Who Loves You Best (35 page)

“Why are you making this so difficult?” I demand. “What exactly have I done wrong? I persuaded Marc to let me take Rowan home. Isn’t that what we wanted? Why are you treating me like I’ve just done a deal with Stalin?”

“Point made.”

He turns back to his coffee. I experience a blinding rush of anger. Does he think this is easy for me either? Does he think I don’t
care?

“If you want to wall yourself off from the rest of the human race, fine. I can’t stop you,” I say furiously. “You’ve
been doing it for forty-nine years, so I guess you’re used to it. But I can’t. After everything that’s happened, I’m not letting you pretend it meant nothing! You know how I feel about you! If it wasn’t for the twins—”

“Do you think that helps?” Cooper snaps. “You think it’s some sort of consolation?”

“He’s their father! I have to give him another chance!”

“So go. Do it.”

“I don’t understand. What is it you want from me?” I cry helplessly.

His dark eyes blaze, and there is such raw heat in his expression that a fierce answering pulse of lust beats between my legs. My nipples tighten, and suddenly I can feel his warm mouth on them. His hands are skimming the surface of my skin, following the curve of my hips, sliding into the damp shadow beneath my breasts, exploring the warm, wet folds and crevices of my most intimate places. He hasn’t touched me, and yet I can feel him in every cell of my body.

“I can’t,” I whisper. “The twins need their father. I can’t just turn my back on Marc. He needs me—”

“I need you.”

“You’re stronger than he is. You’ll be fine without me. In a few weeks’ time, you won’t even remember—”

“Your husband needs a wife. A housekeeper. Someone to look after him. I need
you.”
He pulls me into a tense embrace, his hands on my shoulders, his mouth inches from my ear. “No one else sees you, Clare. No one else knows you the way I do. You don’t need another child to look after. You need a man who can butt heads with you and win. It won’t be easy. It’ll be hard, and we’ll have to work at it every single
day. But it’ll be worth it, because we’ll have each other. Don’t settle for second best. Don’t take the easy way out.”

“What easy way? There is no easy way!”

“What do you want, Clare?”

“It’s not that simple—”

“Stop thinking about what the twins need, what Marc needs! What about what
you
need? What is it you want, Clare?”

“I can’t just—”

“Damn it, Clare!
What do you want?”

I break away, panting as if I’ve just run a mile. Cooper drops his hands and opens his arms, letting me go.

“I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

I turn and run, as if the hounds of hell are behind me.

For four weeks, all I could think about was
when Rowan comes home
. My entire being was focused on that one event, like a small child looking forward to Christmas, unable to imagine a day that might come afterwards. I should—I
do—
feel relieved, thankful, grateful, and happy. I bathe my babies, savoring their laughter, reveling in the extraordinary resilience of childhood. They wake the next morning in bed beside me, squawking for breakfast, warm and soft and sweet-smelling, and my heart sings as I pull them into my arms. I feel lucky, blessed, as if I’ve been given a rare second chance.

I also feel bleak and empty, as if a Siberian wind has swept through me and hollowed me out. I want to crawl into a cold, dark place and hide.

Brendan, the young policeman who seemed more
sympathetic than his colleagues when Rowan disappeared, and who stopped by almost every day even when there was no news, arrives shortly after our return with shiny blue helium balloons and a bottle of champagne.

“You’re not pressing charges?” he asks, incredulous, as we open the champagne in the kitchen, even though it’s barely nine-thirty in the morning.

“I keep telling her,” Jenna scowls.

“He agreed to let me bring Rowan back,” I say evenly. “He has enough to worry about. He has no job, no money, nowhere to live. He’s the twins’ father. Sooner or later, we have to start mending bridges.”

Marc calls me a week later from a small flat he’s rented in Clapham. “I’m not ready,” I tell him. “Just give me a little more time.”

I throw myself into work, but it doesn’t have the same power of distraction it used to. Every time the doorbell in the shop rings, I look up, despising myself for my foolishness.
You made the right decision
, I tell myself firmly. If Cooper can’t understand that, it’s just proof it would never have worked.

Ten days after we return from Beirut, a bouquet of hyacinths arrives at home. Hyacinths:
You love me and destroy me
. Furiously, I throw them into the dustbin, and then spend half an hour fishing them out and rearranging them in a glass vase.

