Chapter Ten
Harriet woke up the next morning feeling hungover even though she hadn’t even finished her one glass of wine at the pub. She lay in bed as lemony sunshine spilled through the curtains and felt as if she had a stone in her stomach.
Memories from last night played through her mind in an uninspiring reel. The conversation with Richard. The separation documents she’d filled out. The dishes.
There had been no easy way to explain to her children the sudden and hopefully temporary lapse in judgment and perhaps even sanity that she’d experienced in willfully destroying fifteen hundred pounds of Swedish stoneware. So she hadn’t.
“Sorry,” she said, giving them a tired sort-of smile. “Sorry, loves, I’m so sorry. I was just being… stupid.”
“You’re not meant to say the s-word,” Chloe said, and Harriet smiled properly.
“No, no, absolutely, you’re right.”
“That is so not the s-word,” Mallory said in disgust.
“What is, then?”
Thankfully Mallory just shook her head. Harriet stepped around all the broken dishes, the shards and fragments littering the floor, to give them all quick hugs; Mallory didn’t even squirm.
“I’ll clean it up tomorrow,” Harriet said. Her children still looked rather nonplussed. “Everything’s all right,” she assured them. “I’m fine. Daddy’s fine. I just…” She gazed down at the dishes. “I didn’t really like these dishes.”
“That doesn’t mean you should break them,” Chloe said, speaking around her thumb, and Harriet nodded in vigorous agreement.
“No, it does not. It most certainly does not.”
She swept the mess into an untidy heap and told the children she’d clean it up in the morning. Then she’d chivvied them all up to bed and fallen into her own, as heartsick as she’d ever been and completely exhausted.
Now she lay in bed and wondered how she could get up and drag herself through another day. She kept replaying the conversation with Richard in her mind. The way he’d basically said he didn’t like her anymore. The emotional affair—because what else was it, really?—he’d been having with Meghan. The fact that she could no longer see a way ahead, at least not an easy one. Even if she forgave Richard for Meghan, did he want to be with her? He seemed more fixated on making it all right with their financial situation than their marriage, but then she’d felt the same way.
Because maybe their marriage couldn’t be fixed.
Harriet turned onto her side, tucking her knees up to her chest and closing her eyes. Perhaps she’d just stay in bed for the rest of her life. Chloe would bring her food. Mallory could do the laundry.
But no, the familiar thud and thump of William catapulting himself out of bed forced her downstairs. She needed to clean up all the broken pottery before someone sliced open an artery.
But when she came downstairs, still in her pajamas and with a serious case of bedhead, the broken dishes had all been swept up. The kitchen was completely clean. Harriet blinked at the pristine space in surprise. Then she saw Mallory out in the garden, sitting hunched on the steps, arms wrapped around her knees, and Harriet opened the French windows and stepped out into the sunshine.
“Hey.”
Mallory looked up, her expression a little guarded. “Hey.”
“Did you clean up the broken dishes?”
“Yeah.” Mallory looked away, her hair sliding into her eyes.
“Thank you.” Harriet was quiet for a moment, trying to gauge her daughter’s mood as well as her own. “That was really kind of you. I’m sorry about all that.” She nodded back towards the house. “The dishes.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t have any cereal because we don’t have any bowls. Or anything.” There was the tiniest lilt of humor to Mallory’s voice that made Harriet smile, despite the dishes. Despite everything.
“I’ll buy some new ones. Cheaper ones.”
“I never liked those ones, anyway. They always looked dirty.”
Harriet laughed, because now that she thought about it, Mallory was right. The dishes were a greenish brown that did look dirty. “You can help me pick out the new ones if you want.”
“Okay.” They were both silent, the air full of birdsong and with a hint of warmth, the fresh earth smell of spring. Then Mallory asked, “So you and Dad aren’t getting back together?”
Harriet tensed. “Why do you ask that?”
“The broken dishes kind of gave it away, Mum.”
Harriet sighed and sat down on the steps next to Mallory. “I don’t know, Mallory. I really don’t know what’s going to happen. Nothing feels simple at the moment.”
Mallory nodded slowly. “Well, it could be worse, I guess.”
