As Good As It Gets? (25 page)

‘I definitely wasn’t dancing with Sabrina.’ He lifts his glass of water with a quivering hand. ‘At least, I don’t think I was.’

‘Well, I saw you with
someone
…’

‘Yes, you’ve said that. I think we’ve established that fact.’

‘So who was it?’

Will sighs. ‘Look, it’s all a bit hazy, okay? Can we stop discussing this now, please? I’m not feeling too good.’

I glare down at his untouched snack. There are two plastic bottles on our table: a red one for ketchup and a yellow one, on which someone has written in fat black felt tip SALAD CREAM. Will is studying it as if it were a fascinating artefact in a museum. A Roman condiment, perhaps. His face softens, and there’s a flicker of something in his eyes – regret, perhaps, as if he might be on the verge of saying sorry, and let’s forget it and just go home … And maybe, I think, I’ve misread the whole situation, and all he was doing was messing about. So what if he took a stupid drug and danced like a lunatic? We all do mad things sometimes. What about me, getting myself covered in creosote?

‘Will?’ I say tentatively.

He wrenches his gaze away from the table. ‘Can you believe it?’ he says.

‘Believe what?’

‘That.’ He jabs a shaky finger towards the yellow bottle.

‘What about it?’

‘They actually have salad cream here.’

I gawp at him. Thankfully, the man has disappeared again. He doesn’t strike me as someone who’d take kindly to having his sauces mocked. ‘So?’ I ask.

‘Who has salad cream in this day and age?’

For some reason, this throwaway comment enrages me far more than it should. ‘It’s just a dressing, Will. Some people like it, you know. I mean, it’s not an illegal substance.’
Unlike some other things I could name.

He shrugs. ‘It’s disgusting.’

‘No it’s not. My parents always had salad cream. Still do, probably, and it’s perfectly okay for them. In fact, if I had a bit of lettuce in front of me right now I’d
drown
it in salad cream, and bloody delicious it’d be too!’

He reels back in his chair. ‘Jesus, I only—’

‘It says a lot!’ I exclaim. ‘It really does, Will. You have no idea what it says about you …’

‘What the hell—’

‘Your attitude towards salad cream,’ I rant on, ‘gives away more about you as a person than you realise, and it’s
not
very flattering—’

‘My attitude to salad cream?’ He is staring at me now, clearly having recovered from his chemically-enhanced adventure. In fact, he’s actually
smirking
at me, after nuzzling some woman’s sticky-out tits and throwing up in our washbasin in front of our kids,
and
a visitor, who’s a personal friend of Marc Jacobs by all accounts. Without stopping to think what I’m doing, I’ve grabbed the salad cream bottle, pointed it at Will like a weapon and given it an almighty squeeze.

‘What the fuck, Charlotte!’ He leaps up and stares, dismayed, at his T-shirt. It’s splattered with yellow goo. The retro creamy condiment is dripping slowly downwards, and there’s a little daub of it on the front of his trousers, as if a bird has plopped there. Grabbing my bag, I pull out my purse, slam a tenner on the table and march out of the café, with my husband in pursuit.

‘You are fucking crazy,’ he snarls as we climb into the car.

‘Probably, yes.’

‘You’re a bloody child. You’ve never grown up, that’s your problem—’

‘And you’ve behaved perfectly maturely tonight,’ I snap back.

‘What about you? I seem to remember you getting pissed in the garden with Liza and Sabrina and bashing your head on the door. When did you last see me so drunk I fell over and hurt myself?’ I cannot respond to that. I just drive on, my knuckles shining white as I grip the steering wheel. My mouth tastes foul; I think the milk in my tea was off.

‘At least I’m not injured,’ he adds piously.
No, but you may be, before the night’s out.

I am so furious now, I can hardly breathe, let alone utter actual words. How could I have imagined myself with him in a saucy shed situation, cushioned only by a sack of chicken manure fertiliser? I actually thought it might be sexy, doing it with him in a small, enclosed space filled with spiders. Christ, I wouldn’t get naked with him now if we were offered an entire floor of the Savoy. Anyway, he’s probably getting his excitement elsewhere. I bet dancing wasn’t all he did tonight. What does he enjoy? Foraging. Maybe that’s what he was doing. Foraging about in that woman’s pants …

The flat London sky is beginning to lighten. ‘So,’ he blurts out, ‘did you email him back?’ My stomach lurches.

