One in Three

by Tess Stimson

  If I create a scene, I’ll just be playing into Louise’s hands. I made that mistake last week, and she came out smelling of roses, while I ended up reeking of something altogether less fragrant.

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘We can have the fish and chips while Tom looks at her car, and if he can’t fix it today, we can call her an Uber.’

  ‘Actually, I’ve already said she can have the Range Rover.’

  ‘Andy! I’ll need it next week to pick up the dresser for Kit’s room. How long have you lent it to her for?’

  He looks uncomfortable. ‘The Honda’s on its last legs. What if she’d broken down with Bella and Tolly in the car?’ His voice takes on a defensive note. ‘We have the Audi. We leave the Range Rover sitting here for weeks at a time, and even when we’re here, we hardly use it. We’re in walking distance of the station, and it’s impossible to park the damn thing anyway. It’ll be a lot less hassle without it.’

  It’s not about the cars. It’s the way Andy allows himself to be manipulated by Celia and Louise that drives me crazy. When it comes to the Roberts women, he has all the spine of a jellyfish.

  ‘You’ve given her the car?’ I say, unable to hide my anger. ‘You don’t think you should have run something like this past me first? This affects both of us! It should have been a joint decision.’

  ‘The Range Rover was our car before you and I even met,’ Andy says, a little truculently. ‘I think it’s up to me if I give it to Louise or not.’

  ‘And the Audi was mine. That doesn’t mean I’d donate it to the RSPCA without talking to you.’

  We glare at each other. The battle over Louise has ebbed and flowed over the same domestic territory for years now. Periodically, we call a truce, and we’ll have a few months of peace and quiet; and then Louise will drop a grenade between us, demanding money for Bella’s braces or changing the summer holiday schedules when we’ve already paid for flights, and we’re right back to square one.

  The kitchen door opens. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ Louise says, looking anything but.

  ‘You’re not interrupting anything,’ Andy says. ‘We were just about to put the fish and chips on plates. Caz, can you find the vinegar and Worcestershire?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t stay for dinner after all,’ Louise says. ‘I just had a really unpleasant text from Gavin, the farmer who owns the field opposite me. He says my kitchen porch is collapsing because of the rain. I can’t let that happen – he’s looking for any excuse to get the house condemned.’

  ‘Condemned?’ Andy exclaims. ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘He wants me to sell the bottom paddock to some developers so they can get access to his land to build a new estate. I’ve refused, and he’s not happy about it. Look, I’d better go. You know how rickety that porch is – some of the beams are rotted right through. I need to get back and see what’s happening.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Andy says.

  ‘Oh, there’s no need—’

  Andy shoves the warm plastic bag full of fish and chips into my hands. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Louise. I’m not leaving you to sort this out on your own, especially if you’ve got a vindictive farmer on the warpath. At the very least, we need to get a tarp over the porch until we can get someone out to fix it. Caz can look after the kids for an hour or two.’

  ‘What about dinner?’ I protest, as I follow them into the hall.

  He looks at me like I’m feeble-minded. ‘I’ll have mine later.’

  Bella and Taylor are already waiting by the front door, their hair caught up under matching black beanies, rucksacks hitched over their narrow shoulders.

  ‘You’re leaving too?’ I exclaim. ‘What about your fish and chips?’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Bella says.

  Tolly comes running down the stairs. ‘Wait for me!’

  Louise ruffles her son’s hair. ‘You want to come back with Mum, darling? We can snuggle up on the sofa together and watch Coco – d’you fancy that? Or would you rather stay here with Caz? I’m sure she’ll find something for you to do.’

  Tolly leans into his mother’s legs. He’s four years old; it’s no contest. ‘I want to be with you, Mummy.’

  ‘Bella, I thought you wanted to come with me to that cool antique market tomorrow morning,’ I say, trying to keep the note of pleading from my voice. ‘They do some great steampunk jewellery. You’ll love it.’

  She shrugs, twisting her thumb ring round and round with her fingers. I don’t know what Louise said to her when we were out of the room, but it was clearly enough to send her back into her shell again.

