Chapter Three
An hour later Harriet was just cleaning up the detritus of the sauce-splattered pizza boxes when Richard knocked on the door. She felt a pang of something—an emotion caught between frustration, sorrow, and something so deep and aching she thrust it instinctively away—at the sight of him standing there, smiling uncertainly and looking tired, his hair rumpled and his khakis creased.
“Hey, guys,” he said in a too-jolly voice that made Mallory and William give him death stares while Chloe squealed and tackled his knees. “How about I read you some stories?”
“Seriously?” Mallory muttered under her breath. “I’m almost twelve, not six.”
“You can read me stories, Daddy,” Chloe said, hugging his knees and tilting her head up to him as she batted her eyelashes.
Harriet couldn’t help but smile at the sight. Her daughter was adorable and knew it, but it didn’t lessen her charm.
“Brilliant.” He patted Chloe’s head and turned to Harriet. “Afterwards,” he said in a low voice, “I was hoping we could go somewhere to talk.” The words held a meaningful note that made Harriet look away.
“I don’t have a babysitter…”
“The kids can fend for themselves for a bit, can’t they?” Richard said with a quick, smiling glance. “Mallory’s in charge.” Mallory rolled her eyes at this and reluctantly Harriet agreed to walk with him to The Three Pennies for a drink and a chat. About what, she couldn’t think about.
She continued to tidy up while Richard read to Chloe, Mallory sulked, and William kicked a football outside, continually thwacking it against the side of the house.
Richard ventured out there after reading to Chloe, and Harriet watched from the kitchen window as he jammed his hands in his pockets and tried to engage William, who remained stubbornly focused on his football. Was he angry at Richard, or just single-minded?
Harriet looked away. She couldn’t take anymore, not when she could remember William and Richard roughhousing in the garden of the Old Rectory, their laughter ringing through the apple trees. How long ago had that been? A year? Two years? When had it stopped? When Richard had been promoted and had started spending more time in London? When William had become football mad, a sport Richard wasn’t that keen on, and had stopped wanting to wrestle?
By the time all the children were settled on the sofa with a DVD so she and Richard could go out, Harriet’s stomach felt knotted and her heart was starting to thud again. She’d toyed with the idea of going to the surgery to get some medication for anxiety, but she didn’t want word getting out. And word would, because it always did. Someone would see the prescription bag, or think she looked tense as she left the surgery… Wychwood-on-Lea was a small place and even if she shouldn’t, she cared what people thought.
“Call me if anything happens,” Harriet ordered Mallory who simply nodded, her gaze glued to her phone. “I mean, anything.”
“Okay, Mum.”
Outside the night was dark, the sky inky, with a few high, cold-looking stars twinkling far above. Winter still held the world in its grip, and their breath came out in frosty puffs as they walked down the drive towards the village’s high street.
“Nice place, this,” Richard said with a nod towards Willoughby Close.
“It’s hardly what we’re used to,” Harriet answered, and he looked away.
She felt a flicker of guilt, but she couldn’t make it easier for him. Not yet, anyway. Not after everything he’d put her through. Was he still seeing Meghan? She couldn’t ask. She didn’t want to know.
“I will get it back,” Richard promised in a low voice. “I promise.”
“Do you have leads? Any interviews?”
“A few things on the backburner.”
Harriet wished he’d stop talking in clichés. What did they even mean? She’d asked about the promising lunch meeting a few weeks ago and Richard had just shrugged.
“I’m talking to a headhunter tomorrow morning,” he continued, his tone determinedly optimistic. “He says the market’s been pretty quiet, but things are starting to pick up.” He gave her a quick, smiling glance. “You only rented that place for six months, right? Because it won’t be longer than that.”
“Yes, only six months,” Harriet answered.
Six months felt like a long time.
