And then Nick was back from China, shattered but waxing lyrical about the country: about the sights he’d seen, the food he’d eaten and the new business he’d been able to drum up. Although it was after midnight by the time he arrived home, he sat at the kitchen table and ate the remains of the shepherd’s pie and spotted dick I’d made for the children, explaining how and why China’s one hundred thousand textile and clothing manufacturers, employing ten million people, were keen to seek international cooperation. L’uomo’s fabulous menswear would continue to be designed in this country and in Italy, Nick enthused as he ate, but he now had openings to manufacture the garments in China as well as selling into Russia.
I looked at his animated face, the excitement at what he’d achieved over the past few days almost palpable. I suddenly felt as if I had been looking at Nick through smeared, cracked glasses for the last six months and not seen who he really was: my beloved Nick, the father of my children, the man who had never let me down, even when pursued by Amanda in Italy last year.
I knew I had to tell him about Alex, for me to be the one that told him rather than someone else.
‘Nick,’ I began, ‘there’s something I have to tell you…’ My heart was racing and I could feel the sweat trickling down my back. I actually thought I might be sick.
Nick took my hand. ‘Don’t worry. I know all about it.’
‘You know?’ A spasm of what I can only describe as terror went through me.
‘Yes, David told me. He flew out to join me for the last few days. We were being fed snake’s gall bladder at the time, but said he thought I ought to know what had been going on.’
‘But how did David know?’ And why the hell was Nick taking this so calmly? He was eating spotted dick and discussing my adultery as if it were commonplace.
‘Well, as far as I know, Seb told him. Well, I suppose he would, wouldn’t he? I mean, now that Grace knows, we need to be adult about all this and decide the best way forward.’
I just looked at Nick. Was he on some sort of pre-murder high? Was he putting me at my ease so that once I’d relaxed he could simply lean across the table and throttle me? Or maybe I was being shockingly naïve: that in the two weeks he’d spent away from me, he’d had time to consider what David had offloaded about me and really quite liked the idea of not being with me any more? That he’d even sorted a whole divorce thing out in his mind? Oh, how dreadful. Nick didn’t want to be with us any more.
I put my hands to my throat. ‘Well, I think you’re taking it amazingly well,’ I said, offended. Where was the shouting, the recriminations? Did he not care that I’d be having it off ‒ for want of a better phrase ‒ with Alex Hamilton?
‘Harriet, she’s almost a grown woman.’
‘Who is?’
It was Nick’s turn to look puzzled. ‘What do you mean, “Who is?” Who do you think I mean?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Libby.’ Nick had put down his spoon and was looking at me very strangely.
‘Oh, right. Right. Sorry.’ I was scarlet and confused, and the terror at Nick knowing about me and Alex was now greater than the terror at coming out and actually telling him.
‘Seb told David that he’d spent the night with Libby in London after Mum’s wedding. Says he’s in love with her, wants to be with her.’
‘And Grace knows?’
‘Well, yes.’ Nick continued to stare at me, as well he might. ‘I assumed that’s how you knew. I assumed she’d discussed it with you.’
I quickly gathered my senses. ‘No. I had a late Christmas card from Andrea Graham.’ I reached into the drawer in the huge pine dresser where I’d hidden it among the napkins ‒ I’d not wanted any of the children, but especially not Liberty, to see it ‒ and tossed it across the table to Nick. My poor Grace. Not only was she a party to my sleazy little secret, she was apparently aware that Seb really did seem serious about her god-daughter. And that he’d spent the night with her in London. My little girl. My little seventeen year old. Seduced by one of the bloody Goodners family. My God ‒ first Mum by Frank, then John by Amanda, then Grace by Seb. And now Liberty by Seb. My little girl had fallen foul of them. I suppose I hadn’t really believed Libby had actually spent the night with Seb. As in some hotel somewhere. Don’t ask me what I had thought ‒ maybe that they’d walked round Hyde Park all night together or, or… gone to London Zoo.
