“She’s not. The son, on the other hand...”
“All right, all right, quit it,” Tom finally snapped. “I get it, I’m a fool. I shouldn’t have lied, shouldn’t have abandoned Ari in Germany and shouldn’t have assumed Reine wasn’t mine when I saw her.”
“Ah yes,that.” Sebastian turned back to Tom casually. “You came to Ari’s flat in London, saw Reine, and didn’t immediately put two and two together?”
“He did, but made five instead of four,” Marnie chimed in. “He thought Reine was your husband’s child.”
“Luis,” Sebastian spluttered. “You thought Reine was Luis’s? Jesus, Somerset, did you even look at Reine? Any fool can see that she’s yours.”
“I just . . . she was so little and Ari and I . . . the timings . . .”
“The timings? You had unprotected sex with her and then the next time you pop by her London flat there’s a new small girl about the place and you didn’t stop to think about it? What, did you suddenly start believing Ari was some kind of... I don’t know, self-fertilising starfish?”
Tom shook his head in exasperation. “I know Ari isn’t a fucking starfish!”
“Besides, starfish aren’t self-fertilising,” Marnie put forward. “They’re broadcast spawners.”
Tom’s mouth dropped open as he turned to his mother. “How do you even know that?”
“I told you, didn’t I?” Marnie replied blithely. “I read the internet. There was this blog by this man who was an assistant to a marine biologist out in... oh, somewhere in the Pacific. It was very entertaining. I was quite addicted at the time.”
“Oh, I should read that,” Sebastian’s interest was piqued. “Do send me the link. As for you,” he turned back to Tom,“you’re not just a fool, you’re a fucking idiot. If you’d stayed for thirty seconds and spoken to Luis, you’d have realised in an instant he wasn’t Reine’s father.”
Tom dropped back into his chair, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “He just... he was so handsome... so easy-going with Reine... and she had this stuffed rabbit. This pink stuffed rabbit.” Tom closed his eyes as a painful memory struck him. “Every time it wobbled in her little hands, your husband just... fixed it for her. Without even watching what she was doing. It was like he just knew. That’s why I walked away. Because of a fucking pink rabbit.”
Behind him, Tom heard Sebastian give a sigh. “The pink rabbit? Luis gave it to her when she was born. Honestly, Somerset, if you’d just spoken to him... I love him, but he has no boundaries, my Luis. I’d call him an open book but that would be wrong, because in his world there isnobook. Instead, there’s just pages and pages of text, which he’ll tell you about without being asked or invited. If you’d just said to him, ‘cute kid’ he’d have straightaway replied with something like ‘oh thanks, she is cute, she’s my sister’s and hey what a great accent you have, why, you must be an American. Speaking of Americans, do you know a guy named Tom Miller by the way because we’re searching for him?’ and then you’d have known.”
Tom felt something constrict tightly inside his chest. There was a sheen of sweat developing on his skin, and he felt sick, nausea building within him. All of a sudden, the world felt like too much. The room felt like too much and the two people beside him — his mother and this man to whom he was now forever linked because of a small girl — felt like too much. Tom stood, running his hand through his hair.
“I have to get out of here,” he muttered, lurching towards the door.
“No Tom,” his mother snapped, “you promised Sasha you’d be there for dinner!”
“You also promised Ari you’d be there for life!” Sebastian called after him.
But Tom didn’t care. He fled through the open doors, tearing away from the house, tears stinging his eyes.
He needed to get away. From them all.
* * *
There’s no reproach from Doug when Tom walks through the door and back into his life. Doug simply seems glad to see him, reaching for Tom’s hand over the cotton blankets and squeezing it once.
“Hey,” Tom says, and it strikes him painfully that it’s such a simple word to use in the circumstances. Just three letters long and spoken in one short exhalation of breath. He’s been gone for years, absent and silent and angry and lost, and now he’s back with just one word to offer in greeting. It doesn’t feel like enough.
But Doug gives him that same lopsided smile as always.
“Hey, Tom,” he mutters, his voice raspier than Tom last remembers it. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
Guilt builds in Tom’s stomach. “I know I’ve been gone a while,” he says softly.
Doug shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here now. That’s what counts. And you’re a good kid.”
Tom winces. “I don’t know about that.” He can’t help it. He thinks of Ari, and of the look on her face when he said goodbye to her.
“You are a good kid,” Doug persists, before giving him a grin. “So good that I know you’ll go and get my whisky from the cabinet downstairs and bring it up to me.”
“Mom won’t?” Tom asks wryly, sinking into the chair next to his father’s sick bed.