The pub was quiet on a Sunday night, only a few regulars at the bar as they stepped inside the dim warmth, ancient, blackened beams running the length of the low ceiling, a fire burning cheerily in the open grate, squashy leather armchairs on either side. The Three Pennies was the village’s tony pub, bought by an ex-Londoner a couple of years ago, and the one all her friends went to. She wished for a moment that they’d chosen Wychwood’s other pub, The Drowned Sailor, which the village’s slightly rougher element frequented. At least no one she knew would see them there.
Richard ordered them drinks and Harriet chose a secluded booth in the back. She didn’t want anyone overhearing this conversation, not even a half-cut barfly, not that The Three Pennies had many of those.
A few minutes later Richard appeared with a glass of red for her and a pint of bitter for him. The sight of the drinks in his hands, what they both always ordered on an evening out, gave her a funny little pang, her heart turning over. This could almost have been a normal night out at the pub—although come to think of it, when was the last time they’d actually gone out alone together? Harriet couldn’t remember.
The months and years had blurred together, a montage of busyness, of school days and children’s activities and the occasional holiday, of Richard spending nights in London and weekends in his study, coming home too late to do anything but watch the news and drink a beer.
She couldn’t actually remember conversations, or laughter, or the kind of poignant moments you looked back on with a smile. Perhaps there hadn’t been any. It was an unsettling thought, as if her picture of the life she’d been building was nothing more than an empty frame and she’d never even realized.
“We should keep this quick,” she said as she accepted the glass of wine. “I’m not entirely comfortable with leaving the children like that.”
Richard arched an eyebrow as he sat across from her. “They’ll be all right for half an hour, surely?”
“You wouldn’t know, would you?” Harriet returned. “Since you usually came home when they were in bed.” For six months, when he wasn’t even working. Stupidly, perhaps, that stung, on top of everything else. When he could have been available, helping out, he was living a double life in London with sexy Meghan, missing assemblies and sports fixtures and all the rest for no bloody reason. She took a large gulp of wine.
“Maybe I deserve that,” Richard said quietly.
“Maybe?” Her voice rang out, too loud.
She was too angry, hadn’t let go of the fury and hurt yet, hadn’t even begun to process it. But now was not the time.
Harriet took a steadying breath. “So what do we need to talk about exactly?”
“Money, I’m afraid.” Richard put down his glass and raked his hand through his hair.
He had lovely hands, long-fingered and surprisingly slender, elegant, pianist hands although he didn’t play the piano or any other instrument. She’d noticed his hands after his eyes, at that first party. He’d handed her a drink and their fingers had brushed, and she’d thought how she’d never considered hands to look gentle before, kind.
Now Richard dropped his hand and gave her a grimacing sort of smile. “I’m sorry it’s come to this, Harriet, at least for a little while.”
“Come to what, exactly?” Harriet made herself ask. She didn’t want to think about his hands now.
“Losing so much.” Richard took a deep breath. “The house…”
“I know about the house.” Harriet tried to moderate her tone. Fighting now didn’t help anything. “Obviously, since we’re not in it anymore. But… you’ve said there’s still a chance? To get it back?” She sounded hopeful and scared at the same time, like a child asking if Father Christmas was real and wanting it so badly to be true. And she did want it to be true. She wanted to get back as much of their lives as they could, as quickly as possible.
“Yes, of course,” Richard answered quickly. “I’ve told you that. Maybe not the Old Rectory, of course, but one like it. In time.”
“I like Wychwood House, on the road to Burford. It has more land, and there’s a paddock for Mallory’s pony.”
Richard nodded slowly. “It’s been on the market for months, hasn’t it? We could probably get a good deal.”
Relief flooded through her, even though she knew this wasn’t real, and at the rate Richard was going, might not ever be so. “Yes, we could.”
If they lived in Wychwood House, and she could have all her furniture back, and her life, maybe, maybe, her marriage would come too. Maybe everything could go back to the way it was, only better.
