by Mike Gayle
‘You’re right.’
‘Do you want to have kids one day?’
The question took him by surprise. ‘Me?’ he spluttered. ‘Do I want to have kids?’
She laughed. ‘It’s not that hard a question, is it?’
Russell thought for a moment. ‘Yeah. I suppose I would like to have them some day.’
‘Girls? Boys? Don’t care?’
‘Girls definitely,’ said Russell. ‘I’ve done the male-dominated household and let me tell you, it’s hard work.’
‘And a female-dominated one isn’t? Even when I was a teenager I used to feel sorry for my dad having to put up with me and my sister and all of our ballet lessons, pony obsessions and constant demands for new clothes when all he really wanted was someone to take to the park for a quick kick around with a football. And I don’t know how he must have felt when we first started going out with boys. He must have worked out a way of blanking it all from his mind!’
‘None of that bothers me. I’ve always liked girls. They’re more straightforward and loads easier to talk to about stuff.’
‘You’d make a great dad. You’d be really understanding and patient.’
Russell looked back over at the playground where two little girls, clearly sisters, were sitting on the see-saw taking it in turns to scream at the top of their voices. ‘How about you?’ asked Russell. ‘Judging by what you’ve just said my guess is that you’d like boys.’
‘And you’d be wrong. I wouldn’t care one way or the other. Boys, girls, I wouldn’t mind. I’d like at least three though. Three’s a good number for a family, don’t you think?’
Russell shrugged. While he was sure that he hadn’t missed out on anything being the youngest child of three he suspected that Luke harboured a few issues about being the middle child.
‘Kids are important, aren’t they? They bind you together with the love of your life and ground you completely.’ She began to get upset. ‘I just don’t get it. Why didn’t Luke want to start a family with me? Why did I have to make a choice between the man I love and having children that let’s face it I might never have? It’s just not fair. Luke got to experience being a dad, why shouldn’t I get the chance to be a mum?’
As Cassie started to cry Russell put his arms round her and concentrated on the sensation of her body pressing against his own. Part of him wanted to say something that would comfort her but most of him wanted to kiss her and so he reached out, gently lifted her chin until her lips were perfectly positioned with his own and then did so. For a moment or two he was convinced that she was kissing him back but as quickly as the moment had begun it was over.
Cassie regained her composure, stood up and moved away from him. ‘I’d better go,’ she said, avoiding his gaze. ‘I’d really better go.’ Without another word she turned and walked away.
‘Let’s not keep madam waiting.’
Saturday morning found Adam loading up the boot and back seat of his car with weekend suitcases. For the first time he and Steph were going away overnight to attend the wedding of one of Steph’s university friends in Stratford-upon-Avon.
‘Do we really have to do this?’ moaned Adam, who would much have preferred to follow their usual relaxed routine of eating nice food and taking in cultural events that he wasn’t interested in. ‘If there’s one thing I loathe it’s going to the wedding of a complete stranger.’
‘She’s not a complete stranger,’ said Steph patiently. ‘She was one of my best friends back in my uni days.’
‘But she’s not any more, is she?’
‘You’re more than welcome to stay here if you like but I’d just like to point out that you would be missing out.’
‘On wedding cake and pointless small talk with strangers?’
Steph shook her head and raised an enigmatic eyebrow. Eventually he got the message. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’
‘I might be.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, put it this way: I’ve spent a small fortune on underwear and I really don’t want it to go to waste.’
‘Right then,’ said Adam, starting up the car. ‘Let’s not keep madam waiting.’
For the most part the drive down to the Midlands along the M6 was uneventful. Adam steadily worked his way through the playlist that he had made for the journey on his iPod while Steph dozed in the passenger seat in a bid to make sure that she didn’t fall asleep at the reception, but just outside Stoke the traffic came to a complete standstill and Adam began to wonder whether they would make it to their destination at all.
‘Worried about us making it on time?’ asked Steph.
‘Amongst other things.’
‘I can’t help you on traffic jams but I might be able to help you with the other stuff if you want to share.’
Adam squeezed Steph’s hand briefly. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘That’s the thing about you,’ said Steph, sitting up upright. ‘You like to cope. Coping is what you do. But have you thought that there might be a more straightforward solution?’
‘Like telling people what’s on my mind?’
‘It’s a novel approach but I’ve heard it actually works for some people.’
‘OK, it’s like this: basically I was thinking how if I’d met you back at the beginning of the summer and you’d asked me to go to this wedding I would’ve had to say no.’
‘Because you don’t like weddings?’
‘No, because Monday is supposed to be my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary and we’d have thrown the party that we were planning for them today.’
‘Oh, Adam, why didn’t you say? The last place you’ll want to be this weekend will be at a wedding. Look, let’s forget it and turn back home or better still go off on an adventure for the weekend.’
‘You really would do that, wouldn’t you,’ said Adam, surprised by the rush of love that he felt for her. ‘You really wouldn’t care if we didn’t go.’
‘Not if it’s going to upset you, of course not. So where should we go instead?’
