‘I won’t come in,’ Aaron said as he parked up outside my house. ‘Don’t want to leave Buster alone for too long on his first day with me.’
He squeezed my knee before I got out of the car. Half of me was pleased that he hadn’t tried to kiss me in front of Becky, and the other half was disappointed. After I had removed Becky and her car-seat, we said our goodbyes and waved to him from the pavement.
And just like that he was gone, leaving me reeling like I had just been spat out by a tornado. I watched as his Range Rover disappeared around the corner and went inside.
TWELVE
After that first afternoon Becky and I spent at his house, we fell into a routine which remained unchanged for four days. With Aaron being on a sabbatical, Becky and I piled into our small grey Audi Estate every morning and drove to his mansion, arriving there by eleven. The dog trainer – a man called Seth Abbot – always arrived at eleven thirty and stayed for an hour. He was a short, rotund man in his late forties, quite brilliant with Buster and always ready with a kind word and a smile for everyone. I liked him very much, and so did Becky.
After Buster’s training, Becky and I would hang around for an hour or two in the afternoon. Sometimes, we would play board games, or a game of catch in the garden. After that first day we had been there, she never took another nap in the afternoon. We never stayed for dinner though, despite Aaron repeatedly asking on each of those four days, but I didn’t relent until the fifth day.
The fifth day was the day that Buster died.
As much as I had wanted to stay prior to that, I felt that it was important to stick to Becky’s normal routine. Part of me was disappointed that he hadn’t asked me out again for an evening date, and during those four days, I had convinced myself that we had fallen into the friend zone. After that one, solitary, stolen kiss up in the bedroom, he had made no further moves on me, therefore convincing me that we had merely struck up an unlikely friendship. I kept the feelings I was rapidly developing for him close to my chest, even lying to myself that I saw him as nothing more than just a friend.
I’m not sure I ever believed it, though.
On day five, Buster was listless, and Seth went home early. Buster had been doing so well, learning to follow simple commands without the aid of bribery in the form of doggie treats, but that day he just lay down on the grass and refused to budge.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him,’ I said, kneeling next to him on the lawn.
I placed my hand on his head and he stared up at me with glassy, glazed eyes, his tongue lolling and the rapid rise and fall of his chest giving me much cause for concern.
Aaron crouched down next to me. ‘He’s not at all right, is he?’
Becky hovered behind us. I didn’t want her to see Buster like this, and I got to my feet, wrapping my arms around her shoulders and using my body to shield her from the sight of the poorly dog.
‘I think I should take him to the vet,’ Aaron said, getting to his feet.
‘I’ll take him,’ I said automatically.
‘Maybe that’s not such a great idea,’ Aaron said, glancing pointedly at Becky. ‘We don’t know what’s wrong with him yet.’
But I got his meaning perfectly clearly – if it was something serious; if, heaven forbid, he had to be put down, it was entirely inappropriate for Becky to be there as well.
And I knew he was right. I nodded, and Aaron smiled gently at me.
‘Why don’t you and Becky wait here? I’ll just pop to the vet with him now.’
Becky clung to me, and I could feel her trembling against my thigh. ‘Mummy? I want Buster.’
‘It’s okay, sweetie,’ I said, stroking her head. ‘Aaron’s just taking him to the vet.’
‘I want to go.’
‘I’m sorry, baby, we’re going to wait here.’
Becky loved coming here to see Buster. As soon as we got home, she chattered excitedly to my mum about all the things we had done at “Buster school”, and how we were going to come back again the next day. As she was still seeing Buster on a daily basis, she didn’t seem to mind too much that he was no longer living with us. She accepted the situation with her childish simplicity, content to get her fix of him every day.
But I knew this arrangement couldn’t last forever, and it troubled me. We couldn’t very well come to Aaron’s place every single day for the rest of Buster’s life. The friendship that had developed between Aaron and I felt as stable as shifting sand at hightide.
‘I won’t be long. Please, make yourselves at home, you know where everything is. My home is your home.’
