The anguish in his eyes tells me how sorry he is, how tormented he is by his mistake. ‘The more time I’ve spent with you,’ he continues, ‘the more I’ve longed to say something, but I didn’t know how.’ He takes a swig of beer. ‘You and Lauren, you were both being so honest. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I realised in that moment my marriage is over, but I have to gain Sophie’s respect again, and my children’s. It’s not enough saying how sorry I am all the time, or that I’m going to do something, is it? Scottie’s right, you were right. My words mean nothing. I used to tell Soph all the time I was going to make changes, quit smoking, look after myself more, but that was just to shut her up. She told me my words were empty, all I ever did was make excuses. I have to show them how sorry I am for letting them down.’ He exhales deeply. ‘The damage is done. It’s what happens now, right?’ Angus longs for reassurance and support, which I want to give, but something holds me back.
‘I’m glad you told me,us,’ I say, unsure how to go on. I realise that there is a part of me that still feels angry, and that my anger has been brewing all day. He has a son with anaphylaxis, a son who is allergic to nuts, milk and eggs, and if he eats any one of those things, his life is in danger. Angus had described to Angel, Lauren and me how he’d picked Benjie up from school on a Friday afternoon, driven him and his friend, Toby, home; he’d decided to have a drink, which led to another, and another. He’d left Benjie and Toby to fix something to eat for themselves, helping himself to another beer, and ignoring Sophie’s phone call at the same time. She was always checking up on him, he thought, making sure he was looking after the children. Had he done this, had he done that, nag, nag, nag. That night, Amy was having a sleepover with friends, so she was probably reminding him about that, treating him like her third child, and quite frankly, it was dull. It was no wonder they had no sex life. She didn’t turn him on anymore with all her nagging. As Angus had said this to the three of us, his face had clouded over with shame once again. Ever since he’d lost his job, his mental health had declined, his depression returned with a vengeance, he was constantly tired and bored out of his senses being a house dad, but he accepted nothing could excuse his behaviour that day, that night. Sophie had written him a shopping list, explaining what to cook Toby and Benjie for dinner. He should have been to the supermarket, but he hadn’t even tidied up the breakfast plates, dirty coffee mugs and old cereal bowls left accumulating by the sink. Sophie used to complain, saying the least he could do was wash up. Anyway, before he knew it, he’d crashed out on the sofa, only to be woken an hour later by Toby, screaming and shaking him by the shoulders, saying he couldn’t find Benjie’s EpiPen. Angus, fired up with adrenaline, rushed into the kitchen, took one look at Benjie, covered head to toe in a red rash. He could see all the familiar signs; his mouth and tongue were swollen, his chest had tightened, his throat had closed up, he was blue around the mouth, he couldn’t breathe.
‘We were hungry,’ Toby said, shaking. ‘I shared my chocolate bar with Benjie, we didn’t think it had any nuts in it. We checked on the packet. He only had one bite.’
‘You hate me, don’t you?’ Angus says, interrupting my thoughts.
‘I don’t hate you. I could never hate you.’
‘I haven’t seen Toby since. The poor kid. I blamed him. I need to tell him how sorry I am. Holly, you have every right to be angry. I should have told you sooner, and if it makes you feel any better, I hate myself too.’
‘It doesn’t,’ I say, not wanting to judge him anymore, because he’s already his own worst critic. ‘I can’t imagine how frightening that must have been, to see Benjie like that.’
‘It’s the worst thing in the world seeing someone you love not being able to breathe.’
‘Are you ready to order?’ asks a waiter.
‘Can you give us a little longer?’ Angus says, since neither of us have looked at the menu yet. ‘It’s happened before. He had his first anaphylactic shock at a parents’ evening when he was about seven. They were handing round food and he ate something that didn’t agree with him. He was rushed into hospital with Soph. After that, he had terrible separation anxiety, we all did. He slept in our bedroom. I can remember him saying, in the darkness, “I thought I was going to die, Mum,” and we promised him nothing like that wouldeverhappen again.’ Angus is close to tears.
‘What happened that night, after Toby called the ambulance?’ I ask.
‘Soph arrived as it pulled up outside our drive. Even if I’d been sober enough to drive, Benjie needed oxygen immediately. His hands…’ Angus looks down at his own. ‘They were blue. I honestly thought he was going to die.’ He clears his throat, as if his words are impossible to swallow. ‘I thought I’d killed him. I’d killed my son. Because it would have been my fault. Soph and I, we’ve always had a policy to check everything he eats at home and never to become complacent because we can’t afford to be. Benjie was born with eczema and asthma too, the two often go together with allergies,’ he explains. ‘As if he didn’t have enough.’ Angus presses his face into his hands. ‘All his life he’s been in and out of hospital needing emergency treatment for his asthma. As a toddler he always had a cough and cold, and hay fever in the summer. Whenever we went away as a family Soph and I would have to think, “Are we in a safe place? Is there a hospital close by?” An attack could escalate so quickly. One moment he’d be fine, the next dire, and we’d have to get him to hospital asap. It was far worse for Soph. She was the one looking after him full-time, but when she called me at the office at an odd time, my heart would literally stop. Benjie has to be careful abouteverythingHolly, not just what he eats, and if I could give him one gift, forget cash or a new phone. I’d give him freedom. The freedom to do what he wants, play rugby with the boys without fearing he’s going to overdo it, eat a slice of fucking pizza at a kid’s birthday party or enjoy a chocolate bar without ending up at A&E.’
Angus is talking quickly, hurriedly, anxiously, as if he needs to get it all out.