“Could it?” Harriet let out a sad, little laugh. “Sometimes I feel like you got the worst deal. No pony, no Ellerton…”
“I was kind of done with the pony. And as for Ellerton…” Mallory shrugged. “Lea Comp might not be so bad.”
Harriet had to keep herself from doing a double take. Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?
“I’m glad you think so,” she finally said. “Really glad. I know it hasn’t been easy.”
“It’s not like the Ellerton girls were really my friends, anyway.” Mallory schooled her face into a determinedly bored expression as she kicked at the grass with one foot. “So it seems, anyway.”
“Did you lose your friends because of this, Mallory?” Harriet asked quietly. It was what she’d been afraid of. Chloe and William had been fine; their friends hadn’t even noticed, not really. Boys still tackled each other and played football and Chloe and her friends barely knew what money was.
But Mallory… all those in-girls she’d been pals with. All those rich, tanned, blonde girls who were going to Ellerton next year, who linked arms and bent their heads together and looked down on everyone else. Mallory had been popular, and if Harriet was painfully honest, she’d been glad and even a little bit proud that her daughter’s experience of school was so different from her own.
“Not all of them,” Mallory answered after a moment. “Not everyone’s like that. But yeah, some. When they learned I wasn’t going to Ellerton… and the rest.” She bit her lip, her gaze turning shadowed.
Harriet longed to pull her daughter into a hug but she knew how prickly Mallory seemed. How prickly Mallory always seemed.
“It’s my own fault, though,” Mallory said with an attempt at a shrug. “So I can’t really get angry with them.”
“How,” Harriet asked, an ache in her throat, “is any of this your own fault?”
Mallory didn’t look at her as she answered. “Because I acted like I was all that and then when I wasn’t…” She shrugged, still not meeting Harriet’s eyes. “They were just waiting for me to fall, weren’t they? And I probably would have done the same if it had been someone else.” She let out a shaky laugh. “You know? We were all friends but we also kinda… weren’t.”
I know the feeling. Harriet didn’t say the words. This was about Mallory, not her. “But not everyone, you said?” she asked. “Not everyone was—is—like that?”
“No, not everyone.” Mallory gave her one of her usual looks and rolled her eyes, making Harriet smile. Even now her daughter had spirit. Strength. “I’m not a complete loser, Mum.”
“Okay. Good to know.” Harriet paused, wondering how much to say. How much more emotional Mallory was willing to go. Then she decided to take the plunge and blurted, “But you know, that’s pretty much what I was, back in secondary school.”
Mallory’s baby-blue eyes widened almost comically. “What?”
“I was a loser. A nerd. What have you. I had awful teeth and frizzy hair and I was terribly shy. School was kind of a misery for quite a while.” She laughed a little, even though the memory still stung, if only a bit.
“So you mean you didn’t have any friends at all?” Mallory sounded both fascinated and horrified.
“I had a few,” Harriet allowed. “But we weren’t together by choice. It was more like we were survivors of a shipwreck. The lowest on the totem pole that is secondary school, if you know what I mean.”
“And so what happened?” Mallory’s eyes narrowed. “Because that didn’t last, right? I mean, your hair’s not frizzy anymore, and you have, like, mum friends.”
“I got my hair straightened and I also got braces and when I went to uni I decided to be a new person.” She’d still had that debilitating shyness, but then she’d met Richard, and she’d started to grow into herself, at least a little, and then… well, then she’d met Sophie. And she’d finally felt like one of the popular girls, to her shame. “The whole experience made me realize how shallow people can be. How you can be judged lacking solely because of your looks, or just because you don’t have the right shirt or shoes or even pen. There were these silver glitter pens that were big in primary school and I didn’t have one. Ever.”
Mallory gave her a disbelieving look. “So you’re saying you were a loser because you didn’t have the right kind of pen?”
“No, I’m saying those things matter to a lot of people and I wish they didn’t. I hate that people don’t even give you a chance sometimes.” Harriet sighed. “It all kind of sucks.”
And she felt as if she were experiencing it all again, in a way. She’d thought she’d figured out who she was and what she wanted a long time ago. She’d gone to uni determined not to be overlooked, but also just as determined not to overlook anyone. She knew what it was like to be on both sides. And yet, somehow, in the midst of everything, she’d forgotten what that other side looked like. Felt like.