  Andy opens the car door for Louise with a casual familiarity that twists the knife in my heart. ‘I’ll text you, Caz, let you know what’s happening. I’ll be back in an hour; two, tops.’

  I watch Louise get into my car with my husband, feeling like I’ve been mugged. How does the woman do it?

  He still hasn’t texted three hours later, when I finally tuck Kit into bed. I throw the uneaten fish and chips in the bin, hating the feeling of insecurity that gives me sick butterflies in my stomach. I know my feelings around Louise aren’t rational, but I also know how torn Andy was, shuttling back and forth between the two of us for a year before he finally left her. We’re married now, we have a son of our own, but how can I be sure he won’t go back to her again?

  I wait till ten, determined not to look needy and jealous, but finally I can’t stand it anymore and text him. When he doesn’t respond after twenty minutes, I text again, and then finally, at eleven o’clock, I give in and call him.

  He doesn’t pick up.

  Chapter 13

  Louise

  Andrew and I haven’t been alone with the children like this in more than four years. It should feel awkward, but, oddly, it just seems comfortable and familiar. I glance over my shoulder: Bella and Taylor are glued to their phones, and Tolly is drowsing against the headrest of his car seat, his eyelids already fluttering closed.

  ‘You didn’t have to drive me home,’ I say, as Andrew navigates the narrow road towards Petworth. The rain is coming down even more heavily now, and I’m glad he’s the one driving, not me. ‘I’d have been fine getting a cab.’

  ‘I told you, you’re keeping this car,’ Andrew says. ‘We never use it anyway. You should have had it in the first place, instead of the Honda. We’re in London most of the time and it just sits here outside the house. Anyway, the kids spend far more time with you. I don’t know why we didn’t think of that at the time.’

  Min thought of that. My divorce lawyer thought of that. God knows, my mother made her feelings on the subject clear. But the problem with the adversarial nature of divorce is that once lawyers get involved, even the most reasonable of people dig in their heels and go ten rounds over things they don’t even want. Andrew didn’t like the Range Rover. He always thought it handled like a pig, and lectured me frequently on its gas-guzzling consumption. He only fought me over it because, by that stage, we were fighting over teaspoons.

  I can’t just blame Andrew for our clichéd descent into divorce hell. I was hurting, and grieving, and my life had been turned upside down. I fought dirty, too. I made life more difficult than it need have been when it came to the children. I’m not proud of it, but access to Tolly and Bella became my weapon of choice, as money was his. It reflects badly on both of us.

  Andrew turns into our rutted lane, splashing through deep puddles that would’ve swamped my poor Honda. Even before we reach the house, I can see the damage to the porch. One support is bending alarmingly outwards under pressure from the gravid ceiling above it, which sags as if pregnant with some alien life form. I pray to God it’s just the porch that’s threatened, not the kitchen itself.

  Andrew leaps out into the driving rain. ‘Bella, take your brother inside,’ he shouts, scooping our dozy son out of his car seat and handing him to his sister, who shields him from the deluge as best she can as she and Taylor stumble towards the house. ‘Louise, do you have an
ything in one of the outbuildings we can use to prop up that porch column?’

  ‘Nothing really strong enough,’ I shout back, barely able to hear myself over the torrential downpour. ‘Maybe one of the old horse jumps?’

  We run towards the back of the property, past the vegetable garden, to what was once a paddock, long before we bought the house. I’m already soaked through to my underwear, and even though it’s not cold, I’m shivering so hard my teeth are chattering. The paddock is waist-high with weeds now, but some of the old jumps and poles are still there. We heave one out of the clinging weeds, wiping off dirt and worms. The rain makes it slippery, but between us we somehow manage to heft the horse jump around the cottage and onto the porch.

  It feels both strange and completely natural to be working in tandem, as if the last five years had never happened. No wonder Caz has fought so hard to prevent a situation like this. Some visceral sense must have warned her that the pull of familiarity, the habit of love that’d lasted more than a decade before her intervention, was more lethal than passion could ever be. Especially when it wasn’t the death of that love, but her deceit and manipulation, that split us apart.

