James had given up looking for a flat. Everything was too expensive, too far away or just too depressing. Besides, the Travel Motel was happy to continue accepting payment by credit card, which meant he could keep his head well buried in the sand as far as his financial situation was concerned. Harry had agreed that he could do one extra day a week in the surgery and he still had some savings, which would hopefully help to keep him afloat for a while. He didn’t like to think for how long. He had sold his car for a ridiculously low price, because it had already been broken into twice, sitting in the street outside his and Stephanie’s house, and now he was on the phone, trying to explain to an estate agent in Lincoln exactly why it was a good idea to sell a building with a large extension attached that needed to be pulled down.
‘It’s hardly worth my while,’ the man was saying. ‘I mean, I suppose I could market it as a renovation project but then you’re looking at, what?, asking about fifty per cent of its true value.’
James thought about his beautifully appointed surgery, which had only been redecorated four months ago and wanted to weep. ‘And what’s the alternative?’ he asked, feeling angry with the estate agent for, he didn’t know quite what. It wasn’t his fault, after all.
‘Well, you pull the extension down, make good and then we put it on the market. It’ll fetch a much better price.’
‘Fine,’ James said, not feeling fine at all. ‘I’ll get back to you.’
The one thing he knew was that he couldn’t go up to Lower Shippingham himself to sort this mess out. He had no doubt he was a pariah in the village by now and he was far too much of a coward to ever want to risk bumping into Katie. Or Sally or Simone or pretty much anyone, really. He tried to think if there was anyone up there he trusted to do the work without supervision, but the only builder he had any kind of relationship with – the one who had built the extension in the first place – was Sally O’Connell’s boyfriend Johnny, and he somehow didn’t feel like calling him would be the best idea he’d ever had. He would have to take a chance and call one of the big firms in Lincoln and get them to do it, although God knows how much that was going to cost him.
He knew that the time had come for him to sit down and have a proper adult conversation with Stephanie about what should happen next, but he was too afraid that she was going to start talking about divorce to initiate the conversation and, besides, she seemed to be avoiding being left alone with him. Whenever he went to pick up Finn or to spend the evening with him at the house, Cassie always seemed to be there too, right up until the moment Stephanie left. And then, when Stephanie came home, she still always kept the taxi outside, engine running, to take him back to the Travel Motel. He knew she was seeing somebody. It was obvious. And he suspected that there were other nights, when either Natasha or Cassie babysat, when she didn’t come home at all. After her comment that first evening he had made a real effort to smarten himself up but he wasn’t sure she’d even noticed.
He wanted to do the right thing by her. Of course he wasn’t planning to try to persuade her that they should sell the family home so they could both buy somewhere smaller. He was the guilty party so he was the one who should have to make sacrifices and, besides, he wanted Finn to be able to be as settled as possible. But he was terrified that he was going to be left with nothing. That by the time he had sold the surgery for whatever fraction of its worth, he would have credit-card bills so huge that the money would simply be swallowed up and he would be left with nowhere to live and no savings left to bail himself out.
He was a vet, for God’s sake, and he had trained for years so that not only could he spend his days doing something he loved but he could also earn big money. Long term, he thought, he could set up on his own down here, although for that he would need capital to fund the start-up costs. He had made half-hearted enquiries at several other practices to see if he could pick up the odd day here and there, but no one seemed interested.
He could get work a couple of days a week doing something else entirely, but what? He had no other skills. And, besides, he needed his days off so that he could keep tabs on Steph. He had taken to hanging around furtively outside the house sometimes – luckily, this being London, his old neighbours didn’t bat an eyelid – and had watched her coming and going, trying to work out who it was that she was seeing, if indeed there was anyone. In the past three weeks – apart from the four evenings he had looked after Finn – she had been out at least another three times. Luckily there was a small green space almost opposite the house where he could sit with his sandwiches and his bottle of water and wait for her to return. He hadn’t seen any sign of a man with her, which gave him hope. Realistically he knew there was someone, but until he saw the evidence he could convince himself that she was just out having a few drinks with the girls. He had thought about following her on her nights out – hailing a taxi and offering up the classic follow-that-cab line from the movies – but he knew that, sad as he had become, even he wasn’t that sad. If she had met someone she liked, she would bring him home eventually. Meanwhile he needed to try and get her to see what she was losing. (And what was that? he thought. A sad unshaven man who lived in a Travel Motel and ate baked beans out of the tin in the evenings because he had nowhere to cook and no money to buy a takeaway. Worse, a man who had proved himself to be untrustworthy and not worth investing in emotionally.)
He decided to go for a walk. The four walls of his room at the Travel Motel were suffocating him and there was only so much daytime TV he could watch. He called Stephanie and left a message that he was going to pick Finn up from school. He had no idea whether or not she was working at the moment, although she always seemed to be busy when he spoke to her but, of course, that might just be an excuse to get off the phone. Then he rang Cassie, who answered, and he told her the same. She sounded delighted to have the afternoon off, as he had known she would be.
He slogged up Chalk Farm Road towards Belsize Park, puffing a bit from the effort of walking uphill. He felt at home once he got up here where the streets were greener and getting mugged was an altogether more remote prospect. These days, he was finding it hard to remember why he had always hated it so much. It seemed positively like an oasis of calm compared to the Travel Motel’s surroundings. He arrived outside the gates of the little school with five minutes to spare and stood there, feeling self-conscious in among the young mums and even younger au pairs. Just a few weeks ago he would have seen this as a great opportunity, a hunting ground where he would have used the fact that he cared enough for his son to come and pick him up from school as a flirting tool. Now he couldn’t have been less interested. There was only one woman he wanted to impress.
Finn’s face lit up when he saw James waiting for him, and then he must have remembered that his friends were around because he rearranged his expression into something he thought was more moody, and therefore more grown-up, and said, ‘What are you doing here?’
James laughed and, resisting ruffling his son’s hair, patted him on the back instead. ‘I gave Cassie the afternoon off,’ he said. ‘I thought we could give David’s cage a good clean-out.’
And then Finn said something that made James’s heart stop: ‘Does Mum want you to meet Michael too?’
Michael. So that was his name. James thought for a moment that he was going to throw up the instant noodles he had eaten for lunch into the hedge. He mentally flicked through everyone he knew, friends, fathers of Finn’s classmates, people Stephanie had ever mentioned working with. He couldn’t come up with a Michael. He breathed deeply. ‘Who’s Michael?’
Finn, oblivious to the reaction he had invoked in his father, said blithely, ‘He’s Mum’s new boyfriend. He’s coming round this evening so I can meet him.’
‘Right. What time?’ James was trying, and failing, to sound casual.
‘Don’t know,’ Finn said, bored of this topic now. ‘When Mum gets home probably.’
Oh, God. Having given Cassie the day off, James knew that he would have to stay with Finn until Stephanie got home. On the other hand this was just what he had been wanting – to know who Stephanie was seeing, to work out who the competition was. ‘How soon after Mum gets home, do you think?’ he asked. ‘Will he travel home with her? Do they work near each other? What does he do?’
‘Why are you asking so many questions?’ Finn said grumpily. ‘Don’t you like Mum having a boyfriend?’
‘Not much, no,’ James said miserably, and then wished he hadn’t.
‘Mum said you’ve got a girlfriend.’
‘I haven’t. I did have but I definitely haven’t any more. It was a very bad thing to do.’
‘Having a girlfriend is a bad thing to do?’ Finn asked, and James couldn’t tell whether he was being serious or not.
‘When you already have a wife it is.’
‘Well, obviously,’ Finn said, rolling his eyes. ‘Everyone knows that.’