Summer With My Sister (45 page)

Clare was still so disarmed by what Denise had just said that she barely registered the puke-making ‘Babe’. ‘Hi,’ she said when Steve came on the line. ‘What’s Denise talking about? Why does she seem to think I wouldn’t let you see the children any more? And what’s all this about you moving?’

She heard him groan and then the line became muffled, as if he was holding his hand over the receiver. ‘Den, what have you
said
?’ he snapped. ‘I told you to keep out of this!’

‘What’s happening?’ Polly hissed from across the room.

‘Dunno,’ Clare replied, stroking Fred distractedly with her foot. This was all a bit weird. ‘Are you there, Steve? Steve?’

‘Sorry,’ he said, coming back on the line. ‘Ahh . . . I think there’s been a bit of . . . er . . . a misunderstanding.’

‘What sort of misunderstanding? You’ve lost me. Are you moving house?’

Again there came that groan: a low, weary noise of dismay. ‘I can’t do this over the phone. Can I come over? We need to talk.’

She pulled an agonized face at Polly. ‘O-okay,’ she said. Then she remembered the kitchen was full of her business equipment and decided she couldn’t be bothered to go through the palaver of clearing it out again, in order to keep up appearances. The strange mood he was in, it might be better to talk on neutral territory. ‘Why don’t I meet you somewhere in the middle?’

He sighed. It was starting to make her feel concerned, the way he was behaving. ‘Steve, you’re not ill, are you?’ she asked when he didn’t say anything.

She could hear Denise twittering on in the background – anxious, apologetic. ‘What? In a minute,’ Steve snapped and then, in a more conciliatory voice to Clare: ‘Yes, okay. Let’s meet in the Red Lion in Nettleside. I’ll be there in an hour.’

She didn’t even have time to say goodbye before he hung up.

Nettleside was about twenty minutes’ drive to the east of Elderchurch, and the Red Lion was a cosy pub just off the main road, with a large beer garden and an enormous menu. They’d gone for dinner here many times as a couple because Steve had a particular hankering for the generous steak-and-ale pie with flaky pastry; he’d order it every time, and always ran his finger around the pie pot to get the last of the gravy. Funny the silly little things that stuck in your head, Clare thought to herself as she parked the car.

She’d fretted the whole way there, worried about what Steve was going to say. He’d been acting so oddly the last few weeks; there was obviously a big story waiting to tumble out. Thank God Denise had opened her gob and given her some hint of it on the phone, otherwise she’d have been kept in the dark until Steve had decided he was man enough to tell her himself. There was something about moving house, that was for sure. But why spin Denise a lie about her not letting him see their children? As if she would ever say that, for goodness’ sake!

His BMW was already in the car park, she noticed, as she walked towards the pub entrance. He’d parked slightly askew – unheard of, for the man who prided himself on his immaculate driving skills. Just the sight of the angled wheels, the way the car had been left impatiently there, gave Clare cause for concern. It was so out of character.

Steve was at a table in the corner of the pub, nursing a glass of red wine with an air of self-absorbed gloom almost visible around him like a mushroom cloud. She bought herself a Diet Coke and took a deep breath. Next stop: into the lion’s den.

‘Evening,’ she said coolly, sitting down opposite him. Prince Charming that he was, he’d hogged the comfortable padded armchair for himself and had left her a sticky-looking bar stool, but she didn’t comment on this, merely steepled her fingers together on the table and looked at him expectantly.

‘Hi,’ he said. God, he looked rough.
Was
he ill? There were huge bags under his eyes and he had a general air of unkemptness, what with the creases in his T-shirt and the stubble around his jaw. ‘Look, I’m sorry about this,’ he began, fidgeting in his seat. ‘I’ve had a difficult time lately.’

Clare sipped her drink. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked after a few moments, when it seemed as if the conversation had already ground to a halt.

‘Well, work’s been . . . tricky,’ he said, swilling his wine around in the glass, his focus seemingly on the whirlpool he was creating.

Come on, out with it
, she thought. How long was he going to drag this out?

‘The big boys in head office decided last year that we’d save a lot of money if we relocated,’ he said at last, ‘but that’s gone down like a lead balloon with most of the workforce. Not least with me.’

Relocation. Ahh. Steve worked in the accounts department of a large insurance firm that was based in Reading, a short hop up the A33 from Basingstoke. ‘Where do they want to move to?’

He sighed. ‘Liverpool,’ came his answer, pronounced so miserably it was as if he was reading out his own death sentence. ‘Miles away from here, and the children.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘What does Denise think?’

‘Oh, she’s over the moon. Half her family are in Stockport, so she’d love us to live up North. But . . .’ He shrugged.

‘But you don’t want to,’ Clare finished for him. She leaned back in her seat, eyes narrowing. ‘So, what? You told her I wouldn’t let you see the children if you went? Was that your plan?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘Er, you could have told her the truth?’ she said witheringly. ‘That you didn’t want to move hundreds of miles away from Leila and Alex?’

There was guilt all over his face. ‘I tried that,’ he muttered.

Not hard enough obviously, Clare thought. ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she said. ‘Even if Denise had come round to your view, had said, “Okay, if Clare’s playing hardball, then of course we can’t move”, what would you have done? Surely the point is: you’re relocating? You
have
to move?’

