Mum on the Run (20 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

‘You saw Jed and Celeste?’ I murmur.

‘Yes. Well, I assume it was her, from how you’ve described her . . .’

‘Where?’ There are shrieks of laughter as a child charges into the lake.

‘You know the stables near Barnswick? I’d gone to pick up Kira from horse riding. I was early, sitting waiting in the car, and I saw someone in the rearview mirror at a table outside the pub. And I realised it was Jed. I was about to jump out of the car and join him, assuming he’d be with you.’

‘And he was with her? Just the two of them, at a pub miles from anywhere?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do, whether to tell you, but I haven’t been able to think about anything else since . . .’

‘What . . . what were they doing?’

‘Nothing. I mean, they were sitting and talking. It could be quite innocent, Laura. Maybe she needed to talk to him about something that had happened at work . . .’

‘But why there?’ I ask. ‘They could have just gone to the Green Dragon by school where the teachers usually hang out. They obviously didn’t want anyone to see them.’

‘Well,’ she says, ‘it kind of looks that way. But don’t jump to any conclusions.’

I nod. My eyes are blurring but, mercifully, they don’t spill over in front of all the crudité-chomping mums. They just fill with hot tears as the picnic goes on all around us: women chatting, kids skimming pebbles, someone praising Ruth’s extensive cupcake selection. ‘Look out!’ Toby yells as a long, flat object flies over my head, colliding with the oak tree behind us and collapsing damply onto the grass.

I survey the small brown pile. Pippa, who’s gripping a carrot baton between two fingers, bursts into high-pitched laughter. ‘What the hell was that?’ Beth exclaims.

‘That,’ I say, ‘was our gingerbread house.’

*

It’s a relief to get home, despite the fact that Jed will be back from football by now, so I’ll be confronted by his lying, cheating, country-pub-frequenting face. I haven’t yet figured out when, or how, to confront him. He asks me about the picnic; clicking into autopilot, I tell him about our wrecked house, Pippa’s crudités, and kids having to be coaxed out of the lake, stripped down to their pants and swaddled in their mums’ jackets and jumpers. I tell him everything, apart from the part about Beth seeing him at a country pub.

And I try to keep calm, reminding myself that there might be a perfectly reasonable explanation. I do calming things like drink chamomile tea and open a packet of hazelnut and chocolate chip cookies, surprised that I can only manage one.

Having had his fill of news from the picnic frontline, Jed takes Toby and Grace out for a kick-around in the park. Finn is called for by his mate James, and they both head round to Calum’s, probably for a completely unsuitable movie-fest. Instead of brooding, I tackle the really foul jobs, like sluicing out the kitchen bin, and investigating unidentifiable spillages under the cooker. I should be running with Danny tonight, but can’t face it. I text: SORRY CANT MAKE IT THS EVE, WILL EXPLAIN, LX

‘Okay love?’ Jed is standing at the kitchen door.

‘Oh,’ I say, startled. ‘I thought you’d gone out.’ I slip my phone into my jeans pocket.

‘Just started raining,’ he says, and there’s a distinct hint of sadness in his dark brown eyes. For a moment, I want to throw my arms around him and hold him close, to convince myself that it wasn’t actually him at that pub. After all, while undeniably handsome, Jed’s dark-eyed, strong-jawed look is hardly uncommon. It could have been another man, taking his girlfriend for a drink in the country. What nicer way to spend a lazy afternoon?

‘Laura . . .’ he begins hesitantly.

‘Uh-huh?’ The children’s voices filter through from the living room, and there’s a ripple of laughter. They are happy, most of the time. Surely, that means we’re not doing too bad a job. Can I risk destroying all of this by confronting Jed?

‘Is . . . is everything all right?’ he asks.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I say briskly. I can’t say anything now; it’s impossible, with the kids around, especially as their laughter has morphed into furious shouts, with Grace yelling, ‘You never let me watch anything, stinkhead!’

‘Puck off!’ Toby cries.

‘It’s not
puck off
, idiot. You don’t even know how to swear, baby!’

‘Yeah I do. PUCK OFF!’

‘Jesus,’ I growl, marching through to the living room to deal with the fracas. Once I’ve sorted that out, I might start to think how to fix the rest of my life.

*

All evening, the image of Jed and Celeste at that pub table bubbles and ferments in my brain. Finn returns from Calum’s house, boasting, ‘We had proper Chinese from the takeaway. Duck and pancakes and everything, all rolled up with this black sauce. How come we never have that?’

