The Secret of Happy Ever After (45 page)

‘That’s not true.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes it is. Anyway, l want to tell you, not because I like a gossip or want sympathy but because it’s not what you think. I can see why you’d think I was a bit of a shit, but believe it or not, I’m not. If you still think I’m a shit after I’ve told you, then fair enough, but let’s get this out of the way.’

Michelle shrugged. Rory’s privateness was something she liked about him; it went both ways. This changed things, and she wasn’t quite sure how. ‘Go on then, if it makes you feel better.’

Rory leaned on the table, steepling his fingers, and looked her in the eye. ‘Esther Wiseman was my first girlfriend. She was a clerk in the Magistrates’ Court – we met when I was had up for armed robbery and arson. No, of course I wasn’t,’ he said, as Michelle’s head jerked up in surprise. ‘I met her during a very dull morning prosecuting television licence-fee avoiders when I was a trainee. We bought a house not far from here, in Milton Road.’

‘Poet streets,’ said Michelle. ‘Very nice.’

‘Is it?’ Rory looked as if he wasn’t quite sure what she was getting at, but carried on. ‘Anyway, we’d been together for a while when Esther started talking about getting married and having a family – not necessarily in that order – but I wasn’t ready. I worried about money, wanted to get promoted first, bigger house, usual sort of thing. Like the dog – she wanted a dog, I wasn’t sure, hence the volunteering at the rescue that you think is so sinister. It was a compromise. Long story short, Esther got sick of waiting and she ended up having an affair with a friend of ours from the pub quiz team – Adam, nice guy, I liked him – and she got pregnant.’

‘Oh,’ said Michelle, in surprise. This wasn’t turning out quite the way she’d expected. She’d been guessing something more along the lines of
Rory
being caught cheating – although the more she got to know him, the less probable that seemed.

‘Esther decided, since she was thirty-seven, that she wanted to keep the baby, but she didn’t know whether it was Adam’s or mine. That was a bit of an issue, so I told her I wanted to sell the house, and moved into the flat above the bookshop.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘I’m not particularly proud of that bit, but . . . you can imagine things were a bit turbulent on both sides.’

‘How long had you been together when this happened?’

Rory fiddled with the teapot. ‘Um, nine years.’

‘Nine years?’ Michelle widened her eyes. ‘You’d been living together for
nine years
and you weren’t sure whether you wanted to get married or not?’

‘She didn’t
have
to have an affair,’ he pointed out.

‘I’m not saying either of you did the right thing. But
nine years
 . . .’

Rory mimed someone banging a gavel. ‘Both guilty. Bam. Next. Is that your final decision?’

She ignored that. ‘And so whose was it? I mean,
he
, Zachary? Who’s the daddy?’

‘Well, Esther was fairly confident he was Adam’s, and she was in a relationship with him by the time Zachary was born, so she wouldn’t do a DNA test for a long time. But we found out earlier this year that he’s mine. Hence the visits. I’ve seen him three times since he was born. He’s very sweet, as little children go. I’m no expert. Obviously.’

Michelle bit her lip. Just three times since he was born. No wonder he’d been so arsey the day the buggy got stuck; what kind of day had
that
been? A whole world of awkwardness.

‘How do you feel about that?’ she asked.

‘I don’t really know what I’m supposed to feel about it, to be honest,’ he said warily. ‘We’re still feeling our way around what the right thing to do is.’

The initial spiel had sounded rehearsed but these words sounded hesitant, as if he hadn’t actually spoken them aloud before. He looked at her as if he wanted her opinion, but was reluctant to ask.

It occurred to Michelle that maybe he didn’t
have
anyone to ask. That maybe all that hanging around he did in the bookshop – talking to Becca about law school, discussing Norwegian children’s stories with Anna – was not because he wanted to air his extensive knowledge, but because he didn’t have many friends. Maybe he was trying to learn about women and parenting by osmosis.

She felt a sudden sympathy for Rory. Off duty in his jeans and weekend shirt he didn’t look so middle-aged as he did in his weekday suit. She felt a tug of something, but immediately pushed it down.

