Lena smiles. ‘There’s nothing to deal with. Everything’s done, isn’t it? So off you go. Remember we’re up early for the breakfast shift!’ Shelley groans and laughs, and hugs her again.
‘Thanks, Leen.’
‘No problem. Night, girls. I’m just going to text Tommy, okay?’ She steps out into the garden where everything is dusted in snow, sparkling under the pearly moon. She strolls down the garden, picking her way carefully over the uneven ground, and gazes out onto the silvery loch.
The sharp night air fills her lungs, energising her instantly. Plucking her phone from her jeans pocket, she goes onto Instagram, wondering if Tommy has posted anything today. He’s like a kid with his social media, sharing snaps of meals he’s cooked, with jokey captions –Managed not to poison Lena today!They both love to wander around different parts of London; little corners off the beaten track. He’ll post his pictureof a woman with numerous pugs on leads, or of noodles with a comically rude brand name in a grocers. Sometimes Lena rolls her eyes at his boyish humour, but she loves it really. He isuncomplicated, which she finds refreshing. What you see with Tommy Huntley is what you get.
Of course, he was seeing Daisy today, she remembers now. It’ll have been good for them to have a dad-and-daughter day, all to themselves. For Tommy to have some company too. He’s not the kind of man to do loads of stuff with his mates, or have a raft of activities that don’t involve her. From the night they met, he’s pretty much wanted to do everything with Lena.
However, it’s not one of Tommy’s photos that she’s looking at now. It’s one of Daisy’s. An Instagram Story that she must have posted earlier today.
Lena would never think of herself as Daisy’s stepmother. She hasn’t been around for long enough to earn the title. And Daisy, although pleasant enough, hasn’t really let her into her life. Lena has tried her best, asking her all kinds of questions and then holding back in case she was quizzing her too much. She has bought books for her, carefully chosen to hopefully chime with a teen mindset. Although Daisy has always thanked her, Lena suspected that they were slung somewhere, never to be read.
Lena has tried to be Daisy’s friend, and if it’s felt a little hopeless, then that’s fine, she’s reassured herself. Catherine is Daisy’s mother and she would never try to get in the way of Tommy’s family. But now, as she stands stock still in the moonlight, and stares at the picture of Tommy and Catherine together, she feels as if she has been punched in the gut.
Tommy is smiling a little awkwardly, but then his smile is always off-centre like that. And Catherine is beaming and their faces are actually pressed together, cheek to cheek. They are two extremely good-looking middle-aged people with excellent bone structure and great teeth and, Christ, how had Lena never realised how right they must have looked together? How right theylook, she corrects herself. Present tense. Tommy and Catherine Huntley still look like a happily married couple. SinceLena has known him, the three of them have never gone to lunch together. At least not to her knowledge. It’s shocking to Lena, that she’s so rattled by a silly photo that Daisy probably put up without even thinking. And they were only having pizza, she tells herself, irritated by this unexpected surge of jealousy.
It was just lunch. It’sfine.It doesn’t mean a thing. That was what Max, Lena’s ex-husband, said when she spotted a restaurant receipt tossed casually on the kitchen worktop one evening.
Just lunch with a friend. It was nothing.
She hated herself then for checking his emails and phone, and for rifling through his pockets and desk drawers at home. Everything was remarkably accessible to her: the texts, the little secret codes in his diary, the photos on his phone. Naked pictures of the woman; nudes as they’re called now. Max had been so careless about passwords that Lena could only conclude that he didn’t care whether or not she found out.
All those years, through the trying for a baby and her pleading with him to try at least one round of IVF, there’d been an affair. And then there was a baby with this beautiful and – Lena had to hand it to her – extremelyflexiblewoman (did she do yoga or Pilates, Lena wondered? Or was there some other way of being able to position your legs like that?). Lena couldn’t have a child, but that didn’t matter to Max, because he’d made one with someone else.
Tommy isn’t like that, Lena tells herself as tears flood her eyes. She looks up at the star-speckled sky and breathes in great lungfuls of crisp Highland air, as if that will chase this terrible feeling away.
‘It was only lunch,’ she mutters out loud. But still, she can’t unsee the image of Tommy and Catherine jammed tightly together with Christmas decorations all around them, as she steps back into the house.
25
‘Stop freaking out. Don’t be an idiot. It’s just a little Christmas party.’
That’s what Martha had told her little brother Fin, as soon as their dad had gone out earlier.
‘But what if he comes back?’
‘He won’t.’
‘But how d’youknow?’
She exhaled, hoping she could trust him not to breathe a word about what was to happen tonight. Of course he wouldn’t. Fin would be part of it as – unfortunately – he lives here too. And much as she’d like to, Martha can’t exactly pack him off to a friend’s or stuff him into the cupboard under the stairs. So she’ll have to accept his annoying presence, and that of his equally annoying friends, and hope that everyone she’s invited will turn up. That way, Fin’s little group will be so diluted as to be barely noticeable.
‘Marth?’ Fin prompts her now.
‘What?’
‘It’s just… Dad. He said the thing he’s gone to, it might be boring…’
‘It won’t be boring,’ she snaps, and he frowns, looking hurt.
‘Yeah, but?—’
‘Fin, listen to me,’ Martha says, adopting a level tone now. ‘I know Dad’s not coming back tonight ’cause he’s taken an overnight bag.’
‘Has he?’ Fin’s eyes widen.
‘Yeah. So we’re fine,’ she states, strutting away from him now and heading for her room, because she can’t be around her little brother any more. Not right now anyway. Not after seeing that thing in their dad’s bag. Because actually, she wants to tell Fin, to offload it instead of carrying it around in her head like a bomb that could go off at any moment. Equally, shecan’ttell him, because what if she’s got it wrong and has misinterpreted the gift tag and the actual gift? Then he’d be freaking out over nothing and it would all be her fault.
