Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [105]
AND SO, OF COURSE, NOW HE WAS LYING WITH JANE IN HIS arms, thinking about Barbara. Fighting feelings of betrayal and self-loathing, and wanting to get up and run away. She felt it. She was a good woman. She knew the difference between an ex-husband and a dead wife, and she lay, alone beside him, castigating herself for letting it happen. It was just that…she really liked him. He was normal. He was handsome, and kind, and he had a great relationship with Hannah—you could see it when you saw them together. He appealed to her, physically and emotionally. Not just because she felt sorry for him. If she’d met him twenty years ago, she knew she would have liked the look of him. And she was so, so very bloody lonely. If she could script this next bit, they would go upstairs together, hand in hand. They would climb under her duvet, wrap themselves around each other, and fall asleep. She wanted to wake up with someone, with him, far more than she actually wanted what had just happened. But she knew that it wasn’t going to go that way, and if she was quiet for a moment, it was because she was struggling to find a way to make it easy for him to leave her, there on the sofa, without stripping her altogether of the dignity she already felt she might be quite close to losing.
She forced a light tone. “So, thanks are in order.”
“Thanks?”
“For services to womankind.”
He wasn’t self-absorbed enough to buy that, but he knew what she was trying to do.
“You’re more than welcome.” And then, “Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
“I should get going…Hannah…these mocks…”
She stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“That’s fine, Mark. Whatever. I understand.”
“Do you?” He looked into her eyes.
“I think so.”
“I’m sorry. I know I should…”
“There’s no should, Mark. We’re grown-ups. I wanted this. I even sort of made it happen. You have nothing to apologize for.”
Again, he didn’t quite believe that.
He grabbed his shirt and pulled it over his head, buttoning the three he’d undone minutes before. “This was…”
“This was lovely. Let’s go with that.”
He nodded at her and smiled. “Lovely.”
But it wasn’t. It was shitty and messy, and he felt bad. He felt bad for himself, and for Barbara and for Jane.
She made herself a toga from the blanket while he put on his boxers and trousers. Now they were both self-conscious and shy. When he was ready to go, he pulled her into a brief, awkward bear hug, but he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t look her in the eyes again when he left.
After she closed the door behind him, Jane curled up in the corner of the sofa and cried for a long time.
MARK SLEPT BADLY; HE’D BEEN DOING THAT A LOT LATELY. WHEN Hannah knocked on the door and came in without waiting for an answer, two mugs of tea in her hands, he felt like he’d only been asleep for twenty minutes. She still had on pajamas and a dressing gown, and, when she’d put the teas down, she jumped onto the bed, grabbing a pillow to hold across her chest, and crossing her legs. She was grinning.
“So…how was it…?”
“How was what?”
He wasn’t ready for this conversation, which was ridiculous, because he should have known he would have to have it this morning, and he’d been awake half the night trying to think of what to say.
“Your date, idiot!”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“You had dinner with a nice-looking woman. No one else was there. That’s a date.”
“If you’re a teenager. If you’re as old as me, it’s just dinner.”
“Semantics, Dad, but okay. Question is, was it just dinner?”
God. Paxman eat your heart out. He realized that his head hurt. He didn’t want to lie to Hannah—he sort of had a policy on that.
“Do I ask you what happens on your dates?”
“So it was a date!” she exclaimed