‘Email who back?’ I ask, knowing precisely who he means.

‘Your ex.’

I nod. ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Is Rosie going to meet him, then?’

‘I suppose so,’ I say quietly. ‘In fact, she’s said she wants to …’

Even without looking I can sense his expression changing. ‘What – recently?’

‘Yes, just before I set off for Bournemouth …’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he exclaims.

‘Because … I knew you’d be upset.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Charlotte – this is
massive.
It’ll change our whole lives. Didn’t you think I should know?’

I inhale deeply, catching a vinegary whiff from the salad cream. ‘Yes, of course I did. And I know I should’ve told you straight away. But at the moment – well, for a while actually, but especially since you left work, I’ve found it really hard to talk to you …’

‘So it’s my fault then,’ he snaps.

‘It’s no one’s fault,’ I reply, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘It’s not about blaming anyone. It’s just happened, like we always knew it would. And she’s asked about Fraser before, you know that—’

‘Yeah, just innocent, childish questions—’

‘But she’s not a child anymore,’ I cut in, my eyes filling with tears. ‘She wants to meet Fraser, to find out what he’s like …’ I pause. ‘It’s only natural, Will. I mean, we’ve talked about this, and we said we’d help her to find him and deal with it together …’

‘That was different,’ he says flatly, and I realise now that of course, he’s right: he was fine about Rosie meeting Fraser
in theory
. But it’s not in theory anymore; it’s real
.
We fall into silence as I turn into our road and park in front of our house. It occurs to me, as we stomp indoors, that this probably wasn’t what Sabrina had in mind when she said we needed a date night.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Dear Charlotte,

Lovely to hear from you. And quite a surprise, to be honest. I wasn’t sure whether you’d want to contact me or if your dad would even pass it on. So, where to start? I know it’s been a hell of a long time but I’ve wanted to get in touch so many times over the years. I’ve just never quite known how to go about it, or how you’d react if I did. The truth is, I never stopped thinking about you …

I’ve wondered about him over the years too – or, more accurately, why he asked Mummy to write me that letter. And the possibilities I’ve come up with are:

1. She was horrified at the thought of him becoming a young dad when he had ‘a promising future ahead of him’ (obviously, as far as she was concerned, I didn’t have any future at all) and forbade him to see me. And although he was nineteen, and perfectly capable of travelling all over Europe by himself, he was a good boy and did as she asked.
   
2. He asked her to write it because he was too embarrassed to admit that he’d found himself another girlfriend called Perdita with a swishy mane of golden hair and a cabinet full of gymkhana trophies.
   

As my husband sleeps off his chemically-induced hangover, I am feeling unusually measured and calm. The kids are having a lie-in too, and there’s an aura of stillness as I stretch out on the sofa with my laptop and read on.

So how are things are in your life? I assume you’re married and fantastically successful. You were always so smart
–
far smarter than me when it came to travelling around and finding somewhere to stay and getting us sorted. Remember that room I found us in Pigalle and it turned out to be a brothel, with a peephole in the wall and all those frantic noises in the night? And the time I left my passport in that bar? Anyway, you know how to contact me now. I’d love to see you for a coffee, just to catch up. But of course I understand completely if you’d rather not
—

At the sound of someone coming downstairs, I quickly shut my laptop. ‘Hi, Mum. Is Dad all right?’ Ollie wanders in and flops down beside me.

‘Yes, he’s fine, love. At least, he will be. He just needs to sleep it off.’

He nods. ‘It’s good that he was sick, if he’s got food poisoning.’

‘Yes.’

‘Being sick’s how the body gets rid of bacteria before it can be absorbed in the bloodstream. It’s what we’re designed to do. The diaphragm goes up and down and the abdomen contracts and food shoots out, it’s called projectile vomiting—’

‘Yes, Ollie, I know.’ I muster a smile and test his forehead with the flat of my hand. ‘So how are you feeling? You were awfully hot last night.’

‘I’m fine now.’

‘That’s good, darling.’ I put my arm around him as he rests his head on my shoulder. It’s a breezy, sunny morning, and I’m seized by an urge to get out of the house, away from Will for a few hours. ‘D’you want to do something today?’ I ask.

‘Yeah, like what?’

‘I don’t know. You’re on holiday, we’ve got the whole day ahead of us.’ I shrug. ‘We can do anything really.’

Ollie sits up. Such a handsome boy with his clear, grey-blue eyes, a scattering of freckles and a big, wide smile. ‘All right. Shall we go swimming? To that big new place with the flumes?’

