As Good As It Gets? (20 page)

He fixes me with a look. His eyes are a startling blue, like sapphires. ‘So you’re not going to reply, then?’

‘What, to his email?’ I hesitate. ‘I need time to think, Will.’

‘What is there to think about?’

‘I don’t know,’ I bluster. ‘It’s just, if she ever does want to contact him, then I’ll have his email address—’

‘Great. That’ll be handy.’ I glance at Will, realising that it doesn’t matter that he’s been Rosie’s dad for fifteen years, and that he’s shown her how to swim, ride her bike and tackle long division. Despite all of that, his Dad-status must still seem as fragile as the finest glass. I don’t blame him for feeling that way; Rosie has cooled towards him lately. She’s not exactly all over me either. But the difference is, I’ll always be her mum, and no one can ever change that.

Will gets up from the bench. ‘I’m going to have an early night,’ he murmurs. Leaving bike parts scattered all over the lawn, he strolls back into the house.

I could run in after him. I could shout, ‘It’s okay! I’ll delete it! I’ll have no contact with him again, ever.’ But what about Rosie? He’s her father and I can’t delete
that.

In the kitchen, I potter about, attending to jobs we never seem to get around to: shaking crumbs out of the toaster and rounding up various school memos which are scattered about. I refill Guinness’s water bottle and replenish his hay. Upstairs, I find Will in our bedroom, pretending to search for a book on the shelf. ‘I know this is hard for you,’ I say, tentatively.

‘It’s just a bit of a surprise.’ He tugs off his socks and throws them into the laundry basket.

I watch him pulling off his jeans and clambering into bed with his T-shirt and boxers still on. He hasn’t even cleaned his teeth, which I suspect is a first: Will is fastidious about such matters. I head for the bathroom and wash and undress, taking a few minutes to compose myself in order to discuss this rationally. Wrapping myself in my dressing gown, I pad through to our room where Will is lying on his back, staring bleakly at the ceiling. ‘Are you okay, darling?’ I slip in beside him and kiss his cheek.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Will, the thing is …’ I start.

‘It’s all right,’ he snaps. ‘Reply to him if that’s what you want to do.’

‘I
don’t
want that,’ I insist. ‘How can you suggest that? That I’m happy about him dropping into our lives again, out of the blue?’ My heart is hammering now. Of course he’s hurt, I understand that – but it’s happened, and we have to deal with it somehow …

‘I just want the best for Rosie,’ Will mutters.

‘Of course you do. That’s all that matters. But we need to talk—’

He turns away from me. ‘I’m just scared, okay? I’m scared of things changing, and what this is going to do to us …’

Tears prick my eyes as I find his hand in the dark. ‘I’m scared too, Will. I really am.’

His breathing changes. Perhaps he’s drifting to sleep, or just pretending – it’s impossible to tell. But I hold on tightly to his hand, never wanting to let go.

Chapter Nineteen

All next day, the spectre of Fraser’s email hovers in the air between me and Will like a particularly unpleasant smell. We orbit each other politely, to the point at which I’m delighted to escape to work on Monday morning. As it’s Rosie’s first proper modelling job today, at least she’s been reasonably cheerful.

I’m busy at work, thankfully, with lots of upcoming press coverage to finalise. We are supplying crisps to food shoots, setting up interviews with Rupert for business magazines, and launching a major ‘design your own flavour’ competition. I manage to push the Will/Fraser issue out of my mind, hoping that my husband’s mood will have lifted by the time I get home.

As soon as I walk in it’s clear that it hasn’t. ‘Wonder how Rosie’s getting on at her shoot?’ I ask, pulling off my jacket.

Will shrugs. ‘Fine, I expect. You okay with pizza?’

‘Sounds great,’ I reply, adding, ‘look – I’ve got tons of samples …’ I start to unload numerous packets of reject crisps from a giant carrier bag. They’re not dangerous, or even out of date; just substandard visually, having been bashed around at some point during the bagging process. I mean, they’re perfectly
fine
. But as Will eyes the growing pile of packets on the table, I realise it was ridiculously optimistic of me to expect a load of shattered crisps to make things right between us. I suspect that the only thing that’d perk him up would be to call him over so he could watch me deleting Fraser’s email, then deleting it from my deleted folder too. But I can’t do that. Apart from Rosie wanting to meet him,
I’m
also curious to find out what he’s up to these days. And to ask questions too, of course. I am beside myself with curiosity.

