No Way to Say Goodbye - Anna McPartlin [32]
When Mary called, she cried, which she had promised herself she wouldn’t do. She had declined Mary’s offer to come over, telling herself that, like any wounded animal, she needed to be alone. That wasn’t the truth. She hated being alone but she knew she wouldn’t get through the next few days exchanging pleasantries and girl talk. Instead, as soon as she had finished a telephone interview at three, she would open a bottle of vodka. When it was gone she might break out another – and she didn’t need any witnesses. After that, she promised herself, she’d emerge from the haze tomorrow or the next day and everything would be fine.
Ivan always woke in time for sunrise. In spring and summer he would enjoy it from his veranda, drinking coffee while the birds sang from the branches of the many trees that lined the boundaries of his home. In autumn and winter he would be on his boat when the sun came up. Whatever the season, he would enjoy five hours of good fishing before he headed into town for lunch. Ivan was a creature of habit, so much so that many people had commented they could set their watch by him.
His afternoons he spent at home locked in his study, reading magazines on stocks and commodities or trading shares online. He was never going to be the cause of Donald Trump losing a night’s sleep but he was smart enough to know when to buy and sell. He enjoyed risk but was never seduced by it. Sometimes his judgement let him down but those occasions were rare. Ivan was no mathematician but he was a pretty good economist.
It was curious that he had deviated from his routine, and it was perhaps curiosity that had driven him to do so but, whatever, he had thoroughly enjoyed drinking a few pints with the American. It had been a nice break from the mundane and it was even nicer to be away from his home in the afternoon even if only for a few hours.
Ivan’s large house was a symbol of success to the onlooker but its many empty rooms reminded him of his failure. When he had uttered the words “I will” and “for ever”, he had meant them and, foolishly, he had believed his wife when she had repeated them. Years later when she had come home one night, battling tears to make an announcement, he had been shocked to the core. In the weeks following her desertion he was numb, but at least she and his children, whom she had left with the very night she’d dictated their split, were still in Kenmare.
Originally she had planned a new life for them somewhere in England, which had ignited in Ivan a fierce anger. It was then he considered fighting her for custody. He consulted a solicitor and was told that his rights were secondary to his wife’s. He had argued that she was the adulterer, the home-wrecker, the assassin, that it was she who had killed their family – and there were plenty around him who weren’t shy to point that out. If necessary, they would have stood in a court to swear to it. He argued that he had been a good provider, a good husband, and that he’d never strayed. He had loved his wife and he adored his children. He would never have risked them. He asked why he should lose everything. His solicitor had no answers but, despite this, Ivan was determined to fight for his kids.
Then one day, having witnessed his daughter’s confusion and tears, it dawned on him that this was about his kids, their life and his love of them, not about the woman who had abandoned him. His kids needed her and, despite her failings as a wife, she was a good mother and the prevailing force in their children’s lives. He couldn’t rob them of her as she had robbed him of them. When he had finally admitted to himself that he would lose them, he had quietly fallen apart.
Earlier that morning, alone on his boat, he had found himself reflecting on the day that he had driven his children to the airport and out of his life. He remembered that, following their mother and her lover in the car ahead, they had cried all the way. Neither had wanted to move away