‘That’s all you can do,’ she said. Hadn’t Anna said something very similar to her, when they first met? That she was still feeling her way around? ‘Most families now have some kind of complication. It doesn’t mean you can’t build a relationship with Zachary. The more people kids have around them who love them, the better, no?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rory admitted. ‘I keep reading about how mothers have this powerful love-urge thing when they see their baby. I’ve seen Zachary three times. I’m not totally convinced I could pick him out of a baby line-up.’ He looked mortified. ‘You know, you’re the only person in the world I could say that to. It’s parental sacrilege.’

‘Thanks,’ said Michelle. ‘So I’m a child-unfriendly monster too? Joking,’ she added when Rory started to apologise.

They were silent for a moment.

‘Do you regret it?’ Michelle asked. ‘Losing Esther?’

‘No.’ Rory looked sad, then buttered another slice of cold toast, dipping the knife into the marmalade. ‘I think we both knew things had run their course well before she had the affair. Neither of us wanted to call it a day – you know, it was just . . . over? Esther wanted a fresh start and I thought it was better to let her go, and yes, she is with Adam now, and yes, they are very happy, and yes, Zachary calls Adam “Daddy”.’

‘Are you happy with that?’

A long pause. ‘Not really,’ he said slowly. ‘Well, I don’t know. It’s messy. I don’t like mess. We’re discussing what appropriate maintenance should be, given that she’s marrying Adam. I think Esther would really like to pretend none of this ever happened. I don’t know whether pretending it never happened is the kindest thing for Zachary, or whether that would be a mistake.’

‘Maybe,’ said Michelle. ‘But what about when he’s twenty-one, and he finds out his dad walked away without a backward glance? That’s major league therapy. I suppose the best thing you can do is to keep things civil. Like Anna and Sarah and Phil. Well,’ she amended,‘as far as you can. It’s hard.’

‘It is.’

Rory chomped down on his toast and regarded Michelle carefully. ‘Still think I’m a baby-abandoning bastard?’

‘No. A messy, bossy one, maybe.’ She helped herself to a slice of toast and cut it in half. ‘Are you wanting me to perform some kind of absolution? Ten Hail Marys and a Dan Brown novel?’

‘I could have handled it better,’ said Rory. ‘I should have been brave and ended it, instead of putting her in a position where we both behaved badly. But it’s like my old landlady once said, God rest her soul – nice people sometimes do terrible things because they don’t want to do one small mean thing. It doesn’t automatically make them a bad person forever.’

‘That’s very true,’ said Michelle. ‘Even if it does sound like something you’ve said more than once in court.’

‘Ha. Very good. So,’ he said. ‘Your turn. How about you tell me the real story of your divorce.’

‘What do you mean, “the real story”?’ Michelle reeled. ‘I don’t even recall telling you I
was
divorced.’

Rory waved his toast dismissively. ‘It’s common knowledge. Don’t remember who told me – Anna, or Rachel? I sort of assumed that you drove him away with your endless nitpicking about scatter cushions and obsession with lists, but you can tell me different, and dispel
my
misapprehensions.’

Michelle opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again. Was that how she came across? Was this how Rory had felt, knowing she and Anna and Kelsey were discussing his buggy issues?

Rory was looking at her and she thought about telling him to sod off, but he’d just been very honest with her. And her anger with Harvey was still tingling enough to override her shame.

She took a deep breath. ‘Well, there’s not much to tell. I got married very young – too young, probably – to a guy who worked with my dad.
Unlike
you, I worked out reasonably quickly that we didn’t have much in common, and when I started lying to the doctor that I needed anti-depressants again because my grandmother had died, I realised maybe I should leave instead.’

Rory was staring at her and Michelle felt uncomfortable. Well, she hadn’t really explained herself. What bits could she tell him without revealing the worst stuff?

‘He made me give up my job,’ she went on. ‘Harvey wasn’t very keen on me working, because he thought all the male customers were hitting on me, so eventually I stopped and stayed at home. And that wasn’t ideal, for either of us, because I’m not really the housewife type. I got into decorating because I was bored. He used to come home and mess things up “to give me something to do”. And move things in the night, and joke that I was losing my marbles.’