‘Nowhere. I’m fine with us going to the wedding. There’s nothing I can do about my parents, is there? I didn’t tell them to split up so I’m guessing it’s up to them to get themselves back together if it’s what they want.’ The traffic had started to move. ‘Anyway,’ he pulled off the handbrake and they started crawling forwards, ‘maybe this whole wedding anniversary thing will make them take a long hard look at everything they’re putting at stake. Maybe it’ll make them see just how important the family really is.’
For the next hour all Adam and Steph did was talk about family. Steph spoke about her mum’s illness and her subsequent passing away but also about all the good times that they had shared as a family of two. As she spoke about her past Adam found himself gaining a deeper understanding of why Steph was the way she was and of the things that she really wanted to get from life. Suddenly the conversation they had had about her ex-boyfriend and the tears she had cried on the night they first got together made much more sense. Steph hadn’t been lamenting the end of her relationship but rather the passing of what must have felt like her last opportunity to make a family of her own to replace the one that she had lost.
Arriving at their destination just before midday Adam and Steph made their way down the long and winding driveway of what was clearly a former stately home.
‘This must have cost a bomb, if they’ve hired the whole place,’ said Adam, looking out at the expanse of greenery towards the huge house mounted in the middle of the landscape. ‘What did you say your friends do again?’
‘She works in the City and I think he’s some kind of top guy in the Civil Service. Sarah’s always telling me about how he’s just had a meeting with this or that minister so he must be quite important.’
Adam lifted up his sunglasses and looked at Steph. ‘You do realise that I’m not going to have a single thing in common with these people, don’t you?’
She leaned across and kissed him. ‘Doesn’t mat
ter, my friend,’ she replied. ‘All I care about is that you have everything in common with me.’
Pulling into the car park at the rear of the hotel Adam and Steph unloaded their bags, checked into their room, got changed and were back downstairs in the reception waiting area within the hour.
‘You look great,’ said Adam, taking in Steph’s simple but elegant dark green dress.
‘And you don’t look so bad yourself. A touch like an East End gangster but in this context that’s no bad thing.’
The afternoon went a lot better than Adam had expected. Determined not to embarrass Steph he gave his best efforts to the making of small talk even when the small talk got so tiny that it was invisible to the naked eye. He refrained from overindulging at the free bar despite waiters thrusting champagne into his hand at every opportunity. Some time after eight when the cake had long since been cut, speeches made and first dances taken, Steph turned to Adam and smiled.
‘What?’ he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
‘I want to go.’
‘Where?’
Steph rolled her eyes. ‘Where do you think? Back to our room. I keep thinking about our lovely room and the fact that we’re not in it. They’ll kick us out by midday! Let’s sneak out now before we’re missed!’
Laughing as Steph grabbed his hand Adam followed her out of the ballroom and they ran full pelt along the corridor, through the main reception and up the stairs to their room. After frantically searching around in her clutch bag for the keys Steph opened the door, pulled Adam in and once the door was fully closed threw herself on to him showering him with kisses as they both began to undress. As Adam struggled to take off his jacket without removing his lips from Steph’s his phone rang. He reached inside his pocket in order to switch it off for good and inadvertently noticed that the call was from his mum.
‘Talk about timing!’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s my mum. I’d better take it just to make sure that she’s all right. Is that OK?’
‘Of course. Anyway, I could do with a minute to get this dress off without ruining it.’
‘Hi, Mum, everything OK?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’s not. It’s not at all. I’ve decided I’m going to divorce your father.’
‘But why? I don’t get it, Mum. Whatever it is it can’t be all that bad, surely?’
‘Well it is to me.’
‘What has he done? You can’t expect to take things this far and not tell us.’
‘He had an affair.’
‘Dad? An affair? Are you sure? When exactly?’
‘Forty years ago.’
Part 3
‘I don’t understand.’
It was one in the morning as Adam pulled up in front of Steph’s house and switched off the car engine after the 117-mile journey from Stratford-upon-Avon to Manchester.
‘Are you sure you won’t stay over at mine?’ said Steph. ‘You wouldn’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I just want to be with you, that’s all.’
Adam shook his head. ‘I’m fine, honest,’ he replied, half wondering if she was aware that this was the beginning of the end for them. ‘I just want to get some sleep.’
He climbed out of the car and took Steph’s luggage out ready to take it up to the house but she made him put it down so that she could put her arms round him.
‘If you won’t stay with me then at least promise that you’ll call me first thing in the morning. I won’t pry or anything. I just want to know that you’re OK.’
‘Of course,’ nodded Adam. ‘First thing in the morning.’
They kissed, a long, slow kiss, and then picking up her bags Steph made her way to her front door. Adam watched as she opened her door and then closed it behind her. Taking one last look at her house as she switched on her bedroom light he drove away into the night.
The past few hours had been some of the toughest in his entire life. With his mum in tears at the end of the phone he had listened to the story of his father’s affair that had shocked him to his very foundations.