“The thing is,” Richard said after a moment, looking down as he turned a beer mat around and around between his fingers, “I don’t have a job yet. And with what we owe…”
“How can we owe anyone anything?” Harriet interjected. “We lost our house.”
“Your credit card bill.” Richard looked up. “Have you ever actually looked at one of the statements?”
Harriet had the grace to feel discomfited by the question. “No,” she said after a pause. “Should I have?” She’d arranged all the bills to go on direct debit years ago and never looked at their bank balance. She’d never thought she’d needed to.
“It’s maxed out. And it has a twenty-five thousand pound limit.”
“That’s because I pay for everything with my credit card. For the points.” They were connected to some frequent flyer program that Harriet didn’t actually bother with that often, because it was such a faff. She leaned forward. “What exactly are you saying, Richard? You told me we were going to lose the house, but… do we have any money at all?”
“Some,” Richard answered. “Of course we have some. We’ll be all right, but… we need to tighten our belts, as it were, at least for a little while. Until…”
“Until you find another job, I know.” Harriet took a deep breath. “Okay. So what are we talking about, exactly?”
“We need to write Ellerton,” Richard said quietly. “We can’t afford the fees for next year.”
Harriet stared, speechless. Mallory had been accepted for year seven to one of Oxfordshire’s best private schools with one of the highest percentages of A stars at A level in the country. Her two best friends were going there, she’d already sat the exam, had had her taster day. She was invited to a sleepover with a bunch of new Ellerton girls next month. And now Harriet was going to have to tell her she couldn’t go? Harriet’s stomach churned at the thought of Mallory’s reaction.
Of course, she should have realized this. If they couldn’t afford their house, they couldn’t afford Ellerton. They couldn’t afford anything. “What else?” Harriet asked, her voice quiet and restrained, considering she wanted to scream and kick and flail. This wasn’t fair.
“Mallory’s pony,” Richard said after a moment. “She doesn’t ride that much anymore, does she?”
“She rides on occasion,” Harriet said defensively.
The pony was stabled nearby, and in truth Mallory had started to lose interest. She’d been horse-mad for a couple of years but lately Harriet had had to chivvy her along, something she found rather tedious. She’d had a solidly middle class upbringing outside Birmingham, no ponies in sight.
“Your car…” Richard continued.
Her car? The black, shiny behemoth that she complained about as being too large and ostentatious but now realized she didn’t want to give up? Okay, fine. She could do that. “I need some kind of car, Richard.”
“We can sell the Discovery and buy something more modest. Used.”
“Right.” She pursed her lips, trying to look businesslike when what she felt like doing was crying.
Sobbing like a child, as she banged her fists and drummed her heels. Not about the car or the pony or even Ellerton. If she looked at each thing separately, none of it mattered so much. It was the unforgiving whole, the relentless tearing down of their entire lives, that made her want to lay her head on the table and wail.
“I suppose the two weeks in Provence this summer are out too.” As soon as she said the words, she realized how ridiculous they were.
How ridiculous she’d been for an entire month, closing her eyes to the gaping reality all around her, the unending lack. Everything about their lives was changing… for a little while, at least. They’d get it all back. They had to. And yet here they were, giving it all away. And for how long? There were no guarantees, no matter what Richard insisted. She knew that, even if she didn’t want to believe it.
“Maybe instead you should tell me what I can keep,” she said after a tense pause.
“The house,” Richard offered. “I mean the rental.”
“Brilliant.” Harriet couldn’t keep the bitter edge from her voice.
She took a slug of wine and stared off in the distance, trying to keep her expression neutral even as her lips trembled. Material possessions didn’t matter that much, she knew that. It was all about family and health and happiness. Except at the moment she didn’t feel any of those were in great shape and damn it, she wanted her things. She wanted her children to have their comforts, to feel safe and loved, not as if their world had shifted on its axis, toppled right off into black, yawning space.
“The children’s things, of course,” Richard continued. “Any personal items. Although…” He paused, grimacing. “I think some of the furniture from the Old Rectory might fetch a decent price. It’s designer stuff, isn’t it?”
