‘Oh heart schmeart,’ Sam said. ‘We all know if Erin followed her heart she’d never have married Greg in the first place, and would have run off to find Adam wherever he was in the world instead.’
‘We don’t know that!’ Rose cried.
‘To be fair, he’s probably right,’ I admitted, and it was the first time I’d said it out loud. Even saying the words felt like stabbing Greg in the back, but if I couldn’t admit the truth to these two, who could I admit it to?
‘See,’ Sam said triumphantly, smacking the dashboard with his palm. ‘Samuel Evans is always right about matters of the heart.’
Rose and I burst out laughing at the same time and Sam looked at us indignantly. ‘Oi, it’s not that funny,’ he said, sticking out his bottom lip.
‘Oh Sam,’ I said, reaching across the gearstick and patting his leg affectionately. ‘We all know perfectly well that not only is that statement not true, but that actually it’s pretty ridiculous. But we love you anyway.’
‘Charming.’ He folded his arms across his chest but I could tell he was only pretending to sulk.
‘Anyway, that doesn’t help me.’ We were only a few minutes from home and I had no idea how to process everything I was feeling, or how I was going to face Greg. Or my father, come to think of it.
‘I think you need to write a list,’ Rose said.
‘You’re such a teacher,’ Sam said, rolling his eyes.
‘Iama teacher,’ Rose countered.
‘Carry on,’ I said, trying to placate Rose. ‘What should this list say?’
She shot Sam another glance and looked back at me. ‘You need to write down all the reasons for staying with Greg – you know, that you love him, he loves you. He’s kind, you have a mortgage together, he’s trying so hard to make everything right again. Anything you can think of. Then you need to do the same for all the reasons for not staying with him. The fact you don’t love him as much as you feel you should, that you can’t stop thinking about Adam, that Greg’s lost loads of your money. Then you need to weigh everything up.’ She stopped and held her finger up. ‘But, you should make it about you and Greg first, and forget Adam in all of this. Because you need to take it one step at a time. Make sense?’
I heard Sam snort beside me and I smacked his thigh. ‘It does Rose, yes. And you’re right. Whether I can trust Greg and want to stay with him has to be separate from anything I might feel for Adam.’
‘Except it isn’t.’
‘Sam, that’s not helpful,’ Rose said.
‘It’s true though, isn’t it? I mean, before Adam came along again you were more than ready to forgive and forget Greg’s gambling. But now you don’t know whether you can, or even want to, and that’s no coincidence.’ He stopped and looked at me, eyebrows raised in challenge. ‘I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m just saying that the two thingsareconnected. So I think you need to consider that as well. And remember what your mum said, about not having any regrets. She obviously does, but it’s too late for her. It’s not too late for you.’
‘You’re right.’ My hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles had turned white. I tried to take a deep breath and relax, but it didn’t work. I was too tightly wound. ‘This is all connected.’ I sighed. ‘You know what I need to do before I make any decisions though, don’t you?’
‘What?’
‘Talk to my dad.’
‘That wasn’t what I expected you to say.’
‘I know. But I have to, don’t you see? I need to find out whether he always knew that Mum settled for what she saw as her second choice when she married him, and if he did, whether he minded. Whether now, looking back, he thinks she should have made a different choice.’
‘He’s never going to say he thinks that, surely? He adores your mum.’
‘I know he does. But it was all a long time ago, and he might see things differently now to how he saw them back then.’ I shrugged. ‘It might just help me work things out.’
25
NOW
Bob Dylan: ‘Like a Rolling Stone’
I’d come to see Dad alone this time. Thanks to work it had been a couple of days since I’d been to see Mum, and my mind had been spinning with what she’d told me ever since. Inevitably, things with Greg had been difficult at home, but I had at least spent some time making a list, as Rose had suggested.
The trouble was, every time I thought about hurting Greg, or tried to picture telling him I was leaving, guilt flooded through me. Images of the two of us together throughout the years kept playing over and over in my mind, as if my mind was trying to torture me, or guilt-trip me into staying.
Sitting here outside my father’s house, I thought back to the first time I’d brought Greg home to meet my parents, when Mum had asked me whether he made me as happy as Adam did. Although at the time I’d wondered why she couldn’t just be happy for me, now I think Mum had always known that I was settling for ‘good enough’, and that Greg didn’t set my heart alight the way Adam had – because she had done exactly the same thing when she’d married my father.