If only that were true, I thought. I hated the way I was falling for him, it left me feeling vulnerable and frightened. When he smiled kindly at us, my heart twisted in my chest. Somehow, I managed to smile back.
‘Come on, sweetheart,’ I said, steering her towards the French doors that led back into the kitchen, but not before I watched as Aaron leaned down to scoop up Buster in his arms.
Not wanting Becky to see, I hurried inside.
* * *
Aaron arrived home an hour and a half later. Becky and I were snuggled up together on the sofa, watching Cbeebies in the art-deco living room. Becky was listless and didn’t want to do anything else. Surprisingly, Aaron had a few board games stashed away in his house – residues from his childhood, he had said. Becky was usually intrigued by these games, but not today. Today, nothing could tempt her.
When we heard the front door opening, Becky scrambled to her feet, suddenly springing into life. She had reached the living-room door before I had even fully stood up. I made it out into the hallway in time to see Becky flinging herself at Aaron.
‘Buster!’ she cried.
She clung to his thigh, and he leaned down slightly to squeeze her shoulders. He was wearing his long, black trench-coat just as he had been on the day I had met him, and my heart gave its customary little flutter.
The Angel of Death, came the dark thought, partly because of the long, black coat, but mainly because Buster wasn’t with him.
Oh God, what were we going to tell Becky?
I clung to the doorframe, the vast hallway lurching around me. Aaron looked over at me, his face ashen and pinched, his eyes red. Ever so slightly, he shook his head.
‘I’m sorry,’ he mouthed to me over my daughter’s head.
My hands flew to my mouth, and I slumped against the wall next to the door, the tears springing to my eyes instantaneously.
No, this wouldn’t do at all – I had to be strong for Becky.
‘Why don’t we all go and sit down in the living-room?’ Aaron said.
Becky, who had grown fond of Aaron over the last few days, didn’t let go of his leg. ‘Want Buster,’ she said.
Even though she had never known her father, or ever had a strong male role-model, there must have been something deep inside her that craved a masculine figure in her life. A pang of guilt twisted in my guts like a knife. Aaron may have been temporarily filling that void, but in the greater scheme of things, as much as it pained me to admit it, he was nothing in our lives.
In a rush, it hit me that I was spending far too much time in Aaron’s home, and that it must be confusing for Becky. Hell, if I didn’t even know what was going on, how could I expect a three-year-old to know? Somehow, because of Buster, we had ended up spending far too much time here than was good for us.
I went over to my daughter and the man who it physically pained me to be around and vowed to myself that from this day onwards, we were going to have to extract ourselves from Aaron’s life.
Aaron and I escorted Becky into the living-room with her sandwiched between us, all three of us sitting down on the sofa.
‘Buster was very poorly…’ Aaron began, looking over at me as if seeking reassurance; as if unsure that it was he who was supposed to drop the bombshell.
As much as I appreciated his concern, who else could it be, given that he was the one who had been there at Buster’s end? I nodded, silently urging hi
m on. There could never be an easy way to say something like this to a child, and unfortunately for Aaron, the responsibility had fully befallen him.
There were so many questions that I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t in front of Becky. My questions would have to wait, and silently I urged him on.
He cleared his throat. ‘Buster was very poorly, and there was nothing that the vet could do for him. His kidneys had just stopped working, and the vet had no choice but to put him to sleep.’
‘When will he wake up?’
Inside, I cringed. ‘Sweetie, he’s not going to wake up,’ I said quickly.
Thankfully, Aaron stepped in to help because I was on the verge of welling up:
‘Buster has gone to heaven, Becky. His body didn’t work anymore and the vet helped him to go to sleep forever.’
‘But I don’t want Buster to sleep. It’s not fair.’
She buried her face in Aaron’s chest, and I stroked the back of her head.
‘Now, I know my two favourite girls usually go home for dinner with Granny, but how about today you stay here tonight for dinner? We can order pizza.’
I really wasn’t sure that was a good idea, but Becky nodded into his chest.