She’d become so caught up in money and house and status she’d lost sight of the old Harriet, the real Harriet. The Harriet Richard had fallen in love with, back during those heady university days, when they’d stayed up half the night drinking cheap wine and setting the world to rights.
She’d been so thrilled at being one of the popular girls. Being in. And that had started to matter more than anything else, along with having the right house, car, clothes, everything. The right life.
And Richard, it seemed, had noticed. Anger still burned at the way he’d blamed her. Maybe she’d become a different person, but so had he—working all the time, obsessed with his job, turning to sexy Meghan. Why couldn’t he see his own fault as well as hers?
“Mum?” Harriet blinked the world back into focus, and saw Mallory giving her a funny, lopsided sort of smile. “It’s going to be all right.”
The fact that her eleven-year-old daughter was the one to reassure her made Harriet feel a rush of love, gratitude, and guilt all bundled together. Motherhood, in a nutshell.
“Thanks, love,” she said, and with a shrug Mallory rose from the steps and headed inside.
As she slipped through the doors, Harriet heard William’s bellow of outrage. “There are no bowls for my cereal!”
*
A week later Harriet stood by the school gate as a balmy breeze ruffled her hair. It was the last day of term, and spring had come just in time for the holidays. Over the last week daffodils and tulips had exploded into bloom, and the cherry trees lining the lane into Willoughby Close were dripping with giant pink puffballs of blossom.
After the seemingly endless winter, when absolutely everything in her life had felt cold and dark, Harriet welcomed the change. The children did as well; William had torn up a good part of the garden kicking his football, taking full advantage of the lighter evenings. Even Mallory seemed less prone to moaning, and had sloped over to Abby’s several evenings this week. Harriet didn’t ask what they did; she was just glad her daughter was connecting with someone.
They were more than surviving, if only just, and for that she was grateful. A little over two months on from her personal ground zero and they were making it. Looking ahead, even. Harriet had taken the plunge and, as Ellie had encouraged, sent her CV off to the academic publishing house in Oxford. She hadn’t heard anything, and suspected she might very well never hear, but simply sending it out had been a step for her. An important step.
Ellie had taken a step too, and gone up to Yorkshire in search of Oliver. Abby had stayed at theirs and she and Mallory had spent the entire weekend closeted in Mallory’s room, giggling. Ellie had come back grinning from ear to ear, and she and Oliver were now a firm item.
Harriet told herself she was not the tiniest bit envious, not at all. No, she was just lonely. After fourteen years of married life, living as a singleton again was hard. The empty bed, the long, lonely nights, the lack of a proper grownup to talk to or to be able to hand off a kid when she were about to blow a gasket.
She missed Richard simply as another adult in the house, as much as she missed Richard her husband. Her friend. But she tried not to miss Richard-her-husband too much, because he obviously didn’t miss her in the same way.
She had, after some deliberation, taken the plunge and sent off the legal separation documents to court; when she’d told Richard he’d been tight-lipped and silent, simply giving a nod. Harriet had fought the urge to shake him by the shoulders and say, What? What objection could you possibly have, when you’re still seeing sexy Meghan and you told me you didn’t like me very much anyway?
The children had accepted it stoically; it wasn’t really much change from the current usual, and Harriet had gone to great lengths to explain how this wasn’t a divorce, wasn’t permanent. Baby steps for all of them.
She and Richard had agreed on an arrangement of him coming to Willoughby Close twice a week—on Tuesday nights, when he took them out for pizza, and Saturdays, when he spent the day with them. Even though it all seemed grown-up and reasonable, it still felt like a rather miserable arrangement, and she found herself both dreading and looking forward to Tuesdays and Saturdays in equal measure.
Richard always asked how she was and seemed as if he really wanted to know the answer, but then he’d look away and she thought about the fact that he was still friends with Meghan, still going on about his promising leads, and she felt like they’d never make up old ground. Never find a way to meet in the middle. She didn’t even know where the middle was, or what it might look like.
