It can’t be,he told himself, taking a corner a little too fast and hardly feeling the angry spin to the rental car’s wheels.It just can’t.
He’d known Ari had had a baby. He’d seen the child for himself, held tight in her father’s arms —Ari’s husband’s arms,Tom reminded himself bitterly — a pink rabbit in her hand, her face tucked under her father’s chin. She’d been small and delicate, and Tom had stared at her, wondering how baby-soft skin could cut him so deep. The man who held her had looked at him oddly, and Tom had quickly noted the wedding ring he wore, and the litany of pictures on the wall behind him. He was in every one of them. His presence told him, loud and clear, that Ari had moved on, and quickly too. Clearly Ari hadn’t missed him like he’d ached for her. She probably hadn’t loved him at all — had no doubt relegated him from lover to the beginning of some tawdry story starting with,“Did I ever tell you about this one guy in Europe...”
She promised to wait for him, but she’d broken that promise. It was a fact that still caused torrents of pain to cut through Tom, a bitter pill he’d swallowed over and over, the worst kind of medicine for his tortured soul. Ari had married, had a baby and moved on. Tom, after grieving her loss, decided to do the same. He couldn’t have the woman he wanted, but he could still have agood life, maybe. A shadow of what it could have been, perhaps, but still worthy, still his. It was what his father had wanted, after all. What his father had asked of him on his deathbed.Live your life for you, Tom. Don’t ever live it for anyone else.
Tom was so lost in thought that, as he turned into the gates of his mother’s house, he nearly smashed into a car flying fast in the other direction. He slammed on his brakes, turning to swear and glare at the offending vehicle. But it was already sweeping down the drive and into the trees, and Tom exhaled tightly, shaking his head.
“Learn to drive,” he growled, turning back to the wheel.
He needed to speak to his mother. Uneasily, Tom recalled their conversation from the previous day, when Marnie had asked about Ari, then stormed out when he’d casually mentioned knowing about Ari’s baby.She thought the baby was mine,Tom realised.She thought it was mine, and that I abandoned her.
That thought made Tom’s stomach turn, because if there was one thing he swore he’d never do, it was to abandon his own child. He’d heard Ari’s stories of her own miserable parents. Tom might have done some shitty things in his day, but notthat. When he became a father, it would be for keeps.
Once again, Tom’s mind dragged forth the image of the baby in Ari’s husband’s arms. She’d been a sweet little thing, and for a moment Tom’s heart leapt in his chest at the thought of having fathered her, ofbeinga father to her. What must that be like? What would it be like to come home to a house where Ari was his wife and their child snuggled into his shoulder, her baby arms around his neck and her pink rabbit in her hands?
It was a useless dream though. She was another man’s child, and her mother was another man’s wife. Tom had to accept it.
Taking a deep breath, Tom stared at the wheel of the car, still tightly gripped in his hands. He would speak with Marnie andclear the air with her. Tell her the truth — that yes, Ari had had a baby, but no, it wasn’t his. And as for the girl on the side of the road earlier... Tom shook his head at his own stupidity. How many children had brown eyes? Millions upon millions of them. That this little girl had eyes like his own didn’t mean anything, not when seventy percent of the world shared them too. It was still that damned lingering strand of hope within him. Tom scowled. He’d had Ari on his mind, and when he’d met that little girl he’d put two and two together and made six. So what if she’d quoted Wilde? Big deal. Every British child did that, right? And even if they didn’t, there was no way that he’d fathered a child with Ari. It was impossible.
He was just a perpetual fool, Tom realised. A perpetual fool who needed some calm and quiet after the stresses of the last twenty-four hours. Thank God, at least here at his mother’s house he could — well, not quiterest, that wasn’t the word. He could never really rest here. Still, it was quieter than the city, and given that Sasha would be busy with her dress designer and the wedding planners, he would have lots of time to sit and switch off his fevered mind. His mother’s house was so out of the way, so lost in the countryside, so peaceful and—
A loud noise to his left interrupted Tom’s thoughts, and he looked up, blinking in confusion at the sight before him. A large yellow excavator was slowly passing him, beeps sounding, a man in a hard hat carefully edging towards the house.
Tom stared at it, then stared some more.An excavator?he thought, rubbing his eyes.What the fuck is an excavator doing here?
He stepped out of the rental car, looking around and doing another double take. Because his mother’s house, normally so pristine and out of the way and peaceful, was absolutelyheaving. There must have been a dozen cars and at least twenty people, most of them men, most of them wearing yellow jacketsand carrying ladders, buckets of paint or pouring over design plans. They all looked busy and purposeful, and Tom dazedly approached the nearest person, gesturing around him.
“What’s going on?” he asked, just as a drill sounded in the distance, the noise cutting into the air and drowning out Tom’s words.
“What?” the worker shouted back, and Tom stepped closer, raising his own voice.
“What’s going on? With all this?” he shouted, and the worker nodded.
“Oh, we’re building the playground,” he yelled, and Tom stared at him.
Playground?
Mercifully, the drilling abruptly stopped, and Tom took a deep breath. “Sorry,” he offered a tired smile, “for a minute there I thought you said you were building a playground.”
“That is what I said,” the worker replied cheerfully. “It’s a rush job though. Are you one of the designers?”
“Designers?”
“For the playground.”
Tom’s face must have remained blank, because the helmeted man suddenly smiled. “Oh, sorry, you must be one of the decorators. Well, your lot are all inside, working on the bedroom.”
“Bedroom? What bedroom?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a decorator. I’m building a playground today. Although playground doesn’t feel like the right word, given that the owner wants a small-scale stone castle in the middle.”
A small-scale stone castle?Tom swallowed hard.Why the fuck is Mom building a playground?
Shaking his head, he walked away from the worker, picking his way through equipment scattered over the gravel drive. Heheaded to the entry of the house, walking in and by habit wiping his feet on the mat by the door.
“Mom!” he shouted. “Mom! Where are you? I need to speak with you! Mom! I’m home, I’m here, and I’m—”
A sudden flash of light snapped in front of Tom’s face, and he blinked at the onslaught, clutching his head in his hands.