The furniture she’d put in storage because she couldn’t bear to lose it. The pieces she’d picked out so carefully. Harriet pressed her lips together. It was just furniture. Sofas and tables and chairs. No big deal, not really. Some of it she hadn’t even liked that much. She’d always meant to replace the hall carpet, a Turkish one that had been eye-wateringly expensive but not quite the color she’d wanted. “What happened, exactly?” Harriet asked in a low voice. “I mean, honestly. How… how did you manage to lose all of our money?”
Richard blinked, jerking back a little as if she’d slapped him. Maybe she shouldn’t have phrased it like that, but how else could she? “I told you, I took a gamble and it didn’t pay off.”
“So you lost HCI Investments money,” Harriet clarified. “You lost their clients’ money.” She couldn’t even remember what HCI stood for, although she’d seen it on his pay stubs. “I get that. But our money. How come we’re losing our house? All our things? How come we’re so bloody in debt?” At the last moment she remembered to lower her voice.
She couldn’t stand the thought of this conversation being whispered about and gloated over throughout the whole village.
“I haven’t been working for six months,” Richard said after a moment, his voice level. “And the truth is, we spent a lot. You spent a lot, Harriet.”
She jerked back, shocked. “That’s not fair. I thought we had the money.”
“Well, we didn’t.” Richard raked a hand through his hair and looked away. He seemed angry, but not as angry as she was.
“You should have told me earlier. I wouldn’t have…”
“Are you sure about that?”
“You should have given me a chance. You never even said—”
“I know I didn’t, and now we’re here.”
“Which is not a nice place to be.” Harriet sat back and finished her wine.
They hadn’t even talked about sexy Meghan yet or how that had happened, but Harriet didn’t think she could take much more now. Her heart was skittering inside her chest already.
“Okay.” She blew out a breath. “So the car and the furniture go, but the kids can keep their cuddly toys.”
“And everything else,” Richard replied, his voice sharpening a little.
He’d been Mr. Meek and Mild since this had all blown up, and Harriet was strangely gratified to have finally drawn a little blood.
“Their lives don’t have to change that much, really. They still have their friends…”
“Except they don’t have the house they were born in—”
“They were born in the hospital, Harriet and, in any case, Mallory and William were both born in London.” He sighed. “But I do know what you mean, and I am sorry, more sorry than you can possibly know, that we lost the house. I wish it had never come to this. I really didn’t think it would. And as I’ve said, it won’t be long. I have a lot of experience, a lot of skills to bring to the table. I will get another job.”
He looked so fiercely determined that Harriet didn’t have the heart to remind him it had been six—now seven—months. Richard needed to believe. She did too.
“Okay,” she said tiredly. Her body ached with fatigue and she wanted to go home and check on the kids, make sure Mallory wasn’t sulking and cuddle Chloe, who at six was losing her rounded babyness, making Harriet almost feel a little broody, even though another baby was the last thing she needed right now. “Now is there anything else we need to discuss?”
“Yes,” Richard said quietly. “What about us?”
Us. The word seemed to ping around the room like a ball in a roulette wheel, coming to an awkward stop on the wrong number. “There isn’t an us,” Harriet said unsteadily. “Not right now, anyway. Not since I discovered you were cheating on me.”
Richard took a deep breath. “About Meghan…”
“I don’t want to talk about Meghan, Richard,” Harriet said quickly. She drew in a shattered breath; her hands were shaking. “I definitely don’t want to know any sordid details.” Although she’d tortured herself, wondering about them. How had it started? Had Meghan thrown herself at him? Lent a sympathetic ear at just the right time, understanding him like Harriet hadn’t been able to? Pain lanced through her and she lurched up from the table. “I need to get back, before William and Mallory kill each other.”
