Who Loves You Best (28 page)

“You sent me camellias,” I say, as we reach the edge of the grass and rejoin the path. “To the Victorians, that meant ‘My destiny is in your hands.’”

Cooper stops. He digs his hands in his pockets, ducking his head so that I can’t see his face.

“I came to England,” he says, “to see a woman. She …
possessed
me. I can’t explain. I didn’t know if I loved her or hated her.”

Ella
.

Abruptly, he starts walking again. We veer left, towards the Round Pond, its brackish gray waters reflecting the overcast sky. Cooper is silent for so long, I think he’s forgotten I’m even here.

He stops by a bench and sits down, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. I sit beside him, leaving a careful space of green slatted wood between us.

“I didn’t realize it until I came here, but it wasn’t really about her,” he says. “A long time ago, I gave up something I cared a great deal about for my brother. I don’t regret it. I’d do it again. But my brother was the sort of man who didn’t care very much about anything.” He smiles wryly. “In a good way. He was laid-back. Live for today. Everyone loved him. No one more than me.”

I think of my brother, his reckless disregard for consequences, for the normal ties of love and friendship and family, his easy, careless attitude to life.

“People can only do that when someone else takes on their share of responsibility for them.”

Cooper glances at me in surprise. “Yes.”

“I envy my brother that.” I sigh. “I know I’m too uptight. I want to control everyone, everything. I didn’t ask to be this way. But someone has to be the responsible one.”

“Have you ever let anyone else try?” Cooper asks.

I open my mouth, and close it again.

“I never let Jackson grow up,” Cooper says. “I’d gotten so used to taking care of things. I never taught him how to take care of himself.”

“But—when he married—”

“If your brother got married, would you stop worrying about him?”

I shake my head.

“Ella was the one thing Jackson ever cared about. He gave up everything to be with her: his country, his job.
Children, too: She refused to have any. And then she threw it back in his face.”

I pick up a scrap of stale bread from the ground, breaking it into pieces and throwing them, one at a time, to the ducks.

“I thought I was angry with her, but it was Jackson I couldn’t forgive.”

He lifts his head and looks directly at me for the first time. His cobalt eyes blaze with intensity. “I didn’t hate her. I think I knew that all along. And when I met you, I knew I hadn’t ever loved her either.”

My mouth is suddenly dry. My stomach swoops and soars, as if I’m riding a roller coaster. The backs of my knees and neck prickle.

“I’m going back to the U.S. tomorrow,” Cooper says, “and then on to Afghanistan for a feature I’m writing. I don’t know when I’ll be back in the UK. I would never want you to … betray—”

“I couldn’t,” I whisper; knowing in that second that, oh, I
could
.

I stay at work as long as I can, putting off the moment when I have to return to reality; to Marc. I won’t leave him, of course. There was never really any question I would.

I shut myself in my office and look up the number of a marriage counselor my GP recommended, the last time I saw him for my headaches. I make an appointment for the twenty-eighth of June; a cancellation, the receptionist tells me. I don’t ask if the couple reconciled, or divorced. I put
the phone down wearily, feeling as if I’ve just had a capital sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

I’ve made the right decision
, I think, as I drive home. Marc and I have two young children whose happiness depends on us finding a way around our problems. We owe it to them to do everything in our power to succeed.
This is your life
, I tell myself.
For better or worse
.

I let myself into the cold, dark house a little after eight. For a moment, I wonder where everyone is, and then I spot a sliver of light beneath Marc’s study door.

I push it open and switch on the light. “Here you are. What are you doing, sitting all alone in the dark? Where’s Jenna?”

“She’s out. Another date with her mystery man. It’s lucky she was in when I got home—my key jammed in the bloody lock.”

I fight a surge of anger, knowing she’s with Xan.

“I told her she couldn’t take the night off.”

“She’d already given Poppy her medication and put them both down for the night. Don’t worry, they’re perfectly fine. I just wanted to have some time alone to ourselves.” He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “There’s a couple of things we need to talk about, Clare. Why don’t you come in and sit down?”