‘We’re getting quite a stockpile,’ Will remarks, opening a cupboard to illustrate his point. Sure enough, it’s jammed with Archie’s premium products. A stranger might surmise that a member of our family was suffering from a hoarding disorder or, quite simply, an obsession with crisps. Trouble is, Will and the kids don’t really go for crisps of any kind – sick to the back teeth of them, probably. As a result, we are now ‘approaching critical mass’, as he puts it.

He picks up a lump of pizza dough from the bowl and drops it on the table with a dull thud. I hate it when he’s like this. Maybe it’s nothing to do with Fraser’s email, or even me, but his age, his hormones – dwindling testosterone levels, perhaps. But of course, a man who’s acting all frosty and distant is never hormonal. He’s just a bit tired, or
thinking.

‘We should do stuff with the crisps,’ I suggest.

‘Like what?’

‘Well … we should be inventive.’

He starts to knead the dough rather aggressively. ‘What d’you have in mind?’

‘Er … I don’t know. One of the girls made crisp cookies at the show …’

‘Crisp cookies,’ he repeats, curling his lip as if I’d said
pancakes, with a smearing of dung.

‘It might sound weird,’ I continue, ‘but the combination of oats and raisins and salty little crispy bits is absolutely delicious …’

‘Crisp cookies,’ Will repeats again, like a malfunctioning robot.
‘Crisp cookies?
Are they really a thing?’

‘Yes, but it was just an idea,’ I mutter, wishing now that I’d left the damn packets at work.

‘Hmm,’ Will says.

‘A crisp pizza could be interesting,’ I add lamely. ‘Anyway, don’t bother cooking for me if you and Ollie have already eaten …’ That’s another thing: I’ve spotted two dirty plates in the sink. Usually, Will doesn’t make dinner until I’m home from work.
Look at me,
his martyred kneading tells me,
making a second meal like a bloody underpaid short-order cook …

‘It’s fine,’ he mutters, fetching his kilner jar of fresh tomato and basil sauce from the fridge. ‘Oh, and I meant to say – Tricia’s been over, going on about us chipping in to install CCTV out the back …’

‘CCTV? What would we want that for?’

Will shrugs.

‘I mean, we’ve got nothing to steal,’ I point out.

‘She was still going on about intruders in our garden …’

‘Probably just some drunk teenagers,’ I remark, pretending to study a packet of Sea Salt and Balsamic as if I’ve never seen such a thing before.

‘Yeah, that’s what I said.’ He dollops sauce straight from the jar onto the base so it puddles unfetchingly, then mozzarella is ripped up at speed and dropped on. The few remaining leaves of our wilting basil plant are torn off with such force, the whole plant topples out of its little plastic pot. I have witnessed Pizza Express chefs exhibiting more pride in their work.

‘We could try crisp omelettes sometime,’ I blurt out into the anxious air.

‘Uh?’

‘Crisp omelettes. They’re surprisingly good. Or, d’you remember this from
Blue Peter
, when they covered a loaf with soft cheese and then rolled it in broken crisps, so it looked like a sort of spiky hedgehog?’ There’s a rap at the door. Grateful to escape Will’s withering stare, I rush to answer it.

‘Sabrina, hi, come in …’ As she strides into our kitchen, smiling broadly, I swear Will’s stony expression melts: the first glimmer of warmth in forty-eight hours.

‘Hope I’m not disturbing you,’ she says, looking delightful in a blue patterned wrap dress, hair pulled up with wavy fronds dancing delightfully around her face.

‘No, not at all,’ I say. ‘Come on in. Will’s just making pizza …’

‘Isn’t he a
marvel
in the kitchen?’ She gazes at my misshapen dinner as he transports it to the oven.

He grins bashfully. ‘Would you like one, Sabrina? There’s plenty of dough left.’

‘Oh …’ She winces. ‘I shouldn’t really but Tommy’s still away and I was just going to have a sandwich. You know how it is. I hate cooking actually …’

‘Yes, Charlotte’s like that …’ Hey, what about the thousands of dinners I made when he was gainfully employed at Greenspace Heritage? All the millions of sausages grilled and potatoes mashed? My hair stank of pork, and I nearly gave myself tennis elbow with that darn masher! Granted, they weren’t quite the offerings of a kitchen marvel, but no one starved. As Will starts kneading the dough –
caressing
it, actually, with his big, manly hands – I silently forbid myself from opening the fridge, snatching the half-bottle of pinot which I know is nestling there and upending it into my mouth.