“Those look pretty,” Jenna says when she comes in; and is then thrown into confusion when I burst into tears.

At Jenna’s insistence, I go to the doctor, who diagnoses post-traumatic stress and prescribes me Lexapro for depression and Xanax to calm me down. I throw the prescription
in the rubbish bin on my way out of the office, and stop off at Patrick Cox on the way home for a new pair of shoes.

When I get back, Jenna is sitting on the bottom stair, holding an opened letter. The twins have emptied her handbag and are playing with a box of Tampax while she sits, oblivious, staring at the paper in her hand.

I retrieve her cell phone from sticky fingers and put the top back on her new red lipstick, which is now drilled with tiny toothmarks.

She hands me the letter. “My birthday present from Xan.”

It’s a bank statement. I glance up, puzzled.

“Look at the bottom of the page,” she says dizzily.

Twenty-five thousand pounds
. Even by Xan’s standards, that’s a little over the top.

“He’s not coming back, is he?” Jenna says.

I sit on the stairs beside her. “Not for a while,” I say carefully.

“Do you think it had anything to do with me?”

“I think you were the reason he stayed as long as he did.” I choose my words carefully. “He’s given up his flat and quit his job, Jenna. He said he needed to travel for a bit, to get his head straight. I don’t know when, or even if, he’ll come back. I think he’ll end up in Italy; he’s always loved it there.”

Jenna nods. I realize there will never be a better moment to tell her my decision.

When Marc walked out, Jenna promised she would never leave me. I was able to bury my fear and loneliness because she was there to pick up the pieces, to slide effortlessly into the role Marc had vacated. If she hadn’t shored me up, I might have surrendered to the black terror that
engulfed me whenever I stopped working or moving, whenever I gave myself a moment to think.

But things have changed. I’m not the same person I was six weeks ago. When the twins were born, I believed I lacked maternal instinct, that I was my mother’s daughter; that I needed Jenna to do what I could not: to mother my children. In some ways, I know she is still more suited to the task than me: She’s able to live in the moment, be in the present far better than I am. I’m always so busy worrying about the next problem, the next crisis. But I gave my mothering away for far too long, out of panic and fear. I was both lucky and unlucky to find Jenna; to employ a nanny so warm and competent that I felt I could never match up.

Beirut has changed that. Rowan and Poppy are my children. Only I will do.

“We need to talk,” I say.

“Oh, God. That’s never good.” Jenna sighs.

I pick up Poppy, and she scoops up Rowan. We sit side by side on the stairs, a child in each lap. I realize how foolish I was to worry about Jenna taking my place. In the end, this isn’t about Jenna and the twins, or me and the twins; but about Jenna and me.

“I’ll never be able to thank you enough,” I acknowledge, “for what you did in Beirut. You were amazing. Not many girls would have had the guts.”

“Leap before you look, that’s my motto.”

I smile. “Jenna—”

“Am I being fired?”

“I don’t think I’m going to need a full-time nanny anymore,”
I say softly. “I want to do things with the twins myself. I know I’ll never have the same knack as you, but I want to try. The thing is—”

“It’s OK, Clare. I get it.” Efficiently, she rubs lipstick off Rowan’s cheek with her thumb. “You’ve been really good to me. I don’t think I’d have had the balls to get away from Jamie if it hadn’t been for you. You were really there for me. I’m going to miss you all terribly, but I understand.”

She’s suddenly very busy brushing down her skirt.

I touch her arm. “Jenna, I don’t want you to leave—”

“No, it’s fine; you don’t have to explain.” She jumps up. “So. I’ll call the agency and tell them. Would you like me to work a couple of weeks’ notice, or—”

“I don’t want you to leave,” I repeat. “Jenna, I don’t need a nanny anymore. That doesn’t mean I don’t need
you
.”

She looks understandably confused.

“I want you to work for me at PetalPushers. As a manager.”

I lead her into the sitting room. We put the twins in the playpen, and sit opposite each other on the same sofa where I interviewed her all those months ago.

“You’re a wonderful nanny, but sooner or later, you’re going to want children of your own,” I tell her. “You need a break from babies before that happens, trust me. You’re so good at organizing things. You’re a natural manager.”

