Later that day, Gigi sat in a sandwich shop with Olly. They hadn’t planned to see each other. He’d reckoned on a quick run to Clearview, then back to town. But Gigi had agreed, happily, to meet him. The lunchtime rush was over, and there were only two or three other tables occupied. They ordered at the counter, and chatted about nothing much until the flustered young boy working there brought over a tray with their food and drinks on it. He was obviously new, and he made quite a performance of putting the right plate in the right place, and slopped coffee into Oliver’s saucer, apologized, and fussed around with paper napkins. Eventually, he retreated to behind the counter and left them to it.
Gigi reorganized the chaos he’d delivered, then looked at her boy.
‘You’re spoiling me with visits.’
‘And you should be spoilt.’
‘I can’t argue with that. This is lovely …’ She gestured towards her panini. ‘Melted cheese, hot chocolate and my boy. Three of my favourite things. Not necessarily in that order. But I only saw you a while back and here you are again. To what do I owe this honour?’
Oliver tried to smile, but didn’t quite carry it off.
‘Love?’ She knew her face was full of concern.
‘No fooling you, hey?’
‘Plenty of fooling me. But not from you. What’s up?’
He took a deep breath. ‘I think I’ve made a bit of a mess.’
‘Caitlin.’
‘You assume.’
‘Am I wrong?’
He smiled sadly at her. ‘Hardly ever …’
Gigi wanted to say a lot of things. How she’d known something was off. How worried she’d been. How she suddenly felt giddy with relief … But she didn’t say any of them. She slowly and deliberately cut her panini into squares, and stirred her hot chocolate, and left him the space to try to explain.
‘She’s a great girl.’
Gigi wasn’t convinced that was true, but it seemed inflammatory to say so. Either way, the sentence was damning on its own. You hung out with a great girl. You didn’t marry her. You married a wonderful, one-off girl.
‘I am really, really fond of her …’
There was such a ‘but’.
‘I mean, I love her.’ And a question in his voice, on the word. ‘She’s bright. She’s sexy. She thinks I’m the dog’s bollocks.’
‘Bee’s knees.’ She raised an eyebrow, mock-mother.
‘Bee’s knees. Sorry …’
‘And frankly, Golden Balls, she’s not alone in that sentiment. There’s always been something of an orderly queue.’
Oliver brushed off the maternal compliment. ‘We think the same about lots of things.’
Do you, do you really? Gigi thought. Do you feel the same about family? God – never underestimate the colossal importance of a shared vision of your future …
She said the ‘but’ for him. ‘But?’
‘But I think I’m supposed to be feeling some things that I’m not sure that I am.’ He looked embarrassed.
‘Like what?’
‘Well, I’m supposed to be walking on air. Right? Obsessed. I’m supposed to want to be with her every minute. I’m supposed to not be avoiding any conversation about a date for a damn wedding. I’m supposed to be thinking that I couldn’t or I wouldn’t want to live without her. She’s supposed to be’ – and here he put out both his arms expansively – ‘everything.’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s how you felt about Dad, right?’
‘When I married him?’ She thought about it. ‘Yes. It was.’ Her stomach twisted. She wasn’t sure whether it was for Oliver, or for herself. For them both, maybe.
‘And I’m not saying I’ll never feel like that … it’s just …’ He stopped, and thought. ‘It’s gone so fast. And she asked me.’ He shrugged. ‘She’s been let down, once too often. Mostly by men. Her dad, for a start.’
‘And you’d have been letting her down if you said no.’
‘Well, I would.’
‘Love. You can’t marry someone to be polite.’
‘I know.’
‘Or because you are kind, or because you are hoping for or expecting that the right feelings will follow afterwards. It’s hard, marriage. Hard work. If the right feelings aren’t there before you start, they won’t come.’
‘So how do you know?’
Gigi shrugged. ‘I think you just do. I think you said it already. I think you know what you’re meant to be feeling, and I think you’ve just told me you don’t.’
‘Maybe …’
‘That’s just cowardly, isn’t it?’
‘I can’t tell you what to do, Oliver.’
‘I know that.’ He sat forward, tapping his feet nervously against the floor, so that his knees shook. ‘Fuck. Fuck …’ He buried his face in his hands.
Gigi laid a hand on his shoulder.
Something was missing. Gigi sensed there was something he wasn’t telling her. Her mother’s instinct told her that this wasn’t just an accumulation of feeling. There was some kind of catalyst. She knew it. She just didn’t know what it was. And she didn’t want to push.
She couldn’t pretend she’d been excited about Caitlin becoming part of the family, but she knew she’d have done her best, her very best, if she was the person Oliver had chosen. It sounded like Caitlin had chosen him. Like her beautiful boy had done what he thought he should – what he thought was right. She only hoped he had the sense not to compound the original mistake by carrying on. It couldn’t work, if it started like this.
And he hadn’t asked about Richard, about how she was feeling and how she was doing, and she was glad. It was a relief that Oliver was thinking about himself, and not about her and his father. It made her feel less guilty.
For his part, Oliver felt a sense of simple relief at saying out loud some of what had been in his head these last few weeks. He was grateful for his mum’s quiet ear, even though he knew, really, she hadn’t liked Caitlin. Or at least the idea of her. Or at least the shadow she cast over the family.
If he was absolutely honest with himself, seeing her against the backdrop of his family had been the beginning of the real doubt. It hadn’t worked. Not like Emily worked. Gelled. Not even like other girlfriends he’d taken home had worked. Before Christmas, he’d told himself some of what was missing was just myth, the schmaltz of the smug. That there wasn’t some prescribed list of feelings, of boxes everyone had to tick. After Christmas, that had got harder to believe.
There were bits of him not given over to Caitlin, and he was suddenly, without fully understanding why and how, aware that they might be vulnerable, those bits, to someone else.