He took the tube to the Islington house. He couldn’t face the thought of a cab journey, of being trapped in a vehicle with someone wanting to talk about the bloody Olympics for twenty minutes. The Piccadilly Line was August quiet and he found a seat without any trouble. He sat, his chin pressed into his chest, his feet planted solidly on the floor, his head filled with it all. Not a suicide, after all. Not an inexplicable act of inner turmoil unrelated to himself. Instead, if Abby’s theory was to be believed, a terrible misstep entirely related to himself. To himself and to his family.
Lovely, soft, pliable Maya.
If only she’d been harder. She would have dealt with the issue of the e-mails before it had got under her skin; she would have come home from Caroline’s house that night filled with righteous anger about the behavior of his children and she would have thrown her few things into a bag and gone and made a life for herself, a nice flat-share with Sara, a nice boyfriend eventually, who would have married her and made a baby with her without anyone paying a price.
But instead she’d lost her nerve, walked the streets of late-night London with a belly full of vodka rather than come home to do what she needed to do. And then there, that blighted curbstone on Charing Cross Road where the bloodstains had long since faded away, she’d slipped from the pavement, either by accident or by design, but certainly without properly thinking about what she was doing.
He thought about Abby’s question earlier in the pub. What would he have done if Maya hadn’t fallen from the curb, if she had made it home, drunk and disordered, and told Adrian she was leaving? How would he have reacted? And he knew the answer, well and good. He would have talked her round. He would have pooh-poohed all of her objections; he would have convinced her to stay. And if she’d told him about the e-mails? About the Skype chat? About the disgraceful way she’d been treated by his own daughter? He would still have found a way to make her believe that it could all be OK. And what, he wondered, would he have said if she’d told him about Luke? About their platonic affair of the heart?
He sighed and tipped up his head. Even then, he knew, even then he’d have thrown platitudes at her, told her that everything was going to be fine.
And why? Why would he have thrown a smokescreen over everything? Why would he have ignored the alarm bells, the signs of impending doom? Why would he not have said, My God, Maya, what a terrible, terrible mess this all is, and how are we going to fix it?
Because there was nowhere else for him to go. There had always been somewhere for Adrian to go before. The next woman. The next house. The next family. The next chapter. But he was only halfway through the book of Maya and himself. And he wasn’t prepared to put it down until he’d finished it. Maya didn’t get to choose when it was over. No woman had ever got to choose when it was over with him.
He thought again of Pearl’s bare feet swinging beneath the kitchen counter. And then he thought of the Sunday morning, after he’d gone. He’d woken up in bed with Maya in their new flat and he’d turned to her and smiled and said, “The rest of our lives has officially begun.” He had not thought of Pearl padding down the stairs in her pajamas; he had not pictured her walking into a dark empty kitchen with nobody there to ask her about her dreams. Instead he had pressed his face into Maya’s soft flame-red hair and breathed in her fresh, new smell, told her again and again how happy they would be, how wonderful this new chapter would be, how everyone would love her, how she’d made his life complete.
He’d expected everyone to be happy, just because he was.
Who the hell did he think he was?
Did he think he was God?
And Cat? And Luke? He’d left them too, maybe not in an empty kitchen, but what other tender spot had he ripped himself away from? What other horrible gaping hole had he left in their worlds? Why had he never asked? Why had they never told him?
“You’re just a child, Adrian.”
That’s what Caroline had said to him more than once during the process of their breakup.
“You’re just a little boy.”
“You exist only in the world according to you.”
“You think the rules are for other people.”
“You think anyone who tells you the truth is being mean.”
“You have this innate belief in your own fairy-tale narrative.”
Caroline had said many things to him over those months, in that deep, calm voice of hers. He had not listened to a word of it. Instead he had stroked Maya’s hair and held Maya’s hand and talked to Maya about the baby they would have and rushed home from work to Maya, and met Maya at cinemas and pubs and dreamed about the bright blue future with Maya. Everything else had been aural interference.
He’d thought himself so very reasonable. He’d given Caroline the house. He’d let her choose the terms of their shared custody. He’d carried on paying the bills for over a year without any fuss. He hadn’t once raised his voice or thrown blame at anyone but himself. He had conducted himself impeccably.
But really, what was impeccable about leaving your children and their mother because you liked another girl better?
He changed trains at King’s Cross onto the Northern Line towards Angel. In the corners of his consciousness Pearl’s pale bare feet swung back and forth and back and forth with every footstep he took.
He climbed onto another half-empty train and took another empty seat. His thoughts turned to Caroline and her half-baked ideas about having a baby with Paul Wilson. He tried to imagine it. He tried to imagine there being a child in the world who was inextricably bound to him but was not his. Another face at the Christmas dinner table, another “Daddy.” The thought made him cross. Then he thought of Pearl coming down for her breakfast in her pajamas and Paul Wilson sitting in the half-light, Paul Wilson asking her about her dreams, Paul Wilson maybe holding a baby in his arms who would be Pearl’s new baby brother or sister, and he felt a red heat of injustice spread through his entire anatomy.
Yet he’d expected his family to be happy with his plans to do exactly the same. He’d expected them to embrace Maya and their theoretical child. He’d assumed that everyone would go with the flow, get on with their lives, unscathed.
One more person to love.
The train pulled into Angel. He stumbled onto the platform and made his way up the soaring escalators towards Upper Street. He started to run as he got closer to the house. The air was humid and gray and his shirt stuck to his skin with sweat. His heart was racing. He shouted into his phone as he ran, to Caroline, “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in five minutes. Don’t let Otis go to bed. Don’t let anyone go to bed.”
He took the steps up to the front door two at a time and hit the doorbell urgently. Luke opened the door and stood back to let him pass. “Everyone downstairs?” he asked.
Luke nodded and Adrian ran down the stairs, nearly breaking his neck over the two dogs as they ran towards him to find out who was at the door. He found his family in the kitchen. Caroline was standing over the hob, stirring hot chocolate in a pan. Cat and Pearl sat side by side on the bar stools at the counter and Otis was on the sofa next to Beau, who was fast asleep in his clothes. Luke came from behind Adrian and stood next to Cat.
He looked at them all. He had a hundred things he wanted to say. “I’m sorry,” he said. He put his hand against his racing heart, feeling the sweat cooling on his shirt. “I’m really sorry,” he said again.
And then, quite unexpectedly, he began to cry.