‘Um … are you sure that’s what you want to do, after having a temperature last night?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine! Can Saul come?’

‘Yes, of course he can. I’ll call Maria now …’

‘Um, Mum?’ he says as I place my laptop on the table. ‘You’re not going to, er … swim
with
us, are you?’

I laugh. ‘No, don’t worry. I’m not planning to put you to shame with my record-beating front crawl.’

He laughs. ‘I mean, you don’t even have to come. We’d be fine going on our own.’

‘Listen,’ I say, scrolling for Maria’s number on my phone, ‘I’ll take you but I won’t put so much as a toe in the water, okay? I’ll see if Liza wants to come too and we can have a coffee in the café.’ After dispatching a glass of water and toast to the sick bay – which Will accepts with rather sheepish thanks – we set off, collecting Saul and Liza on the way.

Compared to last night’s greasy spoon, the swimming pool’s café is an oasis of loveliness. Slightly over-heated, perhaps, but at least it’s making me sweat out my ill feelings towards Will. ‘You’re kidding,’ Liza exclaims. ‘Will took ecstasy?
Your
Will? Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, I know. It’s completely bizarre.’

‘But people don’t start taking drugs at forty-one years old. They kind of … build up to it. In fact, no – they might have a go at it when they’re young, then they get to a point when they start tapering off because they can’t handle it anymore and they’re scared of looking stupid.’

‘Well,’ I retort, ‘there’s been no building up or tapering off with him. He’s just dived in and done it. Voluntarily, too. I mean, I’m assuming Tommy didn’t sit on him and force it into his mouth … God, I wonder what his mother would say?’

Liza splutters. ‘I still can’t believe it. He seemed fine when I was there. A bit pissed, sure, but okay. Why did he do it, d’you think?’

I shrug. ‘No idea. In fact, I don’t really care. I’m more concerned about the fact that I don’t seem to know him at all. Don’t you think that’s a bit …
worrying
?’

‘Oh, come on.’ She touches my arm. ‘It was just one mad night …’

‘I saw him dancing with someone too,’ I add, going on to describe his erotic display, and our jolly jaunt to the all-night café where I squirted him with salad cream.

She convulses with horrified laughter. ‘He must’ve been off his head. If he took ecstasy on top of all the beers he’d had at the venue … It doesn’t
mean
anything.’

I shrug and cup my coffee. ‘That’s what they all say.’

‘It’s true, though. God, Charlotte, you know he’d never do anything to jeopardise the two of you. He might not always show it, but you know he’s devoted to you. And he was only
dancing
…’

‘Yes, but the dance involved him squashing his head in her cleavage.’

‘Oh.’ We both glance down at the pool where Ollie and Saul are lying on floats, drifting languidly like a couple of middle-aged friends on sun loungers. ‘Maybe it was the leather trousers that sent him a bit mad,’ Liza adds.

‘Yeah, possibly,’ I say, managing a smile. ‘Um … there’s something else. I’ve heard from Fraser again …’

She frowns, studying me. ‘You want to see him, don’t you?’

‘Sort of. Yes, I suppose I do …’

‘Because Will was off his face?’

‘Of course not! That’s nothing to do with it at all.’

‘Because …’ Liza adds, obviously choosing her words carefully, ‘you wouldn’t make such a monumental decision on the basis of him acting like an idiot just for one night … would you?’

‘No,’ I declare, a shade too loudly. A little boy in a buggy slides a choc ice out of his mouth and stares at us.

‘So you wouldn’t do it for …
revenge
or anything?’

‘Of course not,’ I insist. ‘I’d see him because he’s Rosie’s dad. You know she wants to make contact with him …’

Liza nods.

‘Well, if I meet him first, I’ll be able to suss out if he’s a decent man and if it’s okay for Rosie to get to know him.’

‘Well, that makes sense,’ she says cautiously.

I turn to watch a woman dive, in a perfect arc, into the deep end. I’m feeling better already, about Will’s indiscretion; it no longer feels like an earth-shattering event. Liza has the knack of helping me to put things in some kind of perspective. Plus, I’m no longer racked with guilt over my email exchange with Fraser. If I do meet him, it’ll only be to check out whether he’ll be a positive presence in Rosie’s life. I’d be conducting an assessment –
interviewing
him, if you like. It all feels quite sensible and grown up.