Page 58 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Anna can’t say it’s like the good old days to have Gary come to the kids’ sport with her on a Saturday because he didn’t used to attend sport. Or concerts. Or assemblies. Or anything apart from his office.

Not that she is going to hang on to that any more.

Going over and over all the times she was upset about him working late has made her realise she wasted energy then and she’s wasting energy now.

Not that she’s judging herself for it – that would be a waste too – but she will no longer indulge herself in it.

Because it was an indulgence – it was oh-so-comforting to sit at home on the couch and think about how hard done by she was.

How awful and mean Gary was for working late again.

Except she had no proof he was awful and mean. She had no proof of anything other than that he was working late. Everything else amounted to a heap of her feelings and they didn’t prove anything at all.

So when he offered to pick them all up and take them to the pool for swimming training, she accepted.

He’s sitting with her now on a bench at the pool while Troy does laps and Renee splashes around in the shallow end, amusing herself.

‘I can do this each Saturday,’ he says, and as she turns to look at him she catches a quick smile. ‘If you’d like me to,’ he adds.

The hair-trigger part of her wants to come back with, If you don’t have something better to do .

But she knows where that comes from now: fear and resentment.

Her mother always had something better to do because her father needed constant tending.

For most of Anna’s life, those closest to her have always had better things to do than be with her. Gary was the same – or so she thought.

There’s a way for them to move forward. It starts with her feeling strong enough to stand up for what she wants.

Showing him, showing the world and most of all showing herself that she can ask for things.

For time. That she is worthy of being given it.

She may wish that someone else can do that work for her, but no one can.

‘I would,’ she tells Gary, fully turning toward him and smiling. ‘I would love you to.’

He looks caught unawares. ‘You would?’

‘Mm-hm.’

Her eyes are on the pool again as she works out what she wants to say next. They have time – the kids will swim heats, and they each do three strokes, so they’ll be in the water so long they’ll look like Shar Peis when they finally emerge.

Yet they also don’t have time. She knows, excruciatingly well, from what happened to her father, that the time she thinks she has – that anyone thinks they have – can be gone in a second.

There is nothing to say that she could ponder her future with Gary for the next few weeks or months or years, then decide she’s ready to do something about it only to discover that their time is up, for whatever reason.

That it was up years or months or days before.

Her father, the way she remembers him, before he became his shadow-self, seems a moment in time away – she could reach across to pull back some veil and he’d be there. But he has been gone for so long she’s not sure if the veil is still there or if it ever was.

Gary, the way he was when they married, is there too – she can reach across and pull back that veil and he’ll be there, because he’s still here, sitting beside her. She has another chance. They both do.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, and she feels, in that moment, as if the earth clinks into place.

His face is a portrait of confusion. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean …’ She closes her eyes briefly because she feels this thing in her chest – warmth, expansion, and also wholeness and rightness and promise and hope – and she wants to truly experience it. ‘I mean that I’m sorry for what I did. For throwing you out.’

His head is tilted to one side, then he looks down and frowns. ‘You don’t need to apologise to me,’ he says softly. ‘I’m the one who needs to apologise. I didn’t take care of you.’

‘But you did,’ she says. ‘In the way you thought was right.’

That warmth from her chest is in her whole body now, almost as if she is radiating light and heat from her pores. To him. This is the power her mother was talking about. Damn that Ingrid, she’s always right.

Anna smiles. ‘I just want to let it all go,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to hold on to that.’

‘Do you mean … ?’

Troy shouts from the pool, waving up at them. They wave back.

‘I mean I can sit at home for the rest of my life thinking you did something wrong,’ Anna says. ‘Or I can realise that we were both trying to do things right. In our own way.’

Gary takes her hand. She lets him.

‘I’ve only ever wanted to do right by you,’ he says.

‘We can’t just go back to how things were.’

‘I know,’ he says quickly.

‘We need to talk more.’

‘I know.’

Then she decides to say what’s been on her mind these past few days. ‘It would be easier to do that if you were at home.’

Their eyes meet and she realises she’s nervous about how he’s going to respond.

‘I can move back tonight,’ he says, hope in his voice.

She laughs. ‘Let’s just have dinner first. All of us.’ She squeezes his hand. ‘It’s not that I don’t want you back soon,’ she says. ‘But I think we need to explain it to the kids first.’

‘Agreed.’

His smile is shy, and she can feel that hers is too.

They sit holding hands, like they used to do when they first started going out, and cheer their children through freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly and splashing until Renee and Troy get out of the pool, skinny and dripping, and Anna and Gary wrap them in towels and take them home.