  We look so bedraggled and pathetic by the time we get inside, we both start to laugh. ‘I think you left a sweater or two upstairs,’ I say, squeezing water from my hair onto the flagstones. ‘Let me take a look while you go into the attic and check out the roof.’

  I don’t need to look. I know exactly where Andrew’s clothes are. When he left so suddenly that awful night four years ago, a week after Tolly was born, he took only the clothes that suited his metropolitan, sophisticated new life with a glamorous blonde on his arm. Expensive black jeans, cashmere sweaters, designer sportswear: the clothes I’d noticed gradually creeping into his wardrobe over the preceding twelve months. He abandoned the Aran sweaters that had been part of his life with me.

  I dig into the back of my cupboard now, pulling a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt from the top shelf. I pause and stroke the soft flannel for a moment. A part of me always knew that one day, he’d come back for them.

  As I come back out onto the landing, Andrew emerges from the walk-in attic, brushing dust and plaster from his hands. ‘It’s the same spot,’ he says, referring to the old leak in the roof our surveyor pointed out sixteen years ago. ‘It’s going to need more than a patch this time. The tiles have had it. The slate’s so soft, it crumbles as soon as you touch it. That whole section needs to be replaced.’ He rakes his hand through his wet hair in a gesture so familiar my heart clenches. ‘I’ve moved the soggy insulation, which is adding weight to the ceiling you don’t need. Fingers crossed it’ll hold till we can get outside and sort it out.’

  I hand him his dry clothes. ‘Do you want a hot shower? Your lips are blue.’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind,’ he admits. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Is that an invitation?’

  The second the words are out of my mouth, I flush to the roots of my hair, absolutely mortified. I lost the right to say things like that to my husband when he married another woman.

  But he laughs, a genuine gust of amusement, and in that single exchange the lingering politesse of strangers, which has starched our relationship for the last four years, is dispelled.

  ‘Don’t worry, your virtue is safe.’ I grin. ‘I’ll go in the shower after you. Toss your wet clothes outside the bathroom door and I’ll put them in the dryer. And don’t use all the hot water.’

  A few minutes later, Andrew dumps his sodden jeans and shirt on the landing. I pick them up and go downstairs, cracking the door to the sitting room. The three kids are curled up on the sofa together in front of the TV. None of them even look up. I leave them to it, pausing in the hallway for a moment to listen to the sound of the shower upstairs. I know this isn’t real. A nostalgic flying visit to the past for both of us, that’s all. But right now, my husband is upstairs, my children are next door, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, my world feels in balance.

  I open the door of the tumble dryer in the kitchen, and automatically start checking pockets before throwing everything in. I stop abruptly when I find Andrew’s phone in his jeans. There are no missed calls yet, but we’ve been gone for nearly two hours; it won’t be long before Caz calls Andrew to heel.

  I switch the phone to silent and slide it beneath a pile of tea towels. I just want to keep him here a little longer, to be a family again, if only for a few hours. It’s good for Bella and Tolly to spend some time with their father, without her around.

  After pulling out a homemade shepherd’s pie from the freezer – Andrew’s favourite – I put it in the microwave to defrost. A few minutes later, I hear laughter next door: the sound of Tolly shrieking as he’s tickled, Andrew’s low, lazy laugh, and the rare joy of Bella giggling. I haven’t heard her laugh like that in two years or more.

  A little later, Andrew strolls barefoot into the kitchen, trailing flushed, pink-cheeked children like the Pied Piper. ‘Hey, Lou. Taylor here says she’s thinking about becoming a journalist,’ he says, nodding towards the teenager. ‘Thought you might be able to give her some pointers.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say, glancing up as I set the kitchen table for five. ‘Are you interested in newspapers or magazines, Taylor?’

  The girl awkwardly twists a large silver ring on her finger. ‘No offence, Mrs Page, but I’m kind of more interested in TV.’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ I sigh. ‘Newspapers are an endangered species. If there’s any future in journalism, it’s going to be online. But Andrew’s the one you want to talk to if it’s TV you’re thinking about.’

  ‘Dad, why don’t you show her round INN?’ Bella suggests. ‘She could come up and stay with us in London, and you could take her into the office to meet everyone.’