According to his mum, before she and Dad got married they had been friends with another young courting couple from the area called Janet and Charlie. At some point in the proceedings his dad’s friend Charlie had broken his engagement with Janet and run off to a new job and a new life in Aberdeen, leaving Mum and Dad back in Manchester to sweep up the pieces. His mum and dad had ended up spending a lot of their spare time comforting Janet which ultimately led to the inevitable back at Dad’s lodgings off Cheetham Hill Road. It was six months before Adam’s parents’ wedding and as the affair continued Janet eventually confessed to Adam’s dad that she was in love with him and pleaded with him to leave his fiancée. After various threats to tell Adam’s mum (and even at one point to take her own life) Janet finally said she was leaving Manchester for good and that she would never see Dad again, which was exactly what happened.
‘I don’t understand,’ Adam had said. ‘If this all happened forty years ago why has it come out now?’
‘It was the day that Luke and Cassie announced their engagement,’ his mum revealed. ‘Do you remember while Luke was helping me make the tea for everyone, Cassie, I think it must have been, asked your dad to get the wedding album out and he ended up telling you all the story of how Janet hadn’t turned up for the wedding and how your Aunt Rose had had to step in as maid-of-honour at the last minute?’
Adam struggled to recall Dad getting out the wedding album let alone his story about Mum’s maid-of-honour but with some prompting it had come back to him. ‘But I still don’t understand, Mum, why would you make a connection all these years later about something that happened forty years ago?’
‘Because of the expression on his face as Cassie retold the story when Luke and I walked in the room,’ she had explained. ‘Your dad just looked guilty, son; he looked as guilty as sin. But it was only when I finally plucked up the courage to ask him all those weeks later that I knew for sure. Before he’d even answered my question I could see from his look of relief that he just couldn’t lie to me about this one thing any more.’
His mum tearfully explained how even though it would hurt her as much as it would hurt his father she had come to the conclusion that getting a divorce was the only option. No matter which way she looked at the situation and no matter how hard she tried to forgive him and move on, she just couldn’t do it.
‘Believe me, Adam, there’s no one who wanted to save this marriage more than me but I can’t get over the fact that he lied to me, and not just once or twice but every day for forty years. I love him dearly, and I always will, but this is something I can’t bring myself to forgive.’
Adam ended up staying on the phone for a good half-hour listening to his mum say pretty much the same thing over and over again, but then she told him that she was going to stay with Aunt Rose for a few days and asked if he would tell his brothers about the divorce because she didn’t have the strength to do it herself. All Adam wanted to do was head back into the hotel room where Steph was waiting for him and tell her everything. That was what his heart was telling him even though the thought of being this open and honest about something so painful was uncharted territory for him. But the moment he saw the look of concern on Steph’s face, the moment he realised the real reason he had spent so long in pursuit of the wrong kind of women, was the moment that he couldn’t follow through with his actions. In Steph, who had in their short time together proved herself the perfect confidante, he saw his worst nightmare writ large. If he told her how he was feeling, if he poured his heart out to her, if he pulled down his final barricade and let her inside the one place that he knew to be safe then he would never be able to hide anything from her ever again. Not a single thought, not a single feeling; effectively she would have the keys to his consciousness and would be free to come and go just as she pleased. The thought of this terrified Adam. It terrified him to his very core. Not because of what she might do with her access but rather
with the newness of it all. This wasn’t a game whose rules he understood and right now he didn’t care to learn.
So instead of being open and honest Adam chose to disguise his upset as best he could. Refusing to go into the details he said only, ‘Some more stuff with my parents has kicked off and I need to go.’ He suggested that Steph shouldn’t let him ruin her weekend and should stay and get a lift back to Manchester with one of her friends. But Steph refused on the grounds that ‘a night on my own in a beautiful hotel room without you would be a nightmare,’ so she too had packed her bags and they had made their way to the car.
For the two-hour journey back up to Manchester Adam barely said a word. And even though his actions were amongst the biggest clichés in the male behavioural lexicon this awareness didn’t help him in the slightest. It didn’t help to know that he was ‘emotionally withdrawing’ from Steph. All that mattered was that the more distance he put between himself and Steph the more secure he felt. And nothing, not Steph, not his conscience, not even love itself was going to get in the way of his mission to be alone.
Reaching home Adam kicked off his shoes, dumped his bags in the hallway and was about to go upstairs when his phone vibrated. A message from Steph: ‘I love you.’ He switched off his phone and without thought or reflection made his way up to his bedroom, closed the curtains, crawled under the duvet and finally allowed himself to be consumed by exhaustion.
‘Because it wasn’t just a small tiff.’
It was late morning. Adam had showered and dressed and was heading downstairs for breakfast when his phone rang. His heart immediately began to race. It would be Steph checking to see how he was. If he spoke to her she would know that something other than this thing with his parents was up. She would ask him what was the matter and he would have to stonewall her which would end in a row and then at the height of all the yelling and the accusations and counter-accusations he would finally tell her and it would be all over. Adam shuddered at the thought of it. Steph deserved better than that. Steeling himself not to answer the call he glanced at the screen and breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was Russell, just his stupid, impetuous, kid brother Russell.
