They were sitting out on the terrace of their Portuguese villa, around a long wooden table laden with delicious food that Amy had prepared. The villa was up on a hillside, with a breathtaking view down towards the sea and a natural lagoon where a flock of pink flamingos was wading in the burnt orange light of the spectacular Algarve sunset.
‘So, Emily, how do Jack and Anton get on?’ Sophie asked, taking a huge green olive and popping it into her mouth.
When Emily didn’t reply, they all turned to look at her curiously. ‘Em?’ Melissa prompted. ‘Sophie just asked you how Anton and Jack get on.’
‘I know.’ Emily’s tone was curt, as if she was drawing a line under the conversation.
Melissa rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Emily. Why do you always have to be so secretive? You know every bloody thing about us but you won’t tell us a single thing about you. We know now that Anton’s his father, so why the need to be so cloak and dagger? It’s really not a big deal any more.’
Emily’s dark eyes narrowed. ‘Because it’s no one else’s business, that’s why!’
‘But Emily,’ Sophie cut in, ‘we’re not just anyone else. We’re your best friends. Why don’t you trust us? You should know that we’d never judge you or blab anything you didn’t want us to.’
Emily’s face softened slightly. ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you…’
‘Well, you obviously don’t, or you wouldn’t have kept Anton such a secret all these years.’ Melissa scowled impatiently as she speared an asparagus tip and bit off the end. ‘And to be perfectly honest, we knew all along anyway.’
‘Oh, did you really?’ There was a sharp tone to Emily’s voice that made Sophie sit up a bit straighter. Like Melissa, she found it frustrating that Emily wouldn’t tell the rest of them anything about herself, whilst knowing every single thing about them, both the good and the bad. She had always put it down to Emily not wanting anyone to know about Anton, because he was married and her lecturer. Now she wondered if there was a bit more to it. ‘Come on, Em, Melissa’s right. And it was a simple enough question. How does Anton get on with Jack?’
A succession of emotions passed over Emily’s face. Finally, she exhaled, as if she had come to a decision. ‘He doesn’t know about him.’
There was a long silence as each of the others digested what she had just said.
Sophie frowned. ‘Jack doesn’t know about Anton or Anton doesn’t know about Jack?’
Emily shook her head slightly. ‘Both.’
Emily swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. Beside her, Anton groaned and pulled her naked body back towards his, his hands roaming over her skin. ‘Don’t go,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Stay the night.’
‘I can’t.’ Emily tried to disentangle herself from his arms but his touch was like a magnetic force, pulling her further into him every time she tried to move away.
Anton kissed his way down her body. ‘There’s no reason to leave,’ he whispered, using his tongue to set every nerve ending on fire. ‘Stay here and let me devour you all night long.’
Emily moaned with pleasure. She was helpless to resist him, yet she had to go. ‘Just… one more time,’ she gasped, as he entered her and began to thrust, sending shudders of ecstasy through her whole body.
‘Now I really, really do have to leave,’ she whispered, as they lay entangled in each other’s arms, both slick with perspiration. She rolled away from him and stood up.
‘God, you’re beautiful.’
She looked back at Anton, who was grinning up at her with that sexy, lazy, slightly crooked smile of his. Even the sight of him made her tingle. She had never felt this way with anyone else. He was so comfortable in his nakedness, so animal in his obvious lust for her that it made her less self-conscious and more insatiable than she had ever been. He made her feel like a goddess.
‘I have to go.’ She reached for her dress, which was draped over a chair in the bedroom of Anton’s flat.
‘Let’s get married.’
Emily pulled the dress over her head and gaped at him. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said, let’s get married.’
Emily shook her head, as if it would help to make sense of the words. ‘I don’t understand… why would we get married?’
Anton looked wounded. ‘Seriously, you have to ask that question? I love you. You love me. And we have already wasted far too many years. Let’s not waste any more time. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Em. I thought you felt the same way?’
Emily sank down onto the side of the bed. ‘I do… it’s just, I need time to think about it. ‘
Anton raised his eyebrows quizzically. ‘What is there to think about?’
