| |
Patrick sat on the bed, still unmade, and stared at Clare’s clothes, still strewn in the corner. He’d excused himself straight after dinner, which he’d spent in the company of Michelle, Chad and Charlotte, all cheerful, and Darrell and Anselo, not very. Patrick knew something was now badly awry between the latter pair, but he could not summon an ounce of energy to ask them about it. Some head of the family he’d make. Everyone else’s problems would get buried under his own steaming pile of Richards.
The mobile phone in his hand told him it was ten past nine at night. London was an hour behind. Eight o’clock. Would she be back by now?
There was only one way to find out. He pressed the phone’s screen where it said Home.
It rang and rang until the voice message kicked in. Clare’s voice: ‘We can’t take your call. Leave a message.’ Her tone implied, ‘if you really must’. Patrick did not leave a message.
He’d resisted calling her mobile until now because he’d assumed that she wouldn’t answer any of his calls, and he did not want to feel the hurt and humiliation he knew this would provoke.
Too much of that and he’d get angry, he thought, and then he might as well just mail the divorce lawyer his bank account details and password.
This all happened because he’d been angry. He’d been angry at himself for being useless and weak. But he’d taken it out on Clare.
His judgement was shot. Maybe it always had been and up till now, he’d just got lucky.
When he was a lad, thought Patrick, he’d had no sense of consequences. Absolutely none. He’d lived entirely in the present – stolen and fought and drunk and fucked without looking forward an instant, and most certainly without looking back.
Perhaps that’s why he had got lucky for the most part. He’d managed to avoid seeing the mess he’d made because he’d never looked over his shoulder. That’s what happened with Julie Marsh; he’d never looked. Because it had never once occurred to him to do so.
Even prison didn’t really make him wise to consequences. It had been an experience Patrick had no wish to repeat but all it did was reduce in his thick head the options he’d previously considered freely available to him. He could no longer steal and he had to be more careful about who he chose to fight. But as far as he was concerned, he could still drink and fuck with abandon. It was only when he got his first proper job that he chose to put the limiters on drinking, too. He made the choice only because he liked making money better. Was that the one sensible decision he’d made, Patrick wondered? Did he even know it was sensible? Or did he just do what suited him best at the time and the fact it was also a smart thing was pure luck?
Jenico used to tell him he was lucky, thought Patrick. He didn’t mean it as a compliment.
Shit, thought Patrick. Jenico.
The prospect of telling his uncle what had happened filled Patrick with sick dread. Marriage failure was hardly uncommon in the Herne–King clan – Patrick’s own parents’ was a prime example – and Jenico accepted that not all the clan even wanted to be married. Aishe, Anselo’s sister, was a single mother, and Jenico’s youngest daughter was currently living with her partner and showing no desire to walk down the aisle.
No, admitting that his marriage was in trouble was not the issue for Patrick. What he dreaded was admitting that it was all his fault, his fuck-up. To Jenico, that would seem like déjà vu all over again.
Another thing Patrick had never appreciated when he was young, was how much effort Jenico put into being a surrogate father to him. By the time Patrick was rampaging around as a teenager, Jenico had little kids of his own, not to mention a sense of duty to all the other cousins. Anselo was one of five, for starters and when they lost their dad, Jenico stepped in as surrogate father for them as well.
In retrospect, Patrick was amazed Jenico had made any time at all for the ungrateful shit that he’d been back then. His uncle had kept at it because he’d felt, as the head of the family, that it was his duty. He’d kept at it because there were no other grown-up men around – the family had lost them all through desertion and death.
He’d put the effort in because he wanted Patrick, one day, to step up and be a man, become one of the family’s leaders. Jenico thought that day was soon.
But how could he be the next rom baro, Patrick thought? He might have Jenico’s size, but he certainly didn’t have his stature. A man who split his family apart through his own stupidity is hardly fit to be a mentor and guardian for all his other relatives.
He ran his thumb over the screen of his phone.
Should he ring Clare’s mobile? Could he handle it if she didn’t pick up? And what should he do if he couldn’t get hold of her at all? Fly back with Tom, he supposed. Some holiday he’d turned this into.
Patrick scrolled down his list of contacts until he hit ‘K’. He’d been chuffed beyond belief that she’d taken his surname when they married, because she was so fiercely independent. It had felt to him like an honour that she’d chosen to do so.
His thumb hovered over her name on the screen. He took a deep breath and pressed down.
It went straight to voicemail: ‘Clare King. Leave a message.’ Patrick hesitated, cursed himself for it, and spoke.
‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I fucked up. I miss you. Call me.’ In the nick of time, he added, ‘Please.’
He hung up and cursed himself anew. He hadn’t even managed to say he loved her.
It was uncomfortable sitting on the bed, so he lay down on it instead, on top of the covers. He could smell Clare’s scent on the pillows. She had worn the same perfume ever since he’d met her. It was called Fracas, a name that when he’d first learned it had made him shout with laughter.
‘Yes, well,’ Clare had said, dryly, ‘it was either that or Poison by Christian Dior.’
Patrick turned his head to inhale the scent. When he and Clare were first going out, he only had to catch a whiff of it to feel the stirrings of lust.
Now, all he felt was an urge to fucking cry. But grown men didn’t cry. They stayed strong, because others depended on them.