“This is an important conversation, Harriet. I need to explain what happened with Meghan. It’s not quite what you think…”
“Really? You mean you didn’t talk to her in the middle of the night? You didn’t go for long walks and explain how your wife didn’t understand you? You didn’t…” But she couldn’t say it. She literally couldn’t say the words sex or screw or anything else in relation to her husband and another woman. It was as if her throat was blocked; she’d swallowed a golf ball and she stood there, gulping and gaping.
“I didn’t sleep with her,” Richard said quietly. But he didn’t deny anything she’d said. Harriet didn’t know how to feel. Relief, yes, a little, and yet… “I admit, it got intense and we—we did some things we shouldn’t have.”
Not so much relief, then. She couldn’t think about those nebulous things, not yet, and perhaps not ever. “Yet you’re still talking to her, aren’t you?” Harriet returned as evenly as she could. She’d been checking the mobile phone statement online rather compulsively, seen the regular calls. A necessary and agonizing form of self-torture.
Richard sighed. “We’re friends, yes, but that’s all it is now.”
The now qualifier was horrible. “I don’t want to hear about all that,” Harriet said. “And I certainly don’t want my husband being friends with the woman he was doing whatever with.”
“It wasn’t—”
“I don’t care what you did or didn’t do with Meghan, because I certainly know you did more than you should have.” The crack in her voice belied that statement. Harriet closed her eyes for a second and then snapped them open. “Why don’t you come back from London on Tuesday and take the kids to swimming?” Richard looked surprised and Harriet gave him a grim smile. She ought to get something out of this lousy deal, and no matter what was going on with them, the children needed to see their father.
Back at home chaos reigned, with William and Mallory screeching at each other over what to watch on the TV—the DVD they’d agreed on earlier had been tossed aside—and Chloe curled up on the sofa, her hands over her ears, her expression overly tragic.
Richard had said he’d needed to get back, and so he hadn’t even come inside. Easy for him to dip in and out of their lives but he had, Harriet realized, been doing that for a while. Looking back, she realized how many nights he’d spent in London, claiming he was working late, how often he’d come home at nine or ten at night, when the children were in bed. How many Saturdays he’d spent in his study, ‘catching up’—on bloody what?
“How about no TV?” Harriet suggested, a touch too sharply, and she turned off the television. William gave a theatrical groan and flopped on the sofa while Mallory glared at her, eyes shooting sparks of furious defiance.
“I hate you,” she snapped, and then flounced upstairs, slamming the door of her bedroom so loudly the rafters shook, and an orange rolled out of the fruit bowl on the kitchen table onto the floor.
Harriet took a deep breath. She understood that her children were angry; she was angry. She got that, she really did. She wanted to allow them their feelings, their anger. She wanted this to be a safe space, blah, blah, yes, she’d read the parenting books, including several about separation and divorce and difficulty. Knowing all that, however, didn’t make dealing with it any easier.
“Time for bed, Chlo,” she said, gently nudging her daughter off the sofa. “School tomorrow. Why don’t you get your jimjams on?”
“Daddy always said jimjams,” Chloe said, speaking around the thumb she’d stuck in her mouth.
When had she started sucking her thumb again? Harriet had made her stop when she was four, coating the offending digit in some awful-tasting unguent. Stubbornly, Chloe had persisted for weeks but Harriet had won out in the end.
Except now her daughter was back at it, and Harriet couldn’t blame her. Her self-soother of choice was a glass—or two—of wine. Who was she to deprive her daughter of her thumb?
“Daddy did say jimjams,” she said with a tired smile. “Still does, actually. He’s taking you to swimming on Tuesday. Maybe he’ll put you to bed as well.”
Chloe blinked slowly at her. “Why isn’t he staying with us? I want Daddy to put me to bed every night.”
“Daddy didn’t put you to bed every night even when he was living with us,” Harriet replied, trying to keep her tone light.
“But why can’t he live with us now?”
“Because he needs to be in London.”