“I—I don’t know—”

“Craig will be there to look after the business, but you’ll be in charge of the Fulham shop. Molly wants to move to the Camden branch to be nearer to her family. You can take over from her.”

“I’ve never done anything like that before. I’m not sure if I could.”

“I’ve watched you for the past few weeks at the shop. You’re a fast learner, and you’re good with people. Anyway, it wouldn’t be full-time; not yet, anyway. I thought, if you agree, of course, we could sort of … job-share. Just until the twins go to nursery school. We’ll have to work out the details, but it would mean I could spend more time with the twins, and still run my company. And you’d get the chance to stretch your wings, and learn something new.”

Unexpectedly, she bursts into tears. I can’t remember ever seeing her cry before. “Oh, Clare. Yes, please,” she says, sniffling. “I’m sorry, I was just—I couldn’t bear to leave—I’d miss you all so much—”

My own throat is suddenly clogged. We’ve come a long way in the past six months, I realize. At the start of any relationship, romantic or otherwise, you never know quite how or where it will end. That first, giddy honeymoon stage never lasts. If you’re lucky, it gives way to a deeper, less intoxicating, but ultimately more fulfilling relationship built on love and trust and mutual respect. Or it will fail; all that promise and hope ground down by neglect, until nothing is left but recrimination and regret. In the end, like so many things, so much of it comes down to luck.

Jenna and I have come from very different places, and been dealt very different cards. But in the end, I think, as we get up and go into the kitchen and start the familiar routine of making tea, we are just two women who know without words how hard and terrifying and amazing motherhood can be, regardless of whose hand rocks the cradle;
and who understand that from the moment you learn to love, you must also learn to let go.

Two days later, Marc is sitting on the front steps when I return home late from work.

“I didn’t ring the doorbell,” he says, standing, “I didn’t want to put Jenna on the spot.”

“She’s not here this evening. She went to a policeman’s ball, of all things.”

Brendan still seems to find himself “just passing,” even though the case has been formally closed for weeks. I’m glad, for Jenna’s sake. Xan was never going to settle down.

“Can I come in?”

I hesitate. “The twins aren’t here. Davina has them for the weekend. She seems to be taking to grandmotherhood rather well, actually, though she’ll kill anyone who calls her that. She’s left Guy, did you know? It appears she found him with a fourteen-year-old stable girl and called the police. He’s out on bail, but Davina’s already changed the locks.”

I’m aware I’m babbling. I knew Marc would come back home, sooner or later. I’ve been through this in my head a thousand times. I can make it work. The twins deserve a proper family. It’ll be different this time.

I’m not ready
.

Pity isn’t love
.

“I’m sorry I’ve missed them,” Marc says, “but it was you I wanted to talk to.”

He follows me into the kitchen. It seems odd to see him here: at once familiar and strange. I pour him his usual
Scotch; he nurses the glass, but doesn’t really drink. We stand awkwardly on opposite sides of the kitchen island, and I look at my husband and try, very hard, to remember why I married him.

“I’m going back to Canada,” Marc says abruptly. “I wanted you to know.”

For a moment, I’m too stunned to speak.

“Canada?”

He shrugs. “I can’t get another job here, not with the financial markets in the mess they’re in. And to be honest, I’m not sure I still want to do this kind of work. I want something a bit more … real.”

“But why not stay in England?”

“My family are in Canada. I need to be around them right now.”

“I thought—you said you wanted—”

Marc puts down his untouched glass. He moves around the counter, and gently wraps his arms around me. To my surprise, it’s strangely comforting. “It was never going to work, Clare,” he murmurs into my hair. “Not after everything that’s happened. We both know that.”

“We could try. We’ve both made mistakes, but—”

“Clare, even you can’t fix everything.”

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

He pulls back, his gaze searching. “Can you honestly tell me you’re disappointed?”

I’m swept with sadness. We started out with so much hope and faith. I was so sure we’d make it, if I just kept
trying
.

“The thing is,” he adds, suddenly awkward, “I’ve met someone. It’s early days yet,” he adds hastily. “We sat next to
each other on the flight back from Lebanon. She’s twenty-three. She lives in Montreal, too; our parents even know each other. It seems they’re third cousins, or something. You know how it is with the Lebanese.”