Faith - Lesley Pearse [103]
She had been home some fifteen minutes before Greg arrived, and during the wait she’d tried to make herself calm down, but the moment she heard his car, she rushed outside and wrenched open the back door to reach Barney even before Greg had finished parking it.
‘Hold on, you’ve got all evening,’ she dimly heard Greg say. But she grabbed Barney anyway and holding him tightly ran back inside with him.
‘Mumma,’ he said wonderingly, getting a handful of her hair in his little fist. ‘Mumma.’
He was dressed in dark blue wool dungarees and a red and navy striped jumper, both garments she didn’t recognize. His dark hair had been trimmed, making him look suddenly boyish rather than a baby. She could smell the woman’s perfume on him, something vaguely familiar. She felt murderous that this new woman had dared to put her taste and smell on her son.
She hugged and kissed him but he wriggled to be free of her tight embrace. ‘Get down now,’ he said.
When she put him down he toddled off into the sitting room, making straight for a box of toys that was kept in there. He looked taller and chunkier than before she went away, and when he turned and smiled at her, she began to cry.
Greg’s voice behind her startled her. ‘He looks well, doesn’t he? He’s got a lot of new words too. He said chocolate on the way home, he used to only call it choc choc.’
‘Does he say I want my mummy, not daddy’s tart?’ Laura sobbed. ‘Did he ask why he was at Ealing instead of his granny’s?’
Greg’s face blanched. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said. ‘Christ almighty, Laura, you haven’t been home two minutes and already you’re ranting.’
Greg was a past master at turning things to look as though she was the one at fault, and he was doing it again.
‘I’m not ranting, you bastard,’ she said, wiping her wet eyes on her sleeve and trying to keep her voice down because she didn’t want Barney to be frightened. ‘Don’t even try to lie and say that woman was just a childminder, or give any other excuse. I know! Barney hasn’t been anywhere near your mother’s and I followed you today to see where he’d been while I’d been away. Explain that if you can.’
His face closed up. She could almost see the cogs in his brain whirling round trying to come up with a plausible tale.
‘I’m not going to talk about anything while Barney is around,’ he said airily. ‘He needs his tea, a bath and bed. Until then, will you kindly keep your trap shut.’
He wheeled round and left the house, leaving Laura shaking with rage. She knew he would go to a pub where over a drink he’d soon concoct some kind of story, and whatever she did or said he would turn it around to make himself look like a victim.
It cut her to the quick when Barney said ‘I want Jan Jan,’ while in the bath and it took a monumental effort to stop herself crying.
‘Jan Jan’s gone now,’ she said, and tickled him to make him laugh, but that didn’t stop her feeling as if someone had clamped a steel band around her heart.
Greg didn’t come home that night. She waited and waited, but by twelve-thirty she knew he wouldn’t come. She guessed he’d gone back to the woman and that the pair of them were discussing what to do next.
All the next day Laura went through the motions of going to the shops for food, taking Barney to the swings, and all the usual daily routine of being a wife and mother. But she knew with utter certainty that Greg wanted her out of his life.
He had never been a devoted father, she doubted he really wanted Barney in the new life he’d got planned with this other woman, but once again his actions would be decided by how they affected his image.
Straightforward desertion of his wife and child would not be an option to him; he would have to make himself look like the victim. No doubt he’d already told his parents and friends that she was unstable, a user of drugs and an unfit mother. Maybe he’d even said she’d gone off abroad with another man. Everyone would admire him if he took Barney and had to struggle to bring up his son alone.
Laura couldn’t understand why the other