Emily sighed. What was there to think about? Well, for starters there was Jack. It had been just the two of them for so long, without any kind of father figure in the picture. How would he react to Anton’s sudden presence in his life? She hadn’t told him about Anton. She wasn’t sure why. It all felt too complicated and would open her up to questions she wasn’t sure she was ready to answer yet.
And, rather crucially, she still hadn’t told Anton about Jack. The guilt she felt about this chewed at her insides constantly. But once she had started with the omission, it was impossible to put it right. She couldn’t just come out with: ‘Oh, and by the way, I have a twelve-year-old son that I haven’t told you about.’
‘Just… things. Can I have some time to decide?’
Anton shrugged. ‘Sure. I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Well!’ Melissa raised her eyebrows. ‘That is just weird. How the hell have you managed to keep that a secret?’
‘We always meet at Anton’s flat, so it’s not hard to keep it from him. And Jack’s always out these days so he doesn’t seem to be aware that I’m not home either. I’m always there to pick him up from football, or band practice, or wherever he’s been, so he hasn’t cottoned on.’
‘What about the weekends? School holidays?’ Sophie couldn’t imagine how Emily could pull off such a huge deception.
‘Anton goes back to Durham to see his girls every weekend. Same with school holidays. Being a lecturer means he gets the same holidays as them.’
‘I thought they were older?’
‘They are. Sixteen and fourteen. Still at school.’
There was a long pause.
‘But don’t you want Jack and Anton to know about each other?’ This time it was Amy speaking, her green eyes burning with curiosity.
Emily looked suddenly sad. ‘Of course I do. But the more time that passes when I haven’t said anything, the harder it seems to be to tell them.’
‘That’s why you shouldn’t be so secretive,’ Melissa said, earning a silencing scowl from Sophie.
‘Well, it’s done now, so we just have to help you work out how to broach it.’ Sophie took a sip of her red wine as she mulled the problem.
‘There’s more,’ Emily said, causing them all to gape at her in surprise. After all these years of saying so little, suddenly it was as if a dam had burst and she now wanted to tell them everything. ‘He’s asked me to marry him.’
‘Oh, Em, that is amazing news!’ Amy leapt out of her seat and hugged Emily, who remained strangely still.
‘Congratulations,’ Sophie said, lifting her glass in toast. ‘It is good news, Emily, isn’t it?’
Emily’s eyes clouded. ‘Not really. How can I marry him? How do I suddenly announce I have a son that I haven’t mentioned before?’
‘Hmmm.’ Melissa nodded as she chewed on a piece of bread.
‘Especially as it’s his kid too. He’ll probably be furious that you kept it from him.’
‘Yes, thanks for that, Melissa!’ Sophie cut in. ‘I’m sure Emily is well aware of that. But on the other hand, Em, he might be absolutely thrilled.’
Emily gave Sophie a strange look that she couldn’t read. ‘You see, this is why I always keep everything to myself. No one knows the answer, so it’s pointless discussing it.’
‘No! It really isn’t,’ Sophie reassured her. ‘We’ll figure it out together. The most important question is whether you want to marry him?’
Emily smiled. ‘I do want to marry him. I’ve always wanted to marry him. He’s my Mr Right. He always was. I just wasn’t sure if it would ever happen.’
‘Well, then.’ Sophie rubbed her hands together. ‘You are going to marry Anton and we are going to help you work out a way to break it to him about Jack.’
‘Honesty is the best policy,’ Melissa declared confidently. ‘Just say you didn’t tell him before because you didn’t want to freak him out.’
Emily raised her eyebrows. ‘It’s that simple, is it, Melissa?’
Melissa nodded furiously. ‘It’s only as complicated as you want to make it. You’ve spent too long keeping things bottled up and it only leads to trouble.’
Later that night, Emily lay in bed, thinking. Maybe Melissa was right. Maybe she was wrong to always bottle things up. It had certainly felt like a huge relief to talk to the others about Anton. It was the first time she had unburdened herself and it was a new and cathartic experience for her.