There was a quiet tap on the bedroom door and Patrick’s heart sank. Fuck it. He’d had enough of people trying to be kind. They should just leave him alone. How else would he fucking get used to it?
But the door opened, and Charlotte appeared in the gap. Not caring if his reaction was obvious, Patrick heaved a sigh, and hauled himself back into a sitting position.
‘I’m sorry for intruding,’ said Charlotte. ‘I wanted to see if there was anything I could do.’
Her gaze went to the pile of clothes in the corner. ‘Such as tidying the room.’
‘I don’t give a fuck about the room,’ said Patrick. ‘It can stay like this till the crack of doom for all I care.’
He saw Charlotte’s expression flicker, but she was back to her usual cool self in prompt fashion.
‘Well, I suppose that is what the cleaner is for,’ she said. ‘Even though all I’ve seen her do to date is rearrange the dust with one of those feathered things that looks as if it spends its days off draped round the neck of Gina Lollobrigida.’
She met Patrick’s eye. ‘However, said cleaner is not due until the day after tomorrow. I thought you might prefer not to wait until then.’
‘Charlotte,’ said Patrick wearily, ‘I don’t care what state the room is in.’
When she hesitated, he wanted to yell. Did he actually have to tell her to fuck off?
‘Very well.’ She started to back out the door, and Patrick silently cheered.
‘But if there is anything you need,’ she said, still not quite out of the room, ‘anything at all, I’ll be here.’
He needed his wife, thought Patrick. He needed a son who talked. He needed a whole new modus operandi, because the one he was currently using was as fucked as an old Austin Princess.
Could Charlotte give him all that? Not fucking likely.
But then he noticed that her hand was gripping the doorknob so tightly that her knuckles were protruding. It had taken some nerve for her to come up and talk to him, Patrick suddenly realised. And he was being a gold-medal arsehole.
‘Thanks for the offer, Charlotte,’ he said. ‘But the best thing you can do for me is stay away. I need to stew in my own juices for a while yet. Best leave me to it.’
‘What about the others?’ she said. ‘Shall I keep them away, too?’
Christ, she was determined. Patrick didn’t know whether to be pissed off or admiring.
‘Be the sphinx outside my temple?’ he said, with a faint grin.
‘Someone told me once that I was a lioness,’ said Charlotte. There was not a trace of a smile on her face. ‘Perhaps that’s my true calling? And I’ve had to wait for a person who mattered enough to me to pursue it?’
Then she said, ‘Do you want to take Tom down to breakfast tomorrow?’
Thrown by her sudden change of direction, Patrick took a moment to register her question.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I would.’
‘Then I’ll make sure he knows to come to your room,’ she said. ‘Good night.’
And without waiting for a reply, she closed the door.
Patrick blinked. Had he misheard her? Had Charlotte really said he mattered to her?
She wouldn’t mean it like that, he told himself. She was being loyal, that’s all. Like she’d been when she put up with him offloading all his problems on her the other day. Another example of him being weak, he thought, and felt a rush of self-loathing.
She was a good girl, Charlotte. Under that cool, efficient exterior, she had a good heart. If she ever decided to get married, Patrick hoped she chose a bloke who genuinely appreciated her worth. The kind of bloke Clare should have chosen.
He remembered that Clare and he had once talked about whether they would get married again if the other died.
‘I’d be happy for you to remarry,’ she’d said. ‘Just as long as you never forget that every woman who came before me was a mistake and any woman who comes after is a downgrade.’
She’d been smiling at the time, but Patrick knew she’d meant every word.
He couldn’t imagine being married to anyone but Clare. And, fucking hell, he couldn’t handle seeing her with anyone else.
The idea of it bloomed in his head like a toxic fungus – Clare in another man’s bed, in another man’s house, perhaps even with another man’s child. And Patrick knew just what kind of bloke he’d be. Rich, handsome, educated, successful and well connected – a score of five to Patrick’s sad two. He’d bring Clare breakfast in bed, of freshly squeezed orange juice and an omelette that he’d whipped up himself on the Aga. He’d be able to complete the Times crossword. And he’d undoubtedly know the correct fucking way to pronounce quinoa.
His mobile phone was on the bed. Patrick seized it up and stabbed his finger on the screen.
‘Clare King,’ said her voicemail.
Patrick disconnected before he was told once again to leave a message.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! Patrick craved to hurl the phone through the window and hear the glass smash to smithereens. Instead, he drove his fist into the pillows, again and again until the sound of splintering wood brought him to a sudden halt. Behind the pillows was a padded headboard, and one of the struts connecting it to the bed was now cracked.
There you go, thought Patrick. More mindless destruction caused by yours truly. He should drive into Como and raise hell on a drunken spree. Then they could lock him away for the good of everyone.
Everyone except Tom, he thought, and his anger was subsumed by sadness. Patrick was all he had now, the poor, unfortunate little sod. Patrick might as well leave him on the doorstep of the village church. Couldn’t do Tom’s psyche any more harm than staying with his dad. And he’d get to grow up Catholic. The one religion where no matter how badly you fucked up, you had a right to be forgiven.
Patrick doubted Clare would forgive him. He doubted Tom would either, down the track, when someone told him the truth about why his parents aren’t together.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, get a grip, Patrick ordered. Grow up. Be a man.
He scrolled through the contacts on his phone until he came to H. And made a call to Jenico Herne.