“Well,” Chloe demanded plaintively, “when will he live with us? When is he coming back?”
“I don’t know, Chloe.” The future seemed so uncertain, so impossible to divine.
Would Richard come back to Wychwood-on-Lea? And if he did… would they get divorced? Divorced. So awful. So final. She would be a divorcee and, horribly, she could picture herself, a terrible cliché, a caricature, alone at school functions, other women warily guarding their husbands. She’d turn brittle and hard, with glossy nails and over-highlighted hair and a sharp laugh, made bitter by loneliness and disappointment. Because of course all divorced women were like that. Harriet sighed, annoyed by the melodrama she was envisioning.
She turned to William, who had missed the whole conversation, having found his DS between the sofa cushions. “Time to unplug, darling. School tomorrow.” Harriet reached over and snagged the device, earning a protesting screech from her son.
“Mu-um! I hadn’t finished the level!”
“There’s always another level, William.” She ruffled his hair, giving him a tired smile. What would her energetic boy do without a man in the house? Richard hadn’t been around much, but he’d still been a force for good when it came to William, someone to field his sudden tackles or bursts of energy. With a sigh she put the DS on the charger in the kitchen.
The plates from dinner were still stacked in the sink, and she hadn’t dug out the PE kit or packed lunches for tomorrow. Most of their stuff was still in boxes. Harriet’s shoulders sagged with the sheer effort of these small, mundane tasks. Tomorrow yawned ahead of her, a thousand tomorrows, each one as bleak as the last.
“Come on,” she called to Chloe and William, neither of whom had moved from the sofa. “Let’s get ready for bed.”
Slowly she climbed the stairs, praying they would follow. She really didn’t have the energy to chivvy them along, turning bedtime into some blasted game in order to get them to simply brush their teeth. Richard was the one who had been good at that.
He’d used to play a game where he’d sat at the bottom of the stairs and the children had run across, dodging a ball he threw at them. When they were hit they had to go to bed. They’d loved it, and Harriet had been both exasperated and charmed, because it was fun and cute but it also got them completely riled up right before bed. Still, she could have used some of his infectious energy now. When had that gone? She felt as if so many parts of her life were missing, and she hadn’t even noticed their absence until now, when she looked at the whole picture and saw all the jagged, gaping holes. She’d been living in a ghost town without realizing it.
Harriet pushed open Mallory’s door and peeked in the bedroom she shared with Chloe. Half the room was all soft toys and pink frills, and the other half was purple patchwork and ponies. At least, it had been ponies, back in their old house. But now Harriet saw that Mallory hadn’t put up any of the pony pictures she’d torn out of magazines, and the dressage medal she’d won last year and had had pride of place on her bureau was gone. So perhaps she wouldn’t mind losing the pony.
Actually, Harriet realized, Mallory hadn’t unpacked anything. Her clothes were spilling out of boxes and her books were stacked in a pile by her bed, where Harriet had left them.
“Mallory, why haven’t you started to unpack? I asked you this afternoon…”
“I don’t want to unpack,” Mallory replied in a bored voice. She was lying on her bed, her back to Harriet, her knees drawn up to her chest and her blonde hair spread out over the pillow. “I don’t want to live here.”
Harriet hesitated, torn between saying something sympathetic or something bracing, and not sure which was the better choice. “I’ll help you tomorrow,” she said instead. “It’s time to get ready for bed now. Chloe’s coming up and I want the lights off.”
“So now I have to go to bed when my six-year-old sister does?” Mallory returned, letting out a laugh that sounded far too close to a sob. “Great.”
Harriet leaned her head against the doorframe and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Mallory. I really am. I didn’t want any of this. I know you don’t either, and your father and I are both so sorry for what you’re going through.” Mallory didn’t answer and Harriet took a deep breath. “It’s not going to be forever, I promise.”
Mallory snorted at that and with a sigh Harriet closed the door and went back downstairs, wondering if she’d just made a promise she had no right to make.