Down the hallway, Amy was also lying awake, staring at the ceiling. Coming here to this beautiful place had done her so much good but the spectre of Nick always loomed large at the back of her mind. She wondered if it always would. He couldn’t get to her physically any longer but the emotional damage was much slower to heal. She would never be able to forgive herself for going back to him. For putting Megan and George in such a vulnerable position.
Her therapist had helped. Had shown her that she was the victim and that she shouldn’t blame herself for what happened. But how could she not? Sophie had warned her so many times that he wouldn’t have changed but she hadn’t listened. She had let him dupe her because she had wanted to be duped.
Sophie and Steve were her saviours and she would never, ever be able to repay them for saving her life. When she woke up in the ambulance on the way to hospital that awful, fateful evening, Sophie was by her side, holding her hand and telling her everything would be all right.
‘It won’t be all right,’ she had whispered, unable to speak aloud because of the excruciating pain.
‘Shh.’ Sophie shook her head. ‘Don’t try to talk, sweetie.’
‘But you don’t understand.’ Amy had to find a way to voice it. To say the unsayable. ‘I wanted him to kill me. I just wanted it to be over.’
Sophie frowned, her blue eyes crinkling in confusion. ‘No, you didn’t, Amy. You wanted the violence to stop. That’s not the same as wanting to die.’
But Amy knew the difference. She wanted to die because she was worthless. She was a worthless mother, a useless wife, an ungrateful friend and a daughter who had deliberately distanced herself from her own, loving parents. She didn’t add anything to the world and she knew that it would be a better place without her in it.
Lying here now, months later, with her physical wounds gone and the psychological trauma starting to recede, she couldn’t imagine ever feeling that way but at the time it had been so very real. Nick would be going to prison and while she knew that he deserved his punishment, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she deserved to be punished too.
The future stretched out before her and she was scared of what it might hold. Living with Sophie and Steve was wonderful but they wouldn’t be able to stay there for ever. She would have to find a job and get a place of their own, however many times Sophie told her she was welcome to stay for as long as she wanted.
She needed to show Megan and George that she would look after them, after letting them down so badly. And she needed to make it up to her parents too, for shutting them out of her life and keeping their grandchildren away from them. Her mother’s face when she came to visit Amy in hospital would stay with her for ever. ‘Why?’ she kept asking through the tears that poured down her cheeks unchecked. ‘Why didn’t you tell us what he was doing to you? We would have helped you.’
‘I was embarrassed,’ Amy croaked. She had told her parents that she had left Nick the first time because things weren’t working out and had been slightly surprised by their reaction, which seemed to be one of relief. ‘Well, hopefully, we’ll at least get to see a lot more of you,’ her mother had said, causing Amy to cringe with shame that she had allowed Nick to squeeze them out of her life. But her parents had both stopped short of criticizing Nick, as if they somehow sensed that they might not have seen the last of him. And when they first got back together, Nick was expansive and generous towards them, making them all think that perhaps they had misjudged him. But it didn’t last and very soon Nick was suggesting that it was better when it was ‘just the four of us. We don’t need anyone else.’
‘I never liked him,’ her father had muttered darkly, shaking his head in disgust as they sat by her hospital bed that awful night. ‘I’m glad he’s been arrested or I don’t know what I’d have done…’
‘Don’t, Richard.’ Amy’s mum put a shaking hand on his arm. ‘It doesn’t help to talk like that. And he’s gone now. Hopefully for good.’
They had suggested that Amy and the children move in with them but Amy wanted to return to Sophie and Steve’s, where she felt safe and secure. It was also perfect for the children, with Emma acting as the bossy big sister, while baby Theo provided a welcome distraction for them all. She felt useful there too, looking after the children while Steve worked on his scripts. He had been getting more and more work recently and she could see that his career was about to take off the way Sophie’s had.
She was luckier than most because money would never be a problem for them. She would never need to work again. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want to. She needed to do something with her life to prove to herself and everyone else that she wasn’t worthless. She just hadn’t figured out what it was yet.