When he’d dropped them off last Saturday, he’d asked to have the children for one week of the Easter holidays, shocking her.
“Where will you take them?” she asked, thinking of his small studio in London.
“I’ll take them up to Mum and Dad’s.” His parents lived in a rambling Georgian farmhouse in Norfolk, near the sea. The children would love it, they always did, and Harriet wouldn’t be part of it at all.
“All right, then,” she said because she couldn’t exactly say no.
She couldn’t invite herself along either, and she didn’t even want to. She didn’t know what she wanted. She never seemed to, when it came to Richard. She wanted to stop feeling hurt, but that one was harder to come by.
“Should be fun,” she added with an attempt at brightness and Richard gave her one of his old lopsided smiles.
“Yes, they always like it up there, don’t they? Remember when we used to spend the whole day at the beach with them? They never got tired of it—building sandcastles, drippy ice creams, the lot.”
“Yes.” She remembered gritty sand in the sandwiches, and lugging tons of kit the half-mile walk to the beach, and trying to rock a baby to sleep while crouching under a sun shade. But, despite all that, right now it all possessed a rose-tinted glow. It had been fun. Crazy, exhausting, overwhelming, but fun. And she missed it.
She thought about taking the children to her parents for the second week of the holidays, but her mum and dad’s semidetached on a slightly dilapidated housing estate was a far cry from Richard’s parents’ idyll by the beach. It wouldn’t go well to throw them up in stark contrast, one week after another. The children would just complain.
“Have you told your parents?” she asked, curious. “About… well, everything?”
Richard’s expression turned guarded. “I’ve told them about losing my job, of course,” he said. “You’ve told yours, haven’t you?”
Harriet waited a moment too long to say anything, and a look she couldn’t quite decipher flashed across Richard’s face before he turned away to unlock his car. “You really are ashamed, aren’t you?” he said in a low voice, and Harriet went rigid with shock.
“Ashamed? Why should I be ashamed?” she snapped, still stung from their discussion at The Drowned Sailor. “I’m not the one who did anything.”
“Exactly,” Richard said, and got into the car.
She hadn’t meant it quite like that, but somehow the bitterness kept seeping out, like acid from an old battery, corrosive, toxic. Maybe if he’d cut all ties with Meghan, maybe if he admitted he was to blame too…
Maybe if she just finally moved on.
Now, standing at the school gate waiting for her children to tumble out, liberated for an entire two weeks, Harriet tried to banish all the worries and uncertainties tumbling around in her mind.
On the plus side, she had an entire week to herself, something she hadn’t had in just about ever. Certainly not since she’d become a mother. She almost didn’t know what she’d do with herself. Almost.
Harriet had vague visions of splurging on a spa day, sleeping in, going for coffee with Ellie. Lovely long lie-ins and a proper sort out of the house. If she was feeling really motivated, she’d brave the storage unit in Witney that held the last of their boxes of stuff and a few bits of furniture she hadn’t been able to bear to give away. Since the storage unit cost a fair bit of money to rent, it made sense to empty the thing.
“Mummy!” Chloe came flying out, ringlets bouncing in a blond halo around her flushed face. “No school for two weeks, and we’re going to Daddy’s!”
“Granny and Grandad’s, actually,” Harriet corrected with a small smile.
She felt a twinge of unease that her youngest child had adapted so quickly to having separate abodes for her mother and father. Was divorce that easy? Children adjusted, they moved on. Simple. It didn’t feel that easy for Harriet. Not yet.
“It’s going to be so boring there.” Mallory huffed as she joined them at the infants’ entrance, flipping her hair behind her shoulder and perfecting the sulky look that seemed just a little too put on.
“You love it at Granny and Grandad’s,” Harriet answered mildly.
There were ponies in the field next to the house, and her in-laws were not rigorous about enforcing screen time limitations or sugar intake. In other words, kid heaven.
“When I was six,” Mallory replied, flipping her hair yet again. “They don’t even have mobile phone reception.”
“Might be a good thing,” Harriet murmured.
Mallory’s attitude definitely seemed a little suspect, especially since she’d overheard her and Abby talking about their favorite Barbies a few nights ago. Admittedly it had been in a reminiscing sort of way, but still. It was reassuring to think that Mallory’s sulky teen attitude might only be skin-deep.
