Lex’s face crumpled. They started sobbing again, wailing in a way they hadn’t since they were a baby. ‘I love you, Mummy,’ they bawled into my shirt, as I hugged them tight. ‘I love you so much.’
‘Not as much as I love you,’ I said fiercely.
There was a flash of red in my periphery, the sunlight winking off Sadie’s hair as she stood frozen at the front gate. With a calmness I couldn’t believe I possessed, I gestured for her to sneak around the side. Those ten minutes I’d given Jonah must be nearly up, and the last thing the situation needed was a bunch of cops.
After Lex had cried themselves out and retired, exhausted, to their room, my brothers and Sadie and I had a conversation in hushed voices about what the situation actually did need. ‘I don’t want to disrupt things too badly, or make the girls think anything is wrong,’ I said, still in the grip of that eerie composure, ‘but I’d prefer they not stay here tonight, in case Matt comes back.’
‘We’ll take them,’ Jonah said immediately.
‘If they ask questions, we’ll tell them we need help with the puppy,’ Sadie said. ‘Lex can come too.’
‘I don’t think Lex is up to that level of stimulation. Not tonight.’ I turned to Elias. ‘Mum sent me a hotel gift voucher. Can you take them?’
He blinked. ‘But—’
‘Please don’t argue with me,’ I said. ‘There’s something I need to do.’
Matt and Laura’s AirBnB was two streets away. He was sitting at a table on the verandah, an open two-litre cask of wine withFruity Whiteemblazoned on the side and two glasses in front of him. ‘Do you want one?’ he asked me, gesturing at it as I walked up the path. ‘I know it’s not up to your usual standards, but I thought, when you texted…’
‘No. I’m not staying.’
‘But we have to talk.’ He used his foot to nudge one of the chairs closer to me. ‘We have to fix things with Lex.’
‘Youhave to fix things with Lex. I’m not the problem.’
‘Come on, don’t be like that. We—’
‘Don’t get me wrong, we’ll talk about it. You, me, their therapist. We’re going to have a long discussion. But not tonight. That’s not what I came here for.’
I wrapped my hands around the top of the chair. ‘I have a question for you. And I need you to answer me honestly.’
Matt sighed. ‘Okay,’ he said, pouring himself a glass well over the standard size. ‘Hit me.’
‘Am I even a person to you?’
‘Fi—’
‘You don’t have to spare my feelings. I don’t think you could really hurt them anyway. The truth, Matt. Do you even think of me as a person? Have you ever? Or have I always been just some big joke to you?’
My knuckles went white as I clenched my fingers tighter. ‘That’s how you treated me today. Like the things I say don’t matter. Like the agreement we made doesn’t matter. I told you no, but you turned up anyway, because my no was just a fucking joke to you.’
‘That’s not what I intended. We werehere.How could I be that close to the kids—’
‘And you’ve sure as hell turned me into a joke.’ I steamrolled right over him, the way he had tried to steamroll over me. ‘An absolute laughing-stock. The woman whose husband had a whole second family she didn’t have a clue about.’
‘I didn’t intend that either. I—’
‘Then you left us high and dry, like we werenothing. If it weren’t for my family, I don’t know what I would have done. Thirteen years of marriage – three kids – and boom: you just sayclean breakand disappear. Was our whole life all just a joke to you?’
‘Of course not.’
Matt stood up, his over-full glass of wine wobbling dangerously. ‘I loved you. And I love the kids. But…’ He nodded helplessly to the door. ‘There’s them. Micah. Nikki. Laura. And there came a point where I just couldn’t do it anymore.’
I folded my arms. ‘You were already with her when you met me. You were still with her when you married me. If you really did love me—’
‘I’mgreedy,Fiona!’
He ran his hand over his scalp. He’d cut his hair very short to cover the fact that he was balding, and his scalp was bright pink from sunburn. ‘I always have been,’ he said. ‘That night we met – I’d intended it just to be a one-night thing. But you were just so youngand gorgeous and vibrant, and I had to have you. And then before I knew it, I was proposing to you, and I was marrying you, and you told me you were pregnant, and I had every intention of spending the rest of my life with you. I loved you, I swear. Why do you think I haven’t been able to look you or the kids in the eye?’
