My ex-wife still turned heads.
And as Anne walked into the Fleet Street café first thing Monday morning, her husband a faithful half-step behind her, I saw that she would always turn heads.
When we had been together, there had been many furious scenes because some photographer or stylist thought that she was too old, or too fat, or too lacking in some flavour of the month to grace their glossy pages. But what did they know about real beauty? Hers was the kind of beauty that would never fade. Heads turned now, as they would in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time.
Her husband – Oliver, I thought, the guy is almost certainly called Oliver – attempted a smile at me. How many times had I seen him in my life? A handful. And I had never seen him dressed for work before. I recognised the Savile Row tailor that had made his lightweight summer suit because I had often stared in their window on my way to West End Central. I saw where their money came from. I saw why, once our little family had started falling apart, I could never compete. Anne had been looking for a life that her fading modelling career and a husband who was a young uniformed cop could never provide.
‘This is why Scout is going to live with us, Max,’ she said, sitting down. ‘Because a child should be with her mother. Because we can provide a better life for her. And because it is what Scout wants.’
I placed my hands either side of a triple espresso. I took a breath.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Because she told me! When she came to the party! I said – Scout, would you like to live here all the time? And she said – she got that serious little look she gets – and she said yes.’
‘That was the sugar rush talking. That was birthday party politesse. And you should never ask a kid something like that. What’s she going to say? She was in your home. She can’t say no, can she?’
A nice Australian waiter arrived and we stopped arguing while he took their orders. Green tea for Anne and some complicated milky coffee for Oliver. The waiter left and Oliver stirred in his seat. He placed a comforting hand over Anne’s hand, the one with a thin wedding band and a chunky diamond ring. Seeing that familiarity would have hurt me once. Not any more.
I realised suddenly that I no longer cared. Scars are like that. Once the pain stops, you forget they are even there.
‘You walked out,’ I said. ‘You left us to get on with it. And we did. Scout and I have made a life together. I honestly don’t get it. Why now?’
She contemplated her fingernails.
‘People sometimes ask me how many children I have,’ she said. ‘They see me at the nursery on the nanny’s day off. Or at the gym for my hot Pilates class. How many have you got, Anne? And it is hard. Because we have our little boys. But I have three children.’
I smiled at her. ‘So you want Scout to live you because of – what? Social embarrassment?’
She flared up. ‘Because I – we – can give her a better life. You don’t do anything with her! As far as I can tell, all her free time is spent with that flea-bitten old mutt.’
It took me a long moment to realise that she was talking about Stan.
‘Stan is part of our family.’
She guffawed. A guffaw is the only word for it – this contemptuous snort of disbelief. Definitely a guffaw.
‘Oh, please! Scout’s two brothers are her family. Her mother is her family. Oliver is her family. Her stepfather.’
I looked at Oliver. As far as I could tell, there was no connection between this man and my daughter. He tried to hold my eye contact but his gaze slid away. His phone beeped importantly.
‘Scout should be doing ballet,’ Anne said, and I could see that she had it all worked out in advance. ‘Horse riding. It’s what little girls do, Max. She should be learning an instrument.’
We paused as the waiter brought their drinks.
‘Cello,’ Oliver said, frowning at his complicated coffee. ‘Viola.’
‘You don’t know her,’ I told Anne, and I felt the bitter truth of it like a punch to the heart. ‘Scout is such a good child. Smart and funny and kind.’ I swallowed hard, thinking about the party invitations that filled her diary every weekend. ‘But we did something to her, Anne.’
‘I didn’t do anything to her!’ She looked at Oliver for confirmation. ‘I fell in love. I made a new life. I was desperately unhappy with my old life. But I left you – not Scout.’
‘It’s the toughest thing in the world to admit,’ I said. ‘Children pay the price for divorce and they pay it all their lives. But now Scout’s happy. She likes her best friend, Mia. She likes her dog. The flea-bitten old mutt, Stan. She likes our home. And when I tell her about the history of Smithfield, I know she’s really listening. She likes drawing. When she sees a painting she likes, she buys me the postcard.’
I thought of the postcard of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks propped up in the bathroom mirror, Scout’s Christmas present to me because she knew how much I loved that painting, and unexpected tears sprung to my eyes. I blinked them away.
No, I thought. Not in front of these two strangers. No chance.
Oliver glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got that ten o’clock,’ he reminded Anne, with a kind of drawling self-importance. What could possibly be more important in this world than Oliver’s ten o’clock?
Anne nodded with understanding. I wondered how long they had scheduled for this meeting about the future of my daughter. Fifteen minutes? A quick cup of green tea?
Oliver signalled for the bill.
‘I am not going to let you disrupt her life again,’ I told Anne.
She raised her eyebrows and smiled. ‘Again?’
I recognised that gesture with a jolt. The studied amused contempt was one of her signature expressions. She was a total stranger to me now, but there were still gestures that I recognised so well. The worst of both worlds.
‘Look,’ she said, like the voice of all reason. ‘I know you have found it hard to adjust to the failure of our marriage.’
I shook my head. ‘It wasn’t a failed marriage,’ I said.
She looked at her husband and sighed. She thought I was insane.
‘No marriage fails if it produces a child like our daughter,’ I explained. ‘We broke up. We got divorced. But – I just can’t think of it as a failed marriage, Anne.’ I leaned forward. I really wanted her to understand this part. ‘You don’t know Scout like I do. Our daughter will be better than us. She will be less angry than me. She will be less selfish than you.’
She didn’t like that bit.
‘Selfish? You don’t even know me.’
‘And you don’t know Scout.’ I said, as calm and reasonable as I could make it. ‘You can’t just come back and ruin everything. I’m not going to let you disrupt her life any more. Scout is staying with me.’
Anne looked at her husband.
He understood tough negotiations. He was familiar with the art of the deal. He knew when it was time to thump tables and jut out his manly jaw.
‘We’ll have to see what our lawyer says about that,’ he said.
It was exactly the wrong thing to say to me, it was the wrong button to push, and suddenly I was on my feet with my hands on the lapels of his £3,000 Savile Row suit, dragging him to his feet, fighting the urge to rip his ears off, enjoying the pure terror in his eyes.
And then Anne was on her feet too and shouting my name.
I quickly let him go. Somehow a cup of herbal tea had shattered on the floor.
But nothing had happened.
He had pushed the wrong button but I had never touched him. Well, perhaps just a little bit.
‘Do you think you can bully us, Max?’ Anne’s voice was shaking. ‘Is that what you imagine? That you can intimidate us into going away? You want to punish me, that’s what this is about, isn’t it?’
‘You can kid yourself all you want,’ I said. ‘I bet every absent parent who ever lived kidded themselves in the same way. But you can’t do it, Anne. You can’t walk away from Scout and still pretend to know her.’
Everyone was looking at us, enjoying the show.
The Australian waiter was back, pale-faced with fear.
‘Leave or I’ll call the police,’ he told me.
Anne laughed with mocking contempt. That was one more gesture that I remembered from that other life.
‘Scout stays with me,’ I said.