William came catapulting towards them, trailing school books and papers that Harriet stooped to pick up while he attempted to put Chloe, who promptly screeched, into a headlock. Harriet rolled her eyes at their theatrics as she started shepherding them along.
“Maybe you should teach Chloe how to get out of a head lock, William,” she suggested. “More challenge.”
William looked intrigued by that idea, as did Chloe, and Harriet exchanged a smile with Mallory.
“Harriet.”
She tensed at the sound of Sophie’s voice. They hadn’t talked properly in over a month, although Sophie had subjected her to several overly tragic looks and talon-edged hand squeezes in the school yard, asking in a sotto voce, “How are you?” as if Harriet must be suffering very terribly.
“Sophie,” she said now, forcing a smile. There was a glitter in her ex-friend’s eyes that she didn’t like.
“Have you heard?” Sophie asked, her voice carrying across the still-heaving school yard.
Several mothers shot looks in their direction, and Harriet had the prickly, uncomfortable feeling that everyone already knew what this conversation was about, that it had somehow been staged, a drama about to enfold and she was the unfortunate main actor.
“Heard what?” she asked dutifully, because what other response was there?
“The Old Rectory,” Sophie said, “your old house.” As if Harriet didn’t know. “It’s been bought.”
“Has it?” She’d avoided that part of the village, hadn’t wanted to see her empty home with the awful foreclosure sign in front of it. She’d known about the open house, thanks to Sophie, but she’d deliberately tried not to find out about any auction or sale.
Now she glanced at Mallory’s stony expression and Chloe’s confused face and wished this conversation could have happened anywhere else, at any other time.
“I suppose it was bound to happen,” she said, trying to make her voice sound normal rather than strangled.
Her chest felt tight. Even after all this time, it hurt to think of her house belonging to someone else. Her house, her happy memories, her life.
“Do you know who bought it?” Sophie wasn’t even hiding her relish.
Harriet felt a flash of disgust, and even pity, for how obvious her old friend was. Did she realize? Or perhaps she simply didn’t care. Perhaps Harriet had become so unimportant that Sophie could be obvious and it didn’t matter.
“No, I obviously don’t,” she answered, her tone taking on a distinct edge, “since I didn’t even know it was sold.” Sophie smiled, and Harriet realized she was winding her up on purpose. “Who is it, then?” she asked because Sophie wouldn’t leave Harriet alone until she’d delivered this coup de grâce.
“Cheryl Dennison.” Sophie practically crowed.
Cheryl Dennison, the latest London transplant to Wychwood-on-Lea, an uppity city girl, who drove far too fast down the high street, and flashed her bling and had two whiny and clearly spoiled children. Other mothers discreetly rolled their eyes at Cheryl; Harriet had, once upon a time. Now she didn’t feel she had the right to roll her eyes at anyone.
“How very nice for her,” she managed. “Now we really need to get on. Richard’s picking up the children at five.”
Sophie’s eyes rounded, her mouth curving in transparent delight. “Are you two not together anymore?”
Harriet mentally cursed herself for making such a stupid slip. She’d forgotten she was maintaining the fiction that she and Richard weren’t separated; he was simply spending more time in London to look for a job… which was technically true.
“I’ve got to go,” she said.
Sophie didn’t deserve any explanations. Grabbing Chloe’s hand, she hurried from the school yard. No one spoke until they were back at Willoughby Close, the privacy of the sweeping drive and sheltered courtyard feeling like a balm.
Harriet breathed a big sigh of relief as she unlocked the front door, grateful to be home. Yes, home, even if she hadn’t asked for any of this. Even if she still had no idea what the future looked like.
“So this isn’t temporary.” Mallory’s voice was both flat and accusing. “Like you said.” Harriet tensed and then turned.
“I said I hoped, Mallory,” she said carefully. “I hoped. I hated losing our house. Our home. But we couldn’t afford it and the bank chose to auction it off. You knew that.”
And the Dennisons had bought it. She pictured Cheryl decorating everything in gilt and leather and chrome and mentally shuddered.