I don’t want to sit and talk to you. I don’t want to deal with your problems. I need to go away and think about what’s happened to me today; I need to think about Cooper.

For better or worse
.

I suppress a sigh, and unbutton my coat. “I’d rather talk
in the sitting room. I’m just going to get some tea. Would you like some?”

“Another Scotch, please.”

I fetch him his drink and make myself a cup of peppermint tea. I’m tempted to add a slug of something stronger, but some sixth sense tells me I’m going to need my wits about me.

For a few minutes, Marc makes nervous small talk, clearly working himself up to tell me something. My nerves jangle as I sip my tea. Please God, not more financial losses. I’m not sure how many more hits we can take before I have to go cap in hand to Davina.

He clears his throat portentously, and I steel myself.
Here it comes
.

“Look, we both know things haven’t been good between us recently. We’re constantly at each other’s throats. I’m miserable, and I’m sure you are, too.”

I hide my surprise. It’s not like Marc to venture onto emotional territory. “All right. Yes. It’s been difficult.”

“We can’t go on like this. It’s not good for either of us, or for Rowan and Poppy.”

Maybe … maybe this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. If Marc and I are able to start communicating, perhaps we can begin to make up some of the ground we’ve lost since the twins were born.

“I can’t remember the last time we sat down and really talked,” I say gratefully. “We never seem to have a moment to ourselves.”

He scowls. Before I know it, we’re back on the same
old treadmill, covering the same old ground.
My company
. It’s always about my company.

It’d be so easy to give up and slide towards divorce. I’ve seen so many women walk out of their marriages because things aren’t perfect, like divorce is a lifestyle choice, rather than a last resort. I can’t let that happen. I intend to fight for my marriage; for the twins, if for no other reason.

Nervously, I tell Marc about the counselor. “I didn’t want to go behind your back, but I thought one of us had to do something. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve made an appointment for us on the twenty-eighth—”

“Both of us?”

“Well, yes. You can’t go to this sort of counseling on your own.”

“I’m not talking about counseling, Clare. Christ! I’m talking about
divorce!”

My stomach goes into freefall. Divorce. Even though I’ve been thinking the word all day, hearing it said aloud, having it thrown at me when I’m least expecting it, disorients me more than I would have thought possible. My head fills with a buzzing sound, like a saw or a hornet, and for a few minutes I can’t take anything in.

“Come on, Clare,” Marc says impatiently. “Don’t tell me this is a surprise. We’ve barely spoken, let alone had sex, for months. How did you think this was going to end?”

“Is there … is there someone else?”

“Not as far as I’m concerned.” He leans on the mantel with studied casualness. “What about you?”

Even though I know the question’s rhetorical, that he cannot possibly know about Cooper, I blush. “Of course not.”

His tone drops ten degrees colder. “I don’t want this to get messy. If we can agree to everything ourselves, without getting lawyers involved—”

“But the twins are only six months old! They need us, they need a
family!”

Marc shrugs me off. His stony expression doesn’t change, even when I beg him to reconsider. How can he look at me with such dislike? How can he be so
cold?

It starts to sink in that he’s serious. He means it.
He’s leaving me
. He’s not even giving me a chance to defend myself, or state my case.

How can he do this to me? How can he do this to our children?

“—we can discuss your access to the children tomorrow, when we’ve both had a chance to calm down.”

I look at Marc in shock. “What do you mean,
my
access?”

“You can’t possibly think I’m going to give you custody.”

I don’t understand him, this man I married. I don’t even
know
him. Who is this stranger, who looks at me with such contempt?

What kind of parent does he think
he’ll
make? What kind of example will he set for his son? Pushing his face into mine, snarling and spitting, using his size and his sex to intimidate me. He doesn’t really want full-time care of the twins; he’d go mad with boredom in a week. This is just posturing. Deep down he’s a Sunday father, happy to play with them for an hour or two when they’re clean and good-tempered, and then hand them back when the real work starts. He has no idea what real parenting is, the
commitment it takes. If he did, he wouldn’t be doing this. He wouldn’t be ripping all our lives apart.