‘Because you’re a deprived child,’ I tell him, ‘although I do seem to remember us having a Chinese, what, about a week ago?’

‘Yeah,’ he says airily, ‘but not the duck.’

‘We
never
have duck,’ Grace agrees, looking up from her drawing at the coffee table.

‘Yes, could you rectify that, please?’ Jed teases, giving me a wink.

‘Oh, Mum,’ Grace adds, ‘did I tell you about my project?’

‘No,’ I say, my eyes feeling suddenly, scratchily tired. ‘What project’s that?’

‘For school. Family history.’

‘What, like a family tree?’

‘Yeah, kinda. But it’s gotta be a book and we have to describe the people and what it was like when they were little. I’ve got to have photos and stuff.’

‘Gosh,’ I say. ‘It sounds like quite a lot to do. I’ll need to dig out that big box of old family photos. I think they’re in the attic.’

Grace smiles. ‘Thanks. I need ’em tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow? Grace, we can’t find family photos tonight! They could be anywhere and it’ll take me hours to rake about up there . . .’

‘You said they’re in the attic,’ she mumbles.

‘Yes, but . . . have you ever seen what it’s like? All the boxes and rubbish and . . . stuff?’

‘I’ve got to take them in tomorrow!’ she bleats. ‘We start by picking one person and standing up in front of the class and doing a talk about them! And I wanted to do Granddad!’ Her eyes fill with tears, her drawing forgotten and her pens scattered all over the floor.

‘Oh, Grace. Don’t cry, love. I think it’s a great idea to talk about Granddad. I wish you’d given me a bit more warning, that’s all.’
Then I’d have spent the best part of this morning in the attic, finding those photos, instead of constructing that damn gingerbread house. I might even have skipped the picnic so Beth wouldn’t have told me about seeing your dad and Celeste and this would just be an ordinary Sunday evening . . .

‘I told you,’ she murmurs. ‘I told you last week.’

I sigh, knowing there’s no point in arguing. Perhaps my kids do tell me these things: that forms need signing for art gallery trips, and family photos located in horrible spidery attics. Maybe I’ve just stopped hearing properly.

‘Don’t worry,’ I say, bobbing down to kiss her forehead. ‘I’ll see what I can do, okay?’

She musters a weak smile. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

*

By 9.30 p.m., I still haven’t spoken properly to Jed, because he is getting ahead with some marking at the kitchen table and I am up in the attic. In fact, locating the box of photos isn’t the ordeal I imagined, once I’ve negotiated the Ramsay ladder and remembered where the light switch is. I spot the box, on top of more boxes containing old books, videos and records and the children’s outgrown clothes which I have never got around to taking to the charity shop. Jed’s usually the one who lugs our surplus possessions up here. It must be years since I’ve been in the attic.

I lift down the wooden box and take off its lid. Proper mothers spend hours creating beautiful albums, chronicling every age and stage of their offspring. Our photos are all loose, and sorting through them up here, in the dim, yellowy light, would take forever. I must have sat here for longer than I’ve realised, as I hear Jed coming upstairs and calling good-night. ‘Will you be much longer up there?’ he asks.

‘No, I think I’ve got what I need.’ Waiting until I hear him pottering about in our bedroom, then clicking off the light, I grip the box and step carefully back down the ladder. Then I tip out my family’s life onto the living room floor.

It’s a bizarre, glossy patchwork, a mixture of babies in our arms and, further back, me and Jed on our wedding day looking ridiculously young and delighted with ourselves (and each other) as we gathered with our parents and friends in a cluster outside Hackney Town Hall. It was a dazzling, brilliantly sunny day with red buses trundling by in the background. I looked tanned and slim in a cream slip of a dress, with dark hair piled up, and Jed was dashingly handsome in a navy blue suit which remains the most – actually, the only – expensive item of clothing he’s ever bought. I pick out our old friends’ faces, which are tiny in the group photos: mates from college, the various salons I worked at, and even school. And I realise with a jolt that, apart from occasional phonecalls, which are invariably interrupted by children – plus dashed-off emails and Christmas cards – it’s been years since I’ve had proper, meaningful contact with any of them.

And I wonder if any of these old friends’ husbands have secret trysts in pubs.

