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‘Coming back to my original point, you’ve never cared about any of the other girls I’ve known you to shag. So why go to all the trouble now? Why would you want to protecther, even if you thought you were protecting her from yourself. Which, by the way, is the daftest thing I’ve ever heard.’
I keep my gaze resolutely ahead. Confirm nothing. Deny nothing. If I don’t say it out loud it can’t be the fucking truth. No one knows I’ve dreamed of our children, No one knows I’ve woken in the darkness to feel the physical loss. To watch them turning to smoke in my hands.
‘What is it you’re not telling me?’
Such a lot, Keir. Such a lot.
Chapter Thirty-One
WILL
Needing to escape the confines of the house and the condolences addressed to me I neither want nor deserve, I leave Keir in the cold and faded drawing room, stepping out of the French doors.
The grass is spongey underfoot, moisture gluing the verdant blades to the leather of my highly polished shoes. I cross the lawn where the children are still playing, shove my hands in my pockets and jog down the steps to the gardens beyond. As a child, these gardens were my escape. I rode my bike, climbed trees, and shot all manner of things with my catapult. As a very small child my mother would accompany me—I suppose the lake was a hazard up until I learned to swim. I don’t often think of my mother, the happy memories I have of her are few, the rest tainted by my father. I think she loved him, in spite of his many faults. And in return, he belittled her when he drank heavily, which was most of the time, sold her jewellery to fund multiple mistresses over the years, and generally treated her like a dog.
Worse than a dog. Our hounds were at least valued.
And she took it. She never fought back, not like Sadie would.
When my mother died, she didn’t fare any better in his opinions or memory, and he’d referred to her cancer like it was something she chosen for herself—something she’d plucked from a supermarket shelf. Why she stayed, I’ll never know. Perhaps it was for me. For family, or for duty. But she was wrong. It was a waste of life, and now she’s gone.
Fuck, what a maudlin bastard I am.
‘Will?’
I turn to the sound of Ella’s soft voice. She sits on an old stone bench under an ancient oak tree, the leaves moving like waves in the breeze.
‘Hello. What are you doing all the way down here?’ We’re at the edge of the lawn, beyond where she sits lies wilderness and the lake. A place a person could get easily lost. Or just as easily hide. I would know
‘I was just thinking, she says. ‘Funerals bring back the memories of my mum.’ I recall Mac telling me Ella was also a teenager when her mother passed. I sit on the bench next to her. Palms on the front of my thighs, I turn my face up to the clouds.
‘They certainly can be sad occasions, though I feel nothing today.’ Not even relief.
‘Those feelings will probably come in later,’ she says kindly.
‘Yes, no doubt when the tax bill comes in.’ I laugh without humour.
‘How are you doing, Will?’
‘I’m just the same. I was wandering around and just thinking about the past.’ She blinks back at me, no doubt due to my candid response. I don’t have it in me to pretend today.
‘You know, you aren’t your father,’ she says, placing her hand lightly on my arm.
‘I should hope not. He’s just been shoved in the ground.’ My gaze moves away, looking at anything but her. ‘I’m sorry, did I interrupt you?’ I ask, pointing to the phone I’ve just noticed lying on her lap.
‘No, I was on the phone, but I’m done.’
‘How are Louis and Juno?’
‘I wasn’t checking in on the kids. I was actually speaking to Sadie. Her fingers tighten on my arm for a moment as she murmurs softly, ‘She called to say goodbye.’
‘That’s not possible.’ Even as I say this, my mind begins to turn. ‘She still has weeks left.’ Weeks left for me to torture myself before she finally leaves.
‘I don’t know what to say to you, other than she asked me to tell you goodbye on her behalf. She said she couldn’t trust herself to speak to you. And there was one more thing I was supposed to say.’
‘What was it?’ I demand.
‘She said to tell you she understands. But I wasn’t supposed to tell you any of this until she’d gone.’