‘That’s very kind of you, Aaron, but I don’t want to put you out…’
‘Mummy, I want pizza,’ Becky interrupted, her tear-stained face lifting from his face and twisting round to stare imploringly up at me.
I sighed, realising that I had no choice. Usually, he didn’t ask me to stay for dinner when Becky was listening, perhaps sensitive enough to know that it might put me on the spot, but not today.
‘Please,’ he said quietly. Imploringly. ‘I need the company.’
And had he just called us, his two favourite girls? My head reeled at the fact he might actually want us to stay.
I nodded, too choked up in that moment to trust myself to speak.
‘Why don’t I make us all a drink?’ Aaron said, gently prising my distraught daughter off his chest. ‘Would you like a hot chocolate, Becky?’
She nodded, and inched closer towards me for a cuddle. It felt good to hold her, and the battle not to let go of my tears was real. I watched Aaron leave the room, not believing how gentle and sensitive he was being. He really was the perfect man in every single possible way; as much as I tried, I could never find fault with him, and that scared the hell out of me.
‘I want Buster,’ Becky mumbled damply into my v-neck, purple jumper.
‘I know, baby, I’m so sorry. I do, too.’
I let her cry it out for the ten minutes that Aaron was gone, shushing her and stroking her tear-dampened hair. My thoughts strayed to the other pets I’d ever known in my life, or more specifically, to their deaths. Buster’s death really was quite sudden compared to the other animals I’d had. I fully appreciated that an animal’s internal organs quite often packed up for no apparent reason, but Buster’s death was so incredibly abrupt, to say the least. I couldn’t get my head around the quickness of it, although, now that I thought if it, he had seemed a little off-colour a few hours after the first time we had ever dropped him off here.
A bad feeling niggled at the corner of my mind, one I couldn’t quite place, least of all make sense of. I swept my abstract misgivings to one side when Aaron re-entered the room, a tray of drinks and biscuits held aloft. He had discarded the coat and I was incapable of stopping myself from admiring the hard lines of his body, my gaze involuntarily drawn to his broad shoulders flexing beneath the thin-knit, blue pullover. God, he really was quite spectacular to look at, and I cursed my stupid body for betraying my mind.
‘Hot chocolate for you,’ he said, placing the tray on the coffee-table and handing Becky a plastic mug filled with lukewarm liquid, before handing me a mug of coffee.
He sat back down on the sofa and threw me a sad smile over Becky’s blonde head. As wrong as I knew it was, I was so grateful that he was there with us, helping us. I hadn’t wanted him to become so important so quickly in our lives, but it had crept up on me. He had crept up on me, and there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it.
* * *
That afternoon, Aaron and I did a reasonable job of reassuring Becky as best we could. Her tears dried to sporadic sniffles, and after a little while, I managed to sneak on the TV and she fell into a programme about dancing robots on CBeebies. I knew it was wrong of me to rely on television as a pacifier for her, but I was also sure that at times of great crisis like this, it did her no harm to have a little break from her own terrified, heartbroken thoughts.
‘I just have to phone Granny,’ I said, gently easing myself out of her tight cuddle. ‘I have to tell her we won’t be home for dinner tonight.’
‘Do you want to use the landline?’ Aaron asked me.
I thought of my phone in my shoulder bag in the kitchen. It had been almost out of battery on the way over here, and I had brought my charger with me, intending to charge it up here but had forgotten.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I think my phone might be dead.’
Aaron got to his feet. ‘The landline is in the kitchen. It’s a little tricky to dial out on – if you’re going to use it I have to show you what buttons to press.’
I glanced down at Becky. She was curled up against the arm of the sofa, lost in a world of dancing robots. Gently, I placed a hand on her head. ‘Back in a minute, baby,’ I said, and followed Aaron out of the room.
‘The phone is not remotely difficult to work, I just wanted to get you alone for a second,’ he said when we were out in the huge hallway.
My heart started beating that little bit faster at his nearness. Things felt different between us, charged. I tried to laugh, to make light of the heavy atmosphere, but I couldn’t stop trembling.
