A stillness settled over us after Judy had gone.
‘Well, that was nice, as usual,’ I muttered.
‘Oh, you know what she’s like.’ Nate adjusted his wire-framed specs. At forty-three, with wavy caramel hair and intensely brown eyes, my husband still manages to fall into the ‘cute’ category. Due to his height and long, long legs – he’s six-foot-four – there’s something endearingly gangly about him. If he were in a film, he’d be the kindly teacher who helps a colleague carry her unruly heap of books and box files – and bingo, they’d fall in love.
While he started to make dinner, I went to investigate the bathroom, which I meant to tackle the previous night. As expected, it had still been strewn with socks, pants and several T-shirts belonging to Nate and Flynn. Both of them are phenomenally untidy. Nate’s music magazines were piled messily on the bathroom scales, and the washbasin was daubed with toothpaste and shaving gel. Of course, none of that needed to be dealt with there and then. What I should have been doing was hanging out with Nate, chopping parsley and chatting companionably, instead of moving on to hoover our bedroom and prickling over a massage I’d never had.
‘Ready, love!’ he called from the kitchen.
I trotted downstairs to see he’d poured our wine and set out our bowls of pasta very prettily, with salad in a glass bowl and a fresh loaf. Although I have always done the lion’s share of the cooking, Nate had started to make dinner on Rachel days. It was as if he was trying to make things right.
‘This looks great,’ I said, at which he muttered something I didn’t catch. We started to eat in silence. I heard the front door fly open; Flynn was home. I jumped up and bounded over to hug him as if he’d just traversed the Himalayas, rather than sat in the Odeon for two hours.
‘Hey, Mum.’ He laughed and bobbed down to greet Scout and our visiting hound. ‘Hi, Bella-baby. You always smell so good! No anchovy breath on you. Not like our stinky old Scout. You look blow-dried as well. Does Gran blow-dry you?’ Flynn adores animals and nagged for a dog until we finally gave in. Scout is our second, acquired to help us over the heartache when Larry, our beloved lurcher, died last year.
‘So, how was it?’ I asked eagerly.
Flynn’s lazy grin stretched across his face as he straightened up. He has inherited his dad’s features: the full, wide mouth and dark-chocolate eyes, plus the light brown hair with a defiant wave. ‘I was only at the cinema, Mum. Not sitting an exam.’
‘No, I know that. What was the film again?’
He mumbled the name of an action thriller I’d never heard of. Nate and I haven’t been to the cinema since something like 1926.
‘Was it good?’ I enquired.
‘Uh, yeah?’ He shrugged.
‘What was it about?’
He peered at me as I sat back down at the table. ‘You don’t want to know the whole plot, do you?’
I laughed. ‘No, of course not … so, have you eaten?’
‘Yeah, we got pizza …’
‘School okay today?’ Nate asked stiffly.
Flynn threw him a baffled look. ‘Have my real mum and dad been abducted?’
‘What d’you mean?’ Nate frowned.
‘The two of you, grilling me like you’re distant relatives instead of my parents. Shall we sit down and talk about what I’d like to be when I grow up?’
Nate and I laughed uncomfortably, and Flynn sniggered and escaped to his room, away from his weird, quizzing parents.
I tried to tuck into the pasta I’d barely touched. ‘You’re not upset about Mum, are you?’ Nate ventured.
‘No, it’s fine,’ I said quickly, gaze fixed on my bowl.
‘You know what she’s like. So bloody sanctimonious. God forbid anyone should enjoy themselves—’
‘It’s fine, Nate.’ I looked up. Tension flickered in his eyes.
‘You don’t mind having Bella to stay, do you?’
‘Of course not,’ I exclaimed. ‘Why would I?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ he replied. ‘I just wish I knew what you and Rachel talked about, that’s all—’
‘It’s not about a well-behaved collie coming to stay!’ I blurted out.
‘What is it, then? Why can’t you just tell me what’s wrong?’
Pink patches had sprung up on his cheeks. What did he think was wrong? He knew about my visit to the GP, and the antidepressants – although he hadn’t taken the trouble to talk to me then, to try and find out why I was so down, so close to tears much of the time. Depression: a taboo word, as far as Nate’s concerned. Brush it under the carpet, that’s his stock response to anything remotely uncomfortable. Three-point turns, emergency stops: he’s fine with that kind of stuff. But emotions are messy and scary and he prefers not to have to deal with them. It was clearly bothering him that I’d been sharing my own feelings with someone else. It happened every week, this post-Rachel probing.
He still wouldn’t let it drop, even as we cleared up after dinner. ‘How long d’you think you’ll carry on with this?’ he asked, washing up with unnecessary vigour.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I mean, there’s no grand plan—’
‘And you won’t share any of it with me? The stuff you discuss with this stranger, I mean?’
‘Well, it’s kind of private.’ I was doing my best to remain calm.
‘So private you can’t even tell me?’
‘Nate, the whole point is that it’s not you …’
‘Whoah, great, thanks a lot!’
I stared at him, almost laughing in disbelief. ‘If it was you I needed to talk to I’d just, well – talk to you …’
‘At least that’d be free,’ he thundered. ‘You wouldn’t have to drive over Solworth either—’
‘Oh, right, so I’d save the petrol money as well!’
‘Yes, you would. Have you checked our bank balance lately?’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake …’ I stared at the man I’d once loved to distraction, and who was now glaring at me, his face mottled red, his T-shirt splashed with dishwater. ‘You begrudge me the four pounds fifty or whatever it costs to get there and back?’
‘Of course I don’t—’
‘What’s wrong with you two tonight?’ We both swung around to see Flynn standing in the doorway.
‘Sorry, son,’ Nate blustered, looking away.
Flynn snorted. ‘What were you shouting about?’
‘We weren’t shouting, honey,’ I said quickly.
He blinked at us. ‘Yes, you were. And what’s four pounds fifty?’
‘Nothing,’ I exclaimed, looking at Nate for confirmation.
‘Nothing’s four pounds fifty,’ he said with an exaggerated shrug, while our son exhaled loudly and strode away, as if concluding that his parents really had lost it this time.
Nate and I fell into a sullen silence, and only much later, when we were watching TV, did he attempt to make conversation with me.
‘I meant to tell you, I got her again today,’