“You’ve made your choice,” Marc snaps. “You can keep your damn company. But I’m keeping the kids.”

No. No.
No
.

I jump up, my fists clenched at my sides, forcing him to step back. I will not let this bastard, this playground bully, dictate to me like this. I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing my fear.

“You. Will. Not. Take. My. Children.” I’m very, very clear about this. “I don’t care if I have to give up every single shop. I won’t let you take them away from me.”

“You’re an unfit mother,” Marc sneers, retreating towards the door. “You abandoned your children, and now, when it suits you, you think you can claim them back.”

I stand petrified with shock as he slams his way out of the house.
He won’t be able to get back in
, I think stupidly.
He hasn’t got a set of the new keys
.

“Bloody good thing,” Fran says robustly, when she marches to the rescue twenty minutes later. She hands me a bottle of champagne. “The man’s an ass. About time you kicked him to the curb.”

“Oh, Fran,” I sob, “what on earth am I going to do now?”

“I’m afraid this isn’t going to be very pleasant,” Nicholas Lyon says. “Marc’s hired Stephen Morton to represent him. That means things could get very messy.”

“What do you mean?” I ask warily.

“Morton’s tactics tend towards the confrontational. I’m afraid he’s not beneath using private detectives”—he says the words as if the occupation is on a par with muggers and rapists—“to get what he wants.”

“Detectives?” I give a nervous laugh. “I’m afraid I’m not nearly interesting enough to have any skeletons in the cupboard.”

Nicholas doesn’t smile. “I’m afraid that doesn’t always matter. This isn’t a criminal court of law, Clare; you don’t have to prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s more a question of the balance of probabilities. No smoke without fire, that sort of thing. Family law doesn’t deal with black and white, but with all those tricky shades of gray in between. There’s no right and wrong. Whatever happens, everyone loses; especially the children.”

How did I end up here, in a divorce lawyer’s office? The twins are barely six months old! What
happened
to us?

“I realize how hard this is, but we do have to move quite fast,” Nicholas says gently. “The other side has already filed a petition, which means—”

“But he only left five days ago!”

“I understand that. However, I suspect your husband has been planning this for rather longer. He has done his homework, I’m afraid.”

Planning this? While I’ve been struggling to meet the bills and pay his debts, tearing myself into pieces and struggling to hold everything together, Marc has been consulting divorce lawyers and
planning
this?

I rub my eyes wearily. “What does he want?”

“Considerably more than he’s going to get. Morton
should know better,” Nicholas snaps. “He’s plucking numbers from the air in the hopes that when they finally name their real bottom line, you’ll be so relieved you’ll agree. Your husband is thirty years old and has a healthy income of his own. Maintenance is out of the question.”

I nod, as if any of this matters. Numbness envelops me like a shroud. If it hadn’t been for Fran and Jenna—particularly Jenna, whose kindness has been almost painful—I don’t know how I’d have gotten through the last few days. I keep waiting for Marc to call and tell me it’s all been a terrible mistake. He can’t mean this, surely? He can’t really want to throw away the last seven years, destroy Poppy and Rowan’s happiness, over … over
what?

“It’s just a misunderstanding,” I say suddenly. “He’s not going to go through with it. He wants to make a point, that’s all.”

“Clare, I realize what a shock this must—”

“I know Marc; he’s too proud to admit he’s wrong. Well, I don’t mind being the first to say sorry. If you—”

“Clare,” Nicholas says sharply, “Marc is asking for a divorce on the grounds of your unreasonable behavior. He’s alleging that you are unstable and erratic, prone to violent outbursts of temper, and excessively antagonistic towards him. He also says you have refused him his conjugal rights for some months now, and that he came back one evening to find that you had changed the locks to prevent him accessing his own house.”

“That’s ridiculous! Jenna locked us out of the house by mistake the other day, I had to call out the—”

“I haven’t finished,” Nicholas warns. “Marc is also seeking
custody of the children on the grounds that you’re an unfit mother and a danger to the twins.”

Even though I knew it was coming, it’s still like a punch to the stomach.
He’s actually going to do it
. He wants to take my children.