“I hope you haven’t read it… But…I mean. I can tell you my version. Mary can tell hers.”
“She’s dead.”
“The book isn’t. We still get royalty checks. I mean, the boys do. She left everything to them.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I loved Mary. I loved her my whole life. We met at uni, before she even got famous. She was a poor drama student. I was a first-year medical boy. We…”
He cleared his throat.
Please keep talking, Peter. Don’t stop. Tell me. Because I need to know.
“We had all our firsts together.” He still wasn’t looking at me. And his hands were shaking. I wanted to reach out and scoop him up. Hold him. Tell him, whatever it was he needed to say, I could deal. I had to.
I wasn’t someone who gave up.
“That’s nice.” Fuck me and my stupid mouth. But I had to say something?
“It was. Until it wasn’t. She had her first affair the year after. Slept with someone else and…”
“Peter,” I said sternly.
“It was so many years ago, but it…”
“Come,” I said, and then I moved. Slid around the worktop with an ease that even surprised me. Wrapped him up in my arms as his face burrowed into my shoulder. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I do,” he said sternly. “I really do. Because everything here, it’s just an illusion. I tried to make everything perfect for the boys. I wanted them to feel like this had…you know? Nobody wants to know the truth. Nobody wants to remember that their parents couldn’t keep each other happy and that we hurt each other and slept with other people and… And…”
“Peter.”
“I wanted to leave. I really did.”
“That’s okay,” I said softly.
“No.” He shook his head and leant back. Held me at arm’s length. “We never lied to each other. She always told me everything she felt. What she wanted. Needed. I couldn’t always give her that. And it wasn’t done with malice, never ever think that. She loved me.”
“You loved her.”
“Yes.”
“Love isn’t always a bed of roses. I mean…my mother…she loved. She fell in love with men who were… She always thought she could change them. That if she could only get them over her threshold and build them a home and get married and then?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“I know,” I said. “I know.”
There had been times when I thought Peter had been weak. When I felt I’d needed to look after him. I had been wrong. So very, very wrong. Because the man who stood there was solid. His head moving from side to side like he was trying to negate everything he’d ever known.
“Mary slept with almost every actor she shared a leading role with. She did mostly romantic comedies. Drama.”
“The murder on Park Lane,” I filled in.
“She slept with Theodore Parks.”
“I thought he was gay.”
“So did she. Turns out he wasn’t. Then they didSpring Follythe next year, and she lived with him in New York. The whole time. The boys were six.”
