‘I don’t think Dad likes Elisa very much.’
This time I burst out laughing.
‘Why do you say that?’ I ask, trying really hard to make my voice sound normal.
‘Mum, I can tell,’ she says. ‘Hello! I’m fourteen. I’m not a baby, even if my brain isn’t grown up yet.’
‘Uncle Con’s brain isn’t grown up yet and he’s nearly thirty,’ I point out and she giggles. ‘OK, you’re not a baby, right, got that. And we can talk about the dog thing.’
‘Really, Mum?’ she says, sounding like Liam.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but not just yet. We’ve still got a few hurdles to jump over. We need the right dog. We have to plan this. Have discussions but yes, let’s get a dog.’
While the children screamed with excitement about the dog and Liam got out an animal book to look up exotic breeds that Teddy would no doubt terrorise within their first five minutes in the house, I hid in the pantry, rang Dan and I filled him in on the details.
‘I’ll kill bloody Elisa,’ were his first words.
‘No,’ I say.
‘What do you mean,no,’ he growls. ‘Stupid cow was the one who wanted to talk to Lexi and now this—’
I interrupted him.
‘Let’s face it, Dan,’ I say. ‘Elisa has never been exactly emotionally mature and we should have expected something.Wejust have to begrown-ups in all of this and I have a plan.’
‘A plan to blackmail Elisa to go back to Spain and never darken our door?’
‘No, a moregrown-up plan than that and possibly one that will keep us out of jail, because we have three children to take care of and a mortgage and it would be handier if we weren’t locked up.’
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I could put up with jail for a little while. Stupid, stupid cow and it’s all my fault.’
I could practically hear him running frantic fingers through his dark hair.
‘Young guys are totally led around by their—’
I interrupt him again. ‘When it comes to yourex-wife, I do not want to know what part of your anatomy was in charge, but I can figure it out. Let’s deal with what’s happening right now.’
It’s strange but I feel totally in control.
‘You can do this,’Mildred keeps saying in the background.
There was something cheering about having Mildred on my side. Even Mildred knew I was a good mum and could work things out.
Getting bashed to the concrete floor of a parking garage had rattled me more than I could ever say. But, I was handling that and I was going to handle this.
Stuff happens, as Mildred says. You’ve got to live with it. Somehow.
Energy surges through me.
I think of my mum and how she’d dealt with some unbelievably hard things – Dad disappearing into the dark caverns of his mind and being there only in body; witnessing the pain of Scarlett going through years of infertility treatments and then falling apart. Mum had been able to cope and I was made of the same stuff.
21
Ask someone how they are really feeling. Not how they’re pretending they’re feeling. The result will surprise you
Adele Markham sobs on the phone when she hears my voice.
‘Freya, I was waiting for you to phone. It’s Lexi, isn’t it, she’s heard the news?’