Rory said nothing. Were these examples bad enough? Maybe they were just normal married couple things. She gripped her mug. ‘He used to weigh me, too, which I didn’t like, considering he was three times my size. And he told me he didn’t want kids, then he’d tell my parents that I was the one who refused to lose my figure. When actually it was him who didn’t want my . . .’ Michelle swallowed the rest. Too much.

‘So why did you marry him in the first place?’

‘It seemed like the right thing to do. Harvey was always really lovely to everyone else.’ Michelle gripped her mug harder; this was stuff she hadn’t even told Anna, for fear of Anna feeling so sorry for her that she’d never like her again. Harvey was right when he told her pity ruined friendships. ‘Plus, Mum wanted the excuse to arrange the big fat royal wedding she didn’t have, thanks to what she calls her gymslip motherhood. She had my older brothers when she was just twenty. There’s a big gap between them and me and then Owen.’

‘Forgive me for saying this,’ said Rory, ‘I don’t want to sound out of line, but what was an independent, professional woman like you doing with a manipulative bully like that?’

‘I wasn’t always independent,’ she said. ‘When I met Harvey he dragged me out of a big depression and I think he felt he’d made me into what I was after that. As if he owned me.’

‘What depression can be worth
that
?’ demanded Rory. He seemed angry – for her.

Michelle looked across the table at him and without pausing to think, she said, ‘I was expelled from school when I was seventeen and I ended up having a breakdown. It took me years to get myself back together, because my mum refused to talk about anything, and I let a lot of things happen, because I didn’t know who I was any more. I’d gone from being a top-stream swot to a drop-out with no future. I put up with Harvey controlling me because everyone else kept telling me how happy I was. I thought he was doing it for me. He always said he was, anyway.’

‘So what was your breakdown about?’ Rory asked.

Michelle’s hand wobbled. ‘That’s not really the point. It’s all in the past.’

‘Well, you brought it up. Was it to do with the boarding school? Did you fail some exams? Was it something at home?’

‘It’s irrelevant.’ Michelle started to tidy up the table and Tavish appeared from under Rory’s chair, obviously hoping for toast. ‘It’s something I got over, and put behind me.’

She knew Rory was looking at her but she refused to meet his eye, stacking the plates and collecting the crumbs.

‘Do you always cry when you’re out jogging?’ he asked. ‘Or has something happened today? I’ll come clean – you looked so upset I thought something had happened with your ex. I didn’t mean to come round and make things worse. I just hated to think of you running round like that on your own.’

Michelle stopped clearing up and shoved her hand through her hair, trying to swallow the lump that had appeared in her throat.

‘I’m not actually divorced,’ she said. ‘But I’m going to be. Soon.’

Before he could respond, she walked through to the kitchen and stacked the plates in the dishwasher systematically. She glared at her reflection in the kitchen window, trying to make herself see the straight-nosed, clear-skinned, independent, successful thirty-one-year-old woman, but a different Michelle had escaped from that box of schoolbooks and was floating around the back of her mind like a ghost blown off course: a hopeful teenager with glasses and dreams about polo players. A version of her that existed even before Harvey. One that even he hadn’t known.

She could see in the reflection that Rory was still watching her, his usual self-assured expression replaced by nervousness. He wasn’t sure whether he’d upset her or not. And he’d been so honest with her about Zachary, in the hope of trading a confession, so he could legitimately comfort her. There was something chivalrous about it.

Something from the Jilly Cooper echoed inside Michelle. If Rory was as nice a guy as he seemed, that was even more reason not to tell him the whole tacky story. She preferred it when he just felt sorry for her, married to a bully.

‘Divorce is hard, but if it means a fresh start . . .’ Rory began.

Michelle turned round. ‘I wasn’t crying about that. I’m worried about the shop, too,’ she said, because that was true. ‘I’m worried about my best friend and her stepfamily, and how I’m going to keep everyone happy. I’m worried that you’re not quite the arse I thought you were, because that means my arse detector needs recalibrating.’