We ate our sandwiches and paninis in thoughtful silence, and then drove back to the hotel at Red Wharf Bay. ‘Siesta time,’ Rob said as he switched off the ignition. ‘I’m exhausted.’
‘Me too,’ Lucy said. ‘That was intense.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Rob said. ‘I’m sorry you had to see them like that, Luce.’
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘It’s not like you didn’t warn me.’
Once she’d gone to her room and Rob and I were side by side on the bed, he asked, ‘It won’t change the way you look at me, will it?’
I frowned, then rolled towards him. I laid one hand across his chest. ‘No,’ I said, then, ‘How could it?’
‘Seeing I’ve got such awful parents,’ Rob said. ‘You won’t start to think that I’m like them?’
‘They weren’tawful, Rob,’ I said. ‘They’re just very old.’
‘Is that how it seemed then? Just old?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Of course.’ It was a lie. ‘They seemed old and frail and, in your mother’s case, really quite ill. He was a bit crotchety maybe, but what eighty-year-old isn’t?’
‘He’s nearly ninety,’ Rob said. ‘Eighty-nine, I think.’
‘Well,’ I told him. ‘There you go. But nothingawfulhappened.’
‘Good,’ Rob said, rolling away from me. ‘I’m glad it seemed that way.’
I snuggled against his back and pulled him tightly against me and he raised one hand and placed it over mine to welcome the gesture.
I thought about his question and wondered if itwouldchange how I felt about him, because, in a way, it already had. I was feeling a tenderness towards him, a sort of pity really, for whatever it was that he was going through and whatever had happened to him as a boy.
But it was also true that I’d noticed he had his mother’s brown eyes and his mother’s blobby nose, and I’d momentarily, despite my best efforts, imagined him old, with dementia, staring at some mind-numbingly stupid game show. Perhaps meeting the in-laws had been a dangerous game. Even I didn’t know how my thoughts about it might pan out.
‘What about Lucy?’ Rob asked. ‘Was it the same for her, d’you think?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t really…?’
‘DidLucyjust think they were old and a bit sad?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I replied after one complete breath. ‘I think that’s exactly what she thought.’
‘Right,’ Rob said. ‘Good.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What are you worried about?’
‘Just, you know…’ Rob said. ‘How she sees me. How she sees herself, now she’s met her grandparents. I wouldn’t want it to derail her recovery. Because she’s doing really well this time round. Don’t you think she’s doing better?’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘It feels different, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ Rob said. ‘Yeah it does. So this won’t…?’
‘No,’ I told him, pulling him tight again. ‘Of course not.’
But I remember worrying that maybe he was right. I thought briefly, as I lay there with my husband in my arms, that if it did upset Lucy too much then maybe the answer would be to tell her about Billy. And then I decided that would clearly be worse – that it was the sort of thing that could really send her over the edge.
God, I remember thinking.Kids. The worry never ends.
That afternoon, while the sunshine lasted, we visited Llanddona Beach, Penmon Point, and Beaumaris. They were all as pretty as each other and I almost suggested returning one summer for a holiday. Luckily I realised what a bad idea that would have been before I opened my mouth.
By the time we ate our evening meal, the rain had returned and was lashing against the windows. Because the next morning the weather remained unremittingly foul, we simply ate our breakfasts and left.