‘But what hurts, what keeps me awake at night, is knowing the one person he should have been able to count on, let him down. He doesn’t blame me. He asks me when I’m coming home. He thinks Mum and Dad’s breakup is his fault. Benjie’s the kind of kid who’ll steal from you to buy you a present. He once nicked a fiver out of my pocket, bought his mum a bunch of flowers from the market. Basically, he’s impossible to get cross with, has no mean bone in his body. He doesn’t blame me or anyone. He gets frustrated, sure, he gets low and occasionally angry, who wouldn’t, but he’d never blame anyone, especially me. “It’s all right, Dad,” he said, when I told him how sorry I was. But it’s not. Home is the one place Benjie should feel safe. That night, when the ambulance parked outside our home, Soph figured out pretty quickly what had happened. She wouldn’t let me go with them. “You’ve done enough,” she said. You should have seen her face. I’m not a religious man, Holly, but when I saw the ambulance drive off, siren blasting, I made a deal with God. I begged him to take me instead. It was honestly the worst night of my life. I still have nightmares about it. It’s why I hate going to bed. I hate closing my eyes.’
I reach over and he takes my hand into his, grips it tightly. ‘When Sophie called me in the early hours of the morning to say Benjie was going to be OK, I was sick, so sick I had to call her back. He needed to be monitored, she said, she was going to sleep at the hospital. They came home the following day, in the afternoon. Soph couldn’t look at me, wouldn’t talk to me, unless asking me to do something. She told me to pick Amy up from her sleepover, and that it was my job to tell her what had happened. That night Benjie asked if he could sleep in our bedroom. “Of course you can,” Soph replied. “I won’t ever let anything happen to you again.” That’s when I knew it was over. It had always been, “We won’t ever let anything happen to you.” We were a team. At restaurants I’d be the one grabbing the waiter’s attention, demanding more information about the menu, saying it wasn’t enough to say that there mightbe traces of peanut, that the chef clearly didn’t quite understand that this was about life and death, not about fussy middle-class parents. In so many ways, Benjie’s troubles had brought us closer together. Later that night, when Benjie and Amy were both in bed, I told her I’d move into the spare room. She still wouldn’t look at me. All she said was “I want you to leave. Pack your bags and go.” I begged her for another chance. I cried. She cried. I remember feeling a tiny glimmer of hope when she let me hold her. I promised I’d change, that I meant it this time, that I’d go to the doctors, that I’d doanythingto earn her trust again.’ Tears now stream down Angus’s cheeks, his body is shaking, as if reliving the trauma.
‘Are you ready to order?’ the waiter asks.
‘Can you give us another five minutes?’ I say to an increasingly disgruntled waiter. ‘Do you want to get out of here, Angus?’
Angus and I end up walking down Chiswick Mall, a street on the north bank of the River Thames. ‘Jamie and I always used to say that if we won the lottery, not that we played it, we’d move here,’ I say. ‘We’d rattle around in one of these grand houses.’ I gesture to the Georgian house on my left, the front door flanked by a statue of a lion. ‘We always dreamed of waking up by the sea or being close to water. But when it became clear we couldn’t have children, we decided to stay in London.’
‘Tell me more about him,’ Angus says.
‘He was the opposite of me.’
‘In what way?’
‘I remember us packing for a holiday. He’d chuck in a pair of boxers, some swimming trunks and a toothbrush, and that’s about it.’
Angus laughs. ‘Sounds suspiciously like me.’
‘I’d pack for every single kind of eventuality, leaving nothing to chance. I remember Jamie and I going off on our first mini break together, to Cardiff. He couldn’t believe how much I’d packed. “Anyone would think you were going for a year, not a weekend,” he said, heaving the suitcase into the boot of his car. He drove us in his old battered Golf, car roof down, me belting out Belinda Carlisle’s “Live Your Life Be Free”. He thought I was so funny, until he realised I was tone deaf.’
It feels good to laugh with Angus after the intense evening we’ve had.
‘I used to love dancing and karaoke,’ I say, unable to remember the last time I did either. ‘Jamie had two left feet, but he didn’t mind getting on the dance floor. He didn’t care what others thought of him, actually. I think that’s what I loved most about him. He wasn’t an extrovert, was equally as happy staying in as going out. If we were going out, I usually had to make him put on a clean shirt. Jamie would have happily turned up at a party in one of his old jumpers that he’d been working in that day.’ I smile. ‘But once he was there, he enjoyed seeing people. He was tall like you, and had this laugh.’ In so many ways, Angus’s laugh reminds me of Jamie’s. ‘It was contagious. He managed to put everyone at ease without trying… I don’t know, this probably sounds clichéd, but he lit up a room.’
‘He sounds—’
‘Jamie wasn’t a fan of routine,’ I continue, realising how much I’m enjoying talking about him now. He used to say, “As soon as you have a routine, Holly, things don’t happen by chance.” I liked to make plans for the weekend or for the following summer. “Who knows what will happen tomorrow, let alone next month or year?” he’d say. I guess he was right but my attitude was if you make no plans, you don’t have anything to look forward to. If it was his birthday, I would be dying to plan a party for him, any excuse, whereas Jamie would knock on a friend’s door to see if they were around.’
‘How did you two meet?’
I tell Angus I was thirty-one and beginning to doubt ever meeting anyone or falling in love, until I met Jamie at Milla’s house. I recall how his smile instantly cured my hangover. ‘Gather you had a late night,’ Jamie had said, humour laced in his voice, a dimple appearing in one cheek. I had to force myself to stop gazing at him.