‘David and I talked about it at length. Grace is OK, apparently. We think she was probably not going to carry on living with Seb even if Libby hadn’t come into the equation. Which, obviously, she now has. Seb will always be Jonty’s father and will always be there for him. You and I both need to have a long talk with Libby tomorrow, tell her we are totally aware of what has been going on. But,’ Nick leaned forward and went on, ‘Liberty has not got to let this interfere with her A levels. Once she’s got her place at med. school, then it’s up to her, isn’t it?’
‘So you’re going to give your blessing to this?’ I was amazed. ‘She’s having sex with him? A man seven years older than she is? A man who works in your company?’
‘Harriet, aren’t all seventeen year old girls having sex? I was having sex at seventeen. Weren’t you?’
‘No, I most certainly was not.’ I snapped. ‘I was eighteen, and then it was a quick excuse for sex. A fumble with one of the grammar schools boys that I certainly didn’t want to repeat.’
Nick patted my hand. ‘All I’m saying is… let’s see what happens. It will probably all fizzle out once she’s off to university.’ He suddenly grinned. ‘And just think, if she does end up with him, she certainly won’t want for anything, will she?’
*
January segued into February and then into March. Grace tried to convince me that by admitting everything to Nick it was simply a way of me trying to get rid of Big G, who continued to hover at my side ‒ some days having the upper hand, some days sulking in her corner when I refused to let her out.
‘Why cause Nick unnecessary pain?’ she’d counselled, on one of our now regular walks with the babies. ‘You’ve got to deal with the pain: you’re not doing him any favours by uploading your pain on to him. Deal with it.’
And I did. Bit by bit, day by day, Big G retreated further into her lair.
I adored the twins. At ten months they were into everything. Thea had learned to pull herself up from the floor holding on to a chair or my leg. Unfortunately she didn’t quite know how to sit down again, and would waver, panic on her face until she sat with a bump, surprised anew at being down on the floor once more. Fin appeared to think there was a crawling event at the next Olympics and would daily try to better his time from the kitchen to the hallway, practising at least ten times in the space of every hour. India sang constantly around the house, a good indicator that she was happy and relaxed, and no longer seemed in thrall to Adriana Saxton. When she wasn’t singing, she talked incessantly about her friend, Martha ‒ and, more often than not, had to be told to put a sock in it on both scores. Kit continued to grow upwards and outwards and was made rugby captain for his year. He was still unable to differentiate between aller, avoir and être, but did go some way to redeeming himself over his poor French grammar by his particularly excellent handle on merde and je m’en fous. Liberty still spent much of her time in her room, determined to get a place at Oxford to do medicine, but now that we allowed her to meet up with Seb at the weekends she was more relaxed and certainly a lot more pleasant to be with.
I found it very difficult to relax with Nick after what I had done with Alex. We made love very rarely, mainly because Nick continued to be away so much ‒ but also because, on the few occasions we did have sex, it invariably ended up as a threesome with Big G worming her way in between us, whispering her poison into one ear while Nick spoke of his love for me in the other.
The one big saving grace in all this mess was that, according to Nick, Alex Hamilton was so good at doing what he did for L’uomo in Milan that he was now based over there on an almost permanent basis. Apparently he still had his apartment in Manchester, but was rarely there. I went hot and trembly ‒ from fear rather than lust ‒ every time Nick mentioned his name or what he was up to, but when he casually happened to mention this over breakfast one morning, the sense of relief I felt was enormous.
One wet, cold, late Sunday afternoon towards the end of March, I went into the sitting room where Nick had lit a fire a couple of hours earlier. The room was warm and inviting, the Sunday papers were on the floor and some Shrek type movie was playing itself out on the TV. I stood at the door and just stared, taking it all in. Nick and Kit were sharing the sofa, wrapped around each other, both fast asleep. Fin was spark out on Kit’s tummy and Thea, likewise, was on Nick’s. India was sitting with her back against Nick’s, quietly singing some ditty she’d learned at school and dressing one of her Barbie dolls in a somewhat erotic looking outfit. Libby, curled up in one of the big chairs, had plugged herself into both her music and her chemistry textbook and was steadily making notes. She must have sensed my presence for she looked up, smiled and then carried on with her work.
This, then, was what it was all about. Not some sleazy little apartment in Manchester city centre with my knickers round my ankles. My family was here. They were safe. I was safe.