  ‘Oh, my God, that’d be super-cool!’ Taylor exclaims.

  ‘The summer holidays start soon, don’t they?’ Andrew asks, locating a bottle of Pinot Grigio in the fridge and rooting around in a kitchen drawer for the corkscrew. ‘Why don’t you come up and spend the whole day at the studio, Taylor? See the programme put together from soup to nuts?’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Might even be able to get someone on the newsdesk to take you out on a story, if it’s a slow news day.’

  ‘That would be, like, so awesome!’

  I serve dinner for the five of us at the kitchen table. The kids are drawn to Andrew like iron filings to a magnet. Tolly chatters nonstop, while Bella cleans her plate for the first time in months. In his favourite old pullover and worn jeans, Andrew looks younger and more relaxed than I’ve seen him in years.

  ‘God, that was good,’ he says, pushing back his chair and hauling Tolly onto his lap. ‘No one makes shepherd’s pie like you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I smile.

  ‘I suppose I really should call Caz. It’s after ten. She’ll be wondering where I am.’

  ‘I suppose you should,’ I agree.

  A beat falls.

  ‘She might be asleep,’ he adds. ‘She hasn’t called, so she’s obviously not worried. Although I’m not sure where I put my phone …’

  ‘There’s some rhubarb crumble in the fridge,’ I say.

  He groans. ‘You’re killing me. How can I say no to your rhubarb crumble?’

  I get up from the table and open the fridge, just as a thunderous rumble starts. For a moment, I think it’s the storm outside.

  ‘The ceiling!’ Andrew shouts suddenly.

  He leaps up from the table, Tolly in his arms, and pushes the two girls towards the door. I fling myself across the room to join them, and the five of us watch from the doorway in disbelief as the ceiling finally bursts, releasing a confetti of browned pipes and splintered wood. The air is filled with choking plaster dust, and belatedly Andrew shoves us into the hall and slams the kitchen door shut. We listen with something akin to awe to what sounds like the end of the world.

  Finally, it falls silent. ‘Wait here,’ Andrew war
ns the children, putting Tolly down.

  Gingerly, the two of us peer around the kitchen door. The entire ceiling has come down, destroying half the kitchen. China and glass and broken timbers litter the floor. The collapse has even brought down a section of wall; rainwater is already blowing in through the gap. It looks like we’ve been bombed with a rocket-propelled grenade.

  Andrew puts his arm around me as we survey the wreckage in shock. ‘It’s going to be OK,’ he says.

  I can’t help but let out a half-sob. Never mind the financial implications, or the threat from the farmer; this kitchen has been our home for sixteen years. On the wall now pouring with water, the pencil marks charting our children’s growth are being washed away. Tolly took his first steps across tiles now buried beneath a foot of rubble.

  Andrew pulls me against him, just as I lift my tear-stained face. For a moment, our eyes lock. He bends his head towards me, and kisses me, and every nerve ending in my body lights up with remembered passion. We fit together. We always have.

  I press the flat of my hand against his oh-so-familiar flannel shirtfront. ‘Stay,’ I say.

  Chapter 14

  Caz

  He’s gone all night. All night, without a phone call or text. I almost hope he’s had an accident on the way home, rather than think about what he might have been doing with her.

  The irony isn’t lost on me: this must be how Louise felt when she knew he was with me. I toss and turn in my empty bed, consumed by acid jealousy. It was bad enough when Andy went back to her four years ago, after she got pregnant with Tolly. But in those days, despite Andy’s promises, I’d known he wasn’t entirely mine, not really. There had still been a residual guilt on my part, the sense that somehow I deserved the uncertainty and agony of wondering if he’d ever come back to me.

  But it’s a thousand times worse now. I’m his wife. We have a son together. How can he do this to me?

  The same way he did it to her, I suppose.

  ‘Go round there,’ Angie demands, when I call her at midnight, unable to sleep. It’s Saturday night; she’s out clubbing somewhere, and I can barely hear her over the pounding music in the background. ‘You’re not some sad sack wifey, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Go over and sort her out.’