‘I don’t have to,’ he replied, plucking at the beer mat and tearing shreds off one corner. ‘There’s a voluntary redundancy package, so . . .’

She stared. ‘What, so you’d rather lose your job than move away?’ She hadn’t been expecting that. Steve loved his job; he loved the office banter and the sales targets, loved wearing a suit and tie every day, loved the self-importance that his laptop and smartphone gave him.

He shrugged again. ‘It’s a big decision,’ he said. ‘All I know is that I don’t want to lose touch with my own children.’

Seeing him looking so grey-faced and beaten-down, Clare realized she was actually feeling sorry for him. For a whole split-second anyway, until she remembered the full extent of his weird behaviour. ‘Hang on, though,’ she said. ‘What about all that shit from your lawyer – that bloody pompous letter? – not to mention you springing this Disney World trip on me, all that emotional blackmail about “What will the kids think of you, when I tell them you won’t let them go”? What was all that for?’

He hung his head. ‘I . . . I let things get to me,’ he said hoarsely.

Was that it? Was that the sum total of his explanation? She stared at him, dumbfounded. ‘Yeah, I’ll say you did,’ she replied sarcastically. ‘And you took it out on me. What was that: a little power trip to make yourself feel better?’ She suddenly remembered Polly’s words the night she’d moved into the cottage:
I never liked the way he tried to put you down. He seemed to hate it when you had any kind of success or
triumph
. At the time Polly’s comment had irritated her; who was her sister to criticize Steve, when she’d barely bothered getting to know him? Perhaps she’d had a point, though.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Leila said something about you getting this new business up and running and . . .’ He wrung his hands. ‘It just felt like a kick in the teeth: you doing so well, when everything was going so badly for me.’

What a wanker. ‘Right,’ she said coldly. ‘So you thought you’d try and mess everything up for me, did you? Keep me in my place? How big of you, Steve. How generous.’

‘It wasn’t like that, I—’

‘How was it then? Do explain, I’m all ears.’ She felt like strangling him, great bungling idiot that he was.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I’ve been a prat. I thought if it turned out we did go up North, I might be able to . . . take the children with me.’

Her heart seemed to stop beating. ‘You
what
?’ She was stunned that he could stoop so low. ‘What were you trying to do: prove I was an unfit mother or something?’

Silence fell. Yes. Apparently that was exactly where he’d been going. She wrapped her arms around herself, wanting to wrap them around Leila and Alex protectively too. ‘Over my dead body. There is no way on earth that is going to happen,’ she said, loud and clear. She wished that looks really could kill, or at least maim someone very painfully. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t you dare do anything like that again,’ she said, rounding on him with genuine venom in her voice. ‘I mean it. It’s below the belt, Steve. It’s just . . . nasty.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said for the third time, but with a meekness she’d never heard before. And then, to her horror, his bloodshot eyes filled with tears and he was scrubbing at them with his fists. ‘Like I said, it’s been tricky.’

‘Mmm,’ she said without a flicker of compassion. She got to her feet, wanting to get home to her cottage, her warm sleeping children, her sister and a glass of something stronger than Diet-frigging-Coke. ‘Well, let me know what you decide to do,’ she said frostily. ‘And, Steve, for crying out loud, I’d never deny you access to the children if you move,’ she added. ‘We’d work something out, okay? Just don’t try to shit on me in the process. Ever again.’

She walked out of the pub before he could say another word to her. This holiday could not come soon enough, that was for sure.

The encounter with Steve might have been a bruising one, but equally it seemed to fill Clare with a new kind of strength. She couldn’t trust him any more, that much was obvious, but rather than getting her down, the realization gave her a feeling of autonomy and control. It was up to her to ensure that she and the children had happy lives; and, boy, was she going to do her best to make that happen.

With this in mind she worked like a Trojan for the rest of the week and was able to deliver her Langley’s order by Saturday afternoon, with the most glorious feeling of accomplishment. Once the last box of soaps had been taken from her boot and signed for, she felt lighter than air and drove home, singing at the top of her voice, stopping only to splash out on a celebratory bottle of Prosecco for her and Polly to drink that night. She’d done it!
They’d
done it rather, the wonderful Team Clare of friends and family.

I am a businesswoman
, she’d thought deliriously as she drove, and she couldn’t stop smiling.
I fulfilled my contract. I’ve
just delivered some fantastic hand-made products to a brilliant, upmarket
hotel chain
. What was more, she knew none of this would have happened if she’d still been married to Steve.

Later that evening, flushed with her success and slightly squiffy on Prosecco, she decided that, as a liberated businesswoman of the twenty-first century who’d definitely washed her hands of her ex-husband, there was something else she needed to do. Hadn’t she urged Polly just the other week to take a chance in love again? Well, it was high time she followed her own advice.

‘Luke? Hi, it’s Clare,’ she said when he picked up the phone. ‘Listen, I’ve been thinking. When I get back from holiday, I was wondering if you fancied going out for a drink one night?’

She held her breath. Polly, who was loitering supportively, held hers too.

‘You would?’ Clare beamed in delight, and tried not to laugh as Polly started bouncing up and down like a demented kangaroo in the background. ‘Cool. So, when would suit you?’