Quickly pushing the thought away, I scan the rest of the photos. Naturally, as I explained to Danny, most are of the kids. Apart from our wedding and the odd indistinguishable party aside, it was as if we had only properly discovered the medium of photography when Finn emerged into the world. There I am, grinning from ear to ear, breastfeeding him in Homerton hospital. A dainty six-pound baby who grew into a fiercely strong-minded toddler who’d cling to my leg, wailing, if I so much as tried to go to the loo without him. And Grace, bald until after her first birthday and perpetually laughing, and Toby with his generous, girlish pink lips and angelic blond curls.

Finally, I spot Dad, standing proudly with his arms crossed over a Fair Isle sweater, his herbaceous borders in full bloom behind him. From then on, I find more and more: Dad on various beaches, Dad with a toddler Grace on his shoulders, and Dad and me sitting together at a restaurant table at my 21st birthday party. I was a slim girl, I realise now, although of course I complained about wobbly bits and non-existent cellulite, as everyone did back then. There are even older pictures of Dad, when his hair was dark brown and a little unruly, rather than the light grey of his later years. In one, he’s waist-deep in a river with a fishing rod, laughing. I pick them all out and set them out in a row, starting with a young Dad with a Christmas cracker crown on his head and me in a vest and nappy on his lap, and ending with the last picture I took of him, in the hospice on his sixty-seventh birthday. I sit and look, my gaze running along the row from left to right and back again, until I can’t see clearly anymore because tears are pouring down my cheeks.

I don’t know how long Jed has been standing there. He steps towards me and sits on the carpet, surveying my makeshift gallery of Dad. He puts his arms around me and murmurs, ‘You okay, darling?’

I shake my head vehemently. ‘Jed,’ I blurt out, ‘I know you met Celeste at that pub, somewhere out by the stables in Barnswick. Someone saw you.’ I look up from the photos of Dad to my husband, whose dark eyes shine out from a pale, startled face. ‘Please Jed,’ I add, ‘I need you to tell me what’s going on.’

He blinks and moves away from me, and I see his gaze flicker over the hundreds of photos spread out on our carpet, as if one of them might help him to find the right thing to say. Apart from our coffee table, which forms a kind of island, the entire floor is covered in pictures. Anyone glancing in through our window might think we’re up at 1.30 a.m. to arrange them into some kind of art project.

‘Jed?’ I prompt him. ‘What’s happening?’

‘We . . . we did go there,’ he says quietly. ‘Whoever saw us, they were right.’ His tone is flat and neutral, as if there’s no reason on earth why it might seem strange or even vaguely suspicious to take a woman to a pub four miles out of town.

‘Why?’ I ask. ‘If you wanted to go out after work, why didn’t you just go to the Green Dragon?’

‘Because it’s full of teachers.’ I turn to him, amazed that I am managing to hold it together and not get angry. It’s as if all these photos – the hundreds of faces of our friends, parents and children, all the people we’ve loved who have populated our lives – are watching me, making me feel eerily calm.

‘Would that have been a problem?’ I ask. ‘Being with other people, I mean? Or did you and Celeste want to be alone?’

He meets my gaze. ‘She wanted to talk,’ he says, ‘and I suggested that place. We’ve passed it loads of times, haven’t we, on our way to the coast? And we’ve always said how nice it looks.’

‘Yes, nice for us to go to, maybe . . .’ My voice rises a little.

‘Laura, stuff had happened, stuff she wanted to talk about. She drove us out there and we sat and had one drink.’

I blink at him. ‘Just one drink?’

‘Well,’ he mumbles, ‘maybe two. Does it matter?’

‘It does matter,’ I snap, ‘when I’ve put up with you not turning up for your own daughter’s birthday, and on top of all that . . .’ I pause, taking a breath. ‘On top of all that, there are the texts and calls and . . .’

‘Laura,’ he cuts in, stopping me dead. ‘For God’s sake. I’ve never done anything to jeopardise this family. I never would . . .’

‘But you are!’ I insist. ‘It’s always there, simmering away – this worry about what’s really going on with you two, and it affects the way I am with the kids, and at work, everything. So it
is
jeopardising our family. For one thing, you lied and said a whole group of you were out while the party was going on. And I know it wasn’t a group. It was just you and her. D’you know how I know that? Because I went round to her flat to try and find out the truth . . .’

‘When?’ He looks aghast.

‘A couple of weeks ago. I took her dress back, the one I borrowed at her party . . .’