‘I just wanted to tell you about Zach’s next gig,’ Sabrina says, perching on the edge of the table. ‘They’re playing on Thursday night in some divey pub, not too far away from here. Ticket sales are awfully slow, and after all their rehearsing I hate to think of them playing to a couple of bored bar staff plus Tommy and me …’

I can tell Will’s not fully listening because he’s now
fondling
the dough, swooping his hands over its curves while pretending, perhaps, that this isn’t the trusty base from our battered old copy of
Jamie’s Italian
, but one of Sabrina’s pert breasts.

I watch him, agog, and check his face for evidence of arousal. He’s flushed, certainly, and his pupils look dilated to me. I lower my gaze to check whether there’s any untoward activity in the trouser department. But without going over and peering directly at his crotch, it’s impossible to tell.

Sabrina is chattering on about Zach’s gig, but I’m finding it hard to focus. Catching me scrutinising him, Will throws me a curious look. Then he rolls out the dough into a perfect circle and gives it a final, unnecessary tweak before lovingly painting on sauce with his pastry brush. Cheese is added, then – the climax of his performance – a liberal dribbling of oil, the posh Tuscan stuff which he’s always a bit iffy about me using, and didn’t put on
my
pizza. ‘There,’ he says, sounding exceedingly pleased with himself. I almost expect the pizza to emit a little sigh.

‘So, er, Zach’s gig,’ I prompt Sabrina.

‘Oh, yeah. Bit of a disaster-in-waiting, I think. Don’t suppose you’d both like to come?’ She flashes a hopeful smile. It is, I remind myself, ridiculous to suspect that she fancies Will, or vice versa. She is being friendly and neighbourly and is only inviting us to her son’s gig, for goodness’ sake.

‘Er, yeah,’ Will says, sounding less than sure. ‘I don’t see any reason why not, do you, Charlotte?’

In fact, I can think of one major reason: Zach is a teenager, and I’d imagine his band make teenage music, and we’ll feel about a thousand years old. ‘Sounds great,’ I say firmly.

‘What about Rosie?’ Sabrina asks. ‘She could bring a few friends, boost the numbers—’

‘She should be back pretty soon,’ Will says. ‘I’m sure she’d love to come.’

‘It was her first modelling job today,’ I explain while Will checks our pizzas in the oven. ‘They were shooting at Cambersands. She’s being dropped off on the way back.’

‘How exciting!’ Sabrina says with genuine pleasure. ‘Can’t wait to hear about it.’ Then, right on cue, the door bursts open and in Rosie stomps, muttering a quick hello before clattering up to her room.

I grimace at Will and step out to the hallway. ‘Rosie?’ I call up. ‘How did it go? What were the clothes like?’

‘
Nuttin
’,’ she barks.

I go back into the kitchen and sigh. ‘I know this sounds awful, Sabrina, but sometimes I can’t wait until she’s about twenty-five and we can talk normally again – you know, communicate, using proper words …’

‘Tell me about it,’ she laughs as Will places our pizzas on the table. She tears into hers with gusto, making appreciative noises as she munches away.

Will looks at me. ‘Sorry yours is a bit burnt.’

‘No, it’s fine, I like it like this.’ I force a smile as I hack through the blackened crust.

‘Do you?’ Sabrina asks. ‘Tommy’s like that. Likes everything charred – virtually incinerated. I’m always on at him about it because everyone knows burnt food can cause cancer …’

‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ I say, ‘and it’s not that burnt.’
I mean, it hasn’t quite been reduced to ash.

‘Hi.’ Rosie has reappeared in the doorway. She is milky-pale and looks utterly worn out.

‘So how did it go?’ Will asks, handing her a mug of tea. ‘Want some pizza? Or something else?’

‘We had burgers after the shoot.’ Her mouth sets in a grim line.

‘So, tell us all about the clothes,’ Sabrina chips in. ‘What did you wear?’

‘Nuttin’.’

I frown at her. ‘Nothing? You weren’t naked, were you?’

‘No,’ she splutters, ‘I said
knitting
, Mum. We were shooting for a wool company and it was all jumpers and cardis and hats. Can you imagine wearing horrible hairy wool on a day like this?’

‘Oh, you poor love,’ Sabrina exclaims.

‘It was the hottest day of the year,’ Rosie bleats. ‘I thought I was going to
die
!’

‘But I thought it was for some Italian designer?’ Will says.

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. Laurie said the client was Giordano and I just assumed it was an Italian label, and it turned out it
is
– but for knitting.’

‘You mean it’s a wool company?’ I ask.