“You mean we’re not going back?” Chloe sounded confused, with the threat of tears.
“No, of course we’re not, stupid,” Mallory snarled. “Didn’t you hear anything? The stupid Dennisons bought our house.” And without waiting for a reply she stormed upstairs.
Cue door slamming, rafters shaking. Harriet let out a long, weary sigh. She should have prepared her children better for this moment. For a lot of moments like this. But she’d been so overwhelmed with keeping herself together that she hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted to disappoint or hurt them, had still been hoping that they could claw back some of their old life back. Richard was still so intent on getting a new job, but even if he did…
Their old life was gone. They could never go back, not really, not even if they moved into Wychwood House and Mallory went to Ellerton and everything else. It would still be different. They would be different. And there was nothing she could do about that.
“Mummy.” Chloe tugged on her sleeve. “Are we not going back? I thought we were going back. I thought we were just staying here for a little while, until Daddy got a job again.”
Harriet managed a smile and then drew Chloe to the sofa, hauling her onto her lap in a way she hadn’t in a long time. “No, darling, I’m sorry.” She pressed her cheek against Chloe’s soft hair and closed her eyes. “We’re not going back. Not to our old house, anyway.”
Chloe stuck her thumb in her mouth and burrowed her head, rather painfully, into Harriet’s chest. She gathered her more closely against her, rocking her a little as if she were a baby. “I’m sorry,” she whispered against Chloe’s hair. “I’m sorry, but we can be happy here, can’t we?” She knew she was asking herself as much as she was asking her daughter. Chloe just burrowed harder.
A gust of air made her look up, blinking—William had thrown open the French doors and was now kicking his football against the wall with savage intensity, probably the best thing for him.
Sighing, Harriet leaned back against the sofa. “This place isn’t so bad, is it?” she asked Chloe.
“It’s not home,” Chloe said, sounding tragic, and Harriet kissed the top of her head.
“Then perhaps we need to make it home.”
“How?”
“Well… we could plant some things in the garden. We could paint.” Every room in the house was painted a bright, clean white, which was a bit boring and sterile.
“Can I have elephants on my walls?” Chloe asked eagerly and Harriet was about to demur when she thought suddenly, why not? Why the hell not?
“Of course you can. We’ll paint them ourselves.” And they would probably look like great gray blobs, but who cared? Who cared?
Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “Why wasn’t I allowed elephants in our old house?” she asked, and Harriet thought of Chloe’s old room, with its high ceiling and sashed windows and fireplace. Harriet had had the walls painted pale pink and the curtains and upholstery done in matching pink gingham. Very expensive pink gingham, as she recalled. The interior designer she’d hired had insisted it was just the thing. She’d said no to elephants because they hadn’t matched the decorating scheme, which seemed both absurd and sad now.
“Things are different now,” she told Chloe.
In all sorts of ways. Bad, yes, but also, maybe, just maybe, good.
By the time she’d appeased Chloe, Richard was almost due, and Harriet spent the next twenty minutes hurrying around, making sure suitcases were packed, devices charged, and the crucial soft toys packed for Chloe’s nighttime ritual of surrounding herself with them. After kicking the ball for twenty minutes William had worked out his anger and most of his energy, and Mallory was looking surprisingly calm. Maybe it would all be okay. At least, it could be okay. Eventually.
Still Harriet wondered how Richard would cope with the three of them on his own. Admittedly his parents would be around, but her in-laws tended to retire from grand-parenting duties after supper, preferring to relax in the kid-free sitting room with a stiff drink. Not that she could blame them, really, but would Richard manage? Harriet couldn’t remember the last time he’d done a complete bedtime, from bath to stories to the long, long goodnight.
He’d learn, she supposed. He’d survive. She didn’t have to worry about it, anyway, even though she felt anxious about leaving the children when they’d just learned about the house.
Then Richard rang the doorbell and Harriet didn’t have time to worry anymore. She called William in from the garden and, in exasperation, ordered him to change his trousers; he was filthy with mud.
Blowing out a breath and patting her hair to check its frizz levels, she opened the door. The sight of Richard standing there, dark hair a little mussed, uncertain smile spreading across his face like sunshine breaking through the clouds, made her heart flip over with both sorrow and longing, even now. She was going to have to do something about that. Very soon.