‘Well, you’re a smooth liar,’ I said with a shaky laugh.
When he reached out to gently cup a hand on my shoulder, my knees all but buckled.
‘Joyce,’ he said softly, staring deeply into my eyes.
I could not have looked away in that moment for all the money in the world – I was utterly mesmerised by the way his dark hair flopped onto his forehead, and the way his grey eyes glittered. He took a step towards me, and before I knew it, I was in his arms. He didn’t kiss me though, I just found myself caught up in the most delicious hug that was as comforting as it was erotic. I buried my face in the soft pullover, painfully aware of his hard chest beneath it as I breathed in the faint, musky-spicy, masculine scent of him.
‘I’m so sorry about Buster,’ he mumbled into the top of my head. ‘It was sudden onset kidney failure. The vet didn’t know why it had happened but explained that it just sometimes does. There was nothing he could’ve done. I would have paid anything to save him, I’m so sorry.’
A lump rose in my throat, going some way to diminishing the desperate, sexual arousal that was currently raging through my body at his touch.
‘Poor Buster,’ I said, my voice cracking.
Despite being so shamefully turned on at this inappropriate time, the overbearing sadness became all too much and the floodgates opened.
‘Oh God, I feel such a fool,’ I managed to choke out through the tears.
‘Poor you, I’m so very sorry.’
He held me tight and rubbed my back as I cried it out. Thankfully, Becky didn’t appear in the hallway during those five minutes, and when I had sufficiently gained control of myself, I pulled away from him. Instantly, I mourned the comforting feel of him. My body felt untethered, like I might float away at any second. Like there was nothing holding me together.
‘I should call my mum, let her know that we’re staying here for dinner.’
‘Of course. The phone is an old-fashioned, chorded job next to the fridge. I keep meaning to get a new one, but to be honest, I barely use it.’
‘Thanks.’
Aaron looked at his watch. ‘Well, it’s almost four, I don’t know about you, but I could murder a drink. What do you say?’
God, I thoug
ht, a drink would be good right about now. ‘I’m driving,’ I said with some regret.
‘Then get a taxi home. Please, Joyce, it would mean the world to me to share a bottle of wine with you. I can come and pick you up tomorrow so you can collect your car.’
It was tempting. More than tempting. Not so much the drink – as lovely as that sounded – but the excuse to see him again tomorrow. Now that Buster was gone, I wasn’t sure I had an excuse to see him anymore. There was no denying that I was confused; part of me wanted to run for the hills because my feelings for him were too intense, and the other part couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing him again.
Yeah. I’m a complete basket case.
Against my better judgement, I relented. I was doing this for Becky, I told myself, and I almost believed it, too.
‘Okay, thanks, why not?’ I found myself saying.
He broke out into a broad grin. ‘Fantastic. Why don’t you go and call your mum before you change your mind?’
He seemed genuinely thrilled that we were staying and there was no ignoring the way my stomach flipped.
‘I’ll make that call, then.’
* * *
When we were in the kitchen, Aaron went straight to drawer and pulled out a takeaway menu. ‘Why don’t I show this to Becky while you call your mum? Do you trust her choice in pizzas?’
‘Sure, she can order whatever she wants.’
Aaron left me to it and I dialled home. My mum picked up on the first ring, and she sounded breathless.
‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ I said, fighting back the tears. ‘Buster had massive organ failure today and he had to be put down at the vets. We won’t be home for dinner, Becky wants to stay here for pizza.’ I was met with silence down the other end of the line. ‘Mum? Are you still there?’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said after a long pause. ‘I’m just… shocked.’
‘Yeah. We all are.’
‘But Buster was so healthy. This can’t be true.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
My mum let out a strangled sob that was physically painful to hear. She was a stoic woman – I could count on one hand the number of times she had cried, one of which was at Dad’s funeral. Thankfully, she seemed to compose herself sufficiently to speak:
The Silenced Wife Page 9
