James couldn’t quite believe what he was doing. He never talked about personal stuff, not even with friends, really – because the men he knew didn’t really act like that. They tended to be practical types he’d met through his boat-fitting work and emotions were generally kept under wraps.
Yet here he was, two weeks after Lucy had invited him over for coffee, back here again. She had spotted him in the bakery and darted in to say hi. It had surprised him how happy he’d been to see her. She looked lovely with her dark, glossy hair worn loose, and a flush to her face.
Now they were sitting at her garden table, and he was telling her that the mother of his child – the woman he’d been with for eleven years – had had an affair. Lucy pushed back her hair and encouraged him to go on. ‘So, you really had no idea?’
He shook his head. ‘I suppose I should have. I felt like an idiot for not spotting the signs. But Michaela was a brilliant mum, and in the early years I’d assumed she was happy to not be going out to work, and spending as much time as possible with Spike.’
It was true. She’d always seemed to have endless energy and patience, and Spike adored her. But as he grew older and started school, she started to suffer from anxiety and insomnia. She had returned to work as a legal secretary and said that her job was stressing her out. ‘I’d tried to convince her that we could manage on my earnings,’ he continued, ‘but she was adamant that she wanted to be working too – and of course that was fine. I understood that. A couple of years went by, and when Spike was seven, she started to act all weird and jumpy and not like herself at all.’
Lucy nodded as if she understood, and again, James wondered why he was telling her all this. He hadn’t planned to tell her anything really; it had just tumbled out.
‘Was she stressed?’ she asked. ‘I mean, it’s hard going out to work when you have young children. You want to work, and be part of the outside world again – but then there’s guilt about not being there constantly …’
He sipped from his mug. ‘Yeah, she said that was it – that she was stressed and anxious. I suggested she see her GP, but Michaela was always a bit anti-doctors and started seeing an acupuncturist instead – first for the anxiety and then for other stuff, like migraines, back pain, toothache, stuff I had no idea she had …’ He broke off and paused. He knew he should head off to his dad’s place soon – he’d stopped off at Lucy’s as soon as he arrived – even though he could happily sit here all day.
‘Toothaches?’ she prompted him.
‘Yep. I suggested she saw a dentist for that, and she said, “Why are you so closed-minded?”’
They both smiled, and he noticed how very green Lucy’s eyes were in the sunshine. ‘Because you’d suggested that a dentist might be the best person for seeing to teeth?’
He nodded. ‘She said the acupuncture was really helping her, and she did seem more content generally, since she’d been seeing her. It was all Ally-this, Ally-that. She said it was therapeutic.’
As they got up and went inside for more coffee, James decided he’d babbled on enough. It had been a painful time in his life, but he was over it now and, again, he wasn’t quite sure why or how he’d ended up sharing all of this with Lucy. She seemed genuinely interested – and, yes, she’d been the one to start on the subject, by gently asking about Spike, and Spike’s mum and what had happened between them. But he didn’t want Lucy to think he was badmouthing his ex, and he hoped it wasn’t coming across that way. It surprised him, the way it seemed to matter what Lucy thought of him. He was a little in awe of her, he realised. Despite everything that had happened to her she seemed so capable and strong.
Today, he’d learned more about her impressive floristry sideline: parties, christenings, all kinds of special occasions. There were plenty of grand country weddings around here, and as word spread he was sure she would soon be in high demand. James had a wedding to attend to himself in a few weeks’ time. Phyllida Somerville was a local dignitary whose daughter was getting married. His father was invited; he had supplied firewood to the family for many years, and they were still fond of him. When the invitation had arrived, James had realised he’d have to brace himself, dig out a suit and accompany his dad.
In Lucy’s kitchen now, she refilled their mugs from the percolator and motioned for him to take a seat at the table. He spotted her glancing at her phone on the table. ‘I need to pick up the kids from school in half an hour,’ she started.
‘Oh, God – I’m sorry,’ James exclaimed. ‘I’ve taken up way too much of your time yet again.’
‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ she said, smiling now. ‘But you were telling me …’
‘I’ve really gone on. I’m sorry.’ He raked at his hair and cleared his throat.
She laughed, and just then it was as if she hadn’t changed at all from the girl who’d been up for all kinds of adventures. ‘I went on last time, didn’t I? I told you all about Ivan, and I cried, and—’
‘Yes, but that was different.’
‘Anyway, you’re not going on,’ she said firmly. ‘What I meant was, I’m really curious to know what happened next, about the acupuncturist, I mean.’
Ah, so she’d guessed. Of course she had.
‘I don’t mean that in an idle gossip kind of way,’ she added quickly, ‘but, well, there’s this thing with Ivan – this thing that doesn’t quite add up. You know.’ She flushed and looked down momentarily at her mug. ‘But never mind that. What I meant was, I’m genuinely interested. And you were saying?’
‘You don’t have much time—’
‘So, what happened?’ she cut in. ‘I mean, how did you find out?’
And so he told her, and by the time they left the house – with her heading to school and him to his car – James had shared more about his personal life with Lucy than he had ever told anyone else.
He parked at his dad’s house, but he didn’t go in immediately. Instead, he sat there in his car, feeling a little overwhelmed by how much he’d shared with Lucy today. And now he was replaying that scene, three years ago, when he’d stupidly said to Michaela, ‘Aren’t these acupuncture sessions costing quite a lot? I don’t mean it’s a problem. Of course, you can see whoever you like.’
‘Oh, so you’re saying I should ask your permission?’ Michaela had shot back.
‘Of course not,’ he’d exclaimed.