“Hey.” Harriet stepped out of the way so Richard could come in. “I’m afraid no one’s in the best of moods.”
“Oh?” He aimed a smile at Mallory and Chloe, who were both standing by the stairs.
Mallory was doing her best to look bored and Chloe was clutching an armful of cuddly toys Harriet had forbidden her to take. One carrier bag of stuffed animals was surely enough.
“It’s the first day of the holidays and the sun is shining,” Richard said. “No one’s allowed to be grumpy then.”
Mallory scowled and Chloe thrust the bag of soft toys towards her father. “Can I take these?”
“Sure you can, sweetheart.”
William thundered down the stairs having changed his trousers but not his socks, and the next few minutes of commotion kept Harriet from having to make chitchat.
Richard, however, wasn’t so easily put off. As the children loaded their stuff in his car—he’d traded in his Beamer for an old estate he kept parked at the train station in Charlbury—he turned to her.
“What are you going to do this week?”
“Relax, mostly,” Harriet answered. “And sort out the storage unit if I’m feeling up to it.”
“By yourself the whole time?”
“Yes, and looking forward to it,” Harriet said firmly. The last thing she wanted was Richard feeling sorry for her. “You don’t know what it’s like, managing these three by yourself all the time.” She tried to moderate the faint note of accusation in her voice and failed.
“I guess I will now,” Richard said with deliberate mildness. “For a week, at least.” The kids were now squabbling about who got to sit in the front seat, but Richard was ignoring them, his gaze intent on her. Harriet had forgotten how serious he could look, as if she was the most important thing in the world in that moment. It had been a long time since she’d felt important.
“I’m sorry about the other week,” he said. “At the pub. I handled that all wrong. I didn’t mean to sound as if I was blaming you.”
Harriet swallowed. “This isn’t the time, Richard.”
“It’s never the time.”
“That’s because we have three kids. Life’s busy.”
“You could come with us,” he said suddenly. “If you wanted.”
Shock had her speechless for a few seconds. Come with them? To his parents’ house? When he’d had an affair, emotional or otherwise, and when they’d been living apart for over a month? When he didn’t even like her anymore?
And yet a part of her, a larger part than she would have liked, was tempted. Tempted to climb in the front seat and act as if they were a normal family again. A normal couple. To sweep the last three months under the rug and start over. But that would only be pretending, and she didn’t think she could pretend for that long. And in any case, she’d already realized that they couldn’t go back. None of them could.
“I don’t think so,” Harriet said, and took a step back for good measure. “But thanks anyway. It’s… it’s a nice thought.”
“Okay.” Richard nodded, looking wistful, and Harriet didn’t know whether she wanted to shake him or throw her arms around him. Make up your damn mind! One minute you don’t like who I’ve become and the next you’re looking like you lost your best friend. Which is it?
“Da-ad,” Mallory called. “I’m the oldest so I get the front, right?”
“You can take turns,” Richard replied equably. “It’s one hundred and sixty-five miles to Granny and Grandad’s, so you can each sit in the front for fifty-five miles.”
“Even Chloe?” Mallory demanded, outraged, and Richard gave Harriet one last wistful smile before turning towards the kids and the car.
“Even Chloe.”
Harriet had forgotten how good he could be with the children. He diffused an argument with seemingly effortless ease, never losing his temper or getting ratty the way she did. It was something she’d always admired, but right now she found it somewhat annoying. She didn’t want confused feelings when it came to Richard. She wanted to move on. She needed to, for her own sanity’s sake. Because the other option was to keep looking back, and wishing for things that weren’t happening.
She stood by the door while they all got in the car, and then Richard honked the horn once, rolling down the window to wave as he headed down the drive.
Harriet stood in the courtyard for a moment more. It felt very empty, with Ellie and Abby gone to Manchester for the weekend, and number three and four still unoccupied. It felt lonely. A warm breeze blew over her and she told herself to enjoy this, the peace and solitude and the lovely, lovely quiet.
But as Harriet went back into the house all she felt was the emptiness.