‘Why are you bringing up the cost issue, then?’ She’d glared at him, her hazel eyes narrowed in disdain.
James had been stuck for words for a moment. What had started with a casual enquiry had been turned around to look as if he begrudged her spending money on looking after herself, which of course he didn’t.
‘What about all the money you’ve spent on those tents and sleeping bags, the camping stove and chairs and all that?’
‘But … that was for camping,’ he’d pointed out.
‘Obviously,’ she remarked, ‘and that’s fine, isn’t it – because it’s something you wanted to do.’
James had stared at her, unsure of how to proceed, or what the real issue was here. This whole exchange was being conducted in muttered, angry tones, so that Spike – who was watching something on his laptop upstairs – wouldn’t hear them. ‘I thought you liked camping?’ James said.
‘No, actually, I hate it!’ Michaela snapped. ‘It’s you who loves being outdoors, sleeping on a bloody blow-up bed and heating up beans on that crappy little stove.’
‘Spike loved it!’
She glared at him. ‘Of course he did. He’s a child. But what about me, and what I might enjoy?’
‘Why didn’t you say,’ he started, ‘if you hated it?’
‘After you’d spent all that money? What would’ve been the point?’
He’d felt as if he’d been punched. The previous summer they had driven from Liverpool to Plymouth and taken the ferry to Brittany, where they had booked a pitch at a beautiful campsite right on the coast, and had had two glorious weeks there. They’d swum and fished and built campfires, and come back to the tent happy – at least, he’d thought they were happy – and reeking of woodsmoke from the driftwood they’d burnt. He could hardly bear to think of it now. ‘I thought you loved it too,’ he’d said.
‘I’d have loved it a lot more,’ Michaela retorted, ‘if we’d had a hotel room with a bed in it.’ The implication that he not only begrudged Michaela spending money on acupuncture, but had also forced her to spend a fortnight in a tent, wholly against her will, made him feel terribly uneasy, and a few nights later he found her sitting bolt upright at the kitchen table as if she were about to make an announcement.
‘Could you sit down please, James?’ she asked him.
Obediently, he lowered himself onto a kitchen chair. ‘Kels …’ That had been his nickname for her. ‘What is it?’
He saw her mouth twitch as she picked at the varnish on a fingernail. ‘I’m sorry, James …’ She looked down. ‘I’ve been seeing somebody else.’
He blinked at her across the table. Her expression seemed oddly neutral, as if she had mooted the possibility of upgrading their kitchen worktops.
‘What d’you mean, seeing someone? You mean sleeping with them?’
She nodded, her cheeks flushing pink.
‘Who is it?’ he asked hollowly.
Michaela cast her gaze downwards. ‘It’s, um … my acupuncturist.’
At first he thought it was a joke, perhaps to get him back for ‘dragging’ her camping. But now her eyes had filled with tears and he realised it wasn’t a joke at all.
‘You’re having an affair?’
Michaela had nodded mutely. So many questions had rushed through James’s mind then, such as: ‘You’re leaving me for a woman?’ Not that that would have been any worse, or better; just even more startling, if that were possible. But no, it turned out that Ally was actually Ali, a man called Alistair Jenkins, who lived a couple of miles away in an area of Liverpool far more salubrious than their own. James had just assumed the acupuncturist was female. He had also assumed that he and Michaela were still happy – or at least, content enough in that long-term-couple kind of way.
How wrong he had been. That evening he learned that Ali hadn’t even been Michaela’s acupuncturist beyond that first appointment; they’d taken to meeting for pots of chamomile tea instead. ‘It was all very cerebral,’ she explained, which had made him want to punch a hole in the wall. ‘For ages, we just chatted about stuff.’
Oh, how sodding cosy! How bloody therapeutic that must have been.
‘Right – so you held off jumping into bed,’ he snapped. ‘That makes me feel so much better!’
The next day Michaela had moved in with a friend from work, which turned out to be a temporary measure as, within a couple of months, she and Ali had rented a place together (it had turned out that he was married too). And soon, a rather bewildered but accepting Spike was spending half the week there. Ali was ‘all right’, he said, when James quizzed him. His mum’s new flat was ‘nice’, his bedroom ‘pretty good really’. He was seven at the time. Michaela had bought him the Xbox he’d been asking for (i.e. bribed him) and all seemed right with his world.
It wasn’t that James had been utterly passive in all of this. He had tried to reason with her, and on one sorry occasion, after downing two-thirds of a bottle of scotch – he wasn’t a whisky drinker normally – he had phoned her and cried and begged her to come back. He had even told Lucy that part today, about the whisky (what the hell had he been thinking?). But Michaela had said no, and told him that he should have ‘known’ she wasn’t happy. James had ranted some more and kicked the kitchen bin, making a huge dent in it, which he would later have to explain away to Spike by saying, somewhat unfeasibly, that he ‘knocked it with some shopping’. Cerebral Ali grabbed the phone and barked, ‘Accept it’s over, James. It’s time to move on.’
‘Oh, is it?’ James had fumed. He must have hurled his phone at a vase Michaela’s mother had given them, because hours later James had woken on the sofa wondering why his broken phone was lying in a puddle of water and flowers and broken glass.
He’d told Lucy that bit too – about the phone and the broken vase. What must she think after hearing about him being a phone-smashing, bin-kicking maniac who’d necked almost an entire bottle of whisky in one go? And he wondered again: why did it matter to him what she thought? After all, they hardly knew each other really.
But it did matter, he realised, as he climbed out of his car and made his way across the scrubby ground to his father’s house. It mattered very much and actually, he felt okay that he’d shared it all with her. At least, he thought he did. Anyway, he’d done it now.