Page 25

Pete

Natalie stares at him for a moment, her eyes wide and red-rimmed, as Pete tries to piece together a response – something that won’t place all the blame on her, that will acknowledge what he’s done without firing up her temper again – but before he can speak, she presses a hand to her mouth and hurries back up the stairs.

Pete turns and walks down the stairs, freezing in horror as he rounds the corner into the hallway.

Vanessa is standing by the cloakroom door, her jacket over one shoulder.

Her face is pale and there are the faintest smudges of black mascara beneath her eyes.

She stops dead for a fraction of a second, before she puts her head down and moves to push past him, towards the front door, leaving the scent of alcohol on the air.

‘Vanessa!’ Pete hisses after her.

How much of that exchange with Natalie did she hear?

That’s his first thought before a surge of anger makes his blood warm, his pulse beating loudly in his ears.

‘Vanessa! Do you know what you’ve done?

What the hell did you say to her?

’

Vanessa pauses at the front door, her hand on the latch.

‘Just the truth, Pete.’ Before he can respond she is out of the door, leaving him alone in the hall, shaking with rage.

Everything is falling apart, just as he’d feared.

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Pete takes a deep breath.

There is still a house full of guests, his daughter – even though she’s not exactly a ray of sunshine today – is supposed to be celebrating her eighteenth birthday, and his wife is in no fit state to host, thanks to his actions.

Two more hours , he tells himself.

Just a couple of hours more and then I can kick people out without it looking weird, and then I can try and piece my life back together.

Wearily, Pete moves to the kitchen, forcing a smile at the guests who linger in the doorway, pushed inside by the dimming light outside and the unseasonable chill in the air as the sun drops ever lower in the sky.

‘Beer bucket is dry.’ Stu appears beside him, and Pete realises that could be another reason why people are hovering near the kitchen.

‘You OK, bud? Em seemed a bit upset earlier, but Mari had a word with her, and I think she’s OK now.

’

‘Oh, great. Yeah. Yeah, all good.’ He hands Stu a box of Budweiser, and as people begin to drift away Pete turns to the top cupboard – the one that is a jumble of old medicines and sun creams – and fumbles at the back.

A sigh of relief escapes him as his fingers snag the square corner of the box, and as he pulls it towards him he can almost taste it, can almost feel the nicotine rush as the fresh scent of tobacco rises from the Benson if he’s honest, he thinks he could probably forgive her anything.

He knew the moment she sent him crashing to the concrete with those bloody books in her hands that she was meant to be his, and by the time he’d dropped her back at her halls after their first date, he knew he was going to marry her.

He remembers coming back to the flat he shared with Stu and telling him that very thing, while Stu scoffed and laughed and offered him a hit on his bong.

It can’t be over. There has to be a way for me to salvage this, to make her realise that we’re meant to be together.

Pete stubs out his first cigarette, scratching it hard against the concrete fence post to make sure all the embers are out, before pulling another from the pack.

The day Natalie told him she was pregnant with Emily was the best day of his life.

He’d already been thinking that he wanted to propose to her, but was unsure of how she would respond.

They were in their final year, working on their dissertations, and Natalie had expressed an interest in travelling with a group of girlfriends afterwards.

Pete couldn’t stomach the thought of her not being there, of her travelling around Europe without him, even though he would never have stopped her if that’s what she wanted.

He would have waited for her.

But as it turned out, he didn’t need to wait for her.

She told him she was pregnant, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to propose after that.

If he remembers rightly, he thinks he cried a little bit when she said yes.

Has he really thrown all of that away for a woman he doesn’t even care about?

Pete doesn’t know what he was thinking, starting an affair with Vanessa.

It almost felt like an accident, even though he knows it wasn’t – that part of him enjoyed the attention, that there was a layer of nostalgia there, as if Vanessa represented a life before kids and marriage – but if he confesses that to Natalie, she’s liable to kill him.

At the thought of Vanessa, he feels a fresh surge of anger run through him, and he snaps the lighter, bringing the flame to the end of a fresh cigarette.

What the fuck was she thinking, telling Natalie like that?

If she thinks this will drive him into her arms, she’s got another think coming.

He doesn’t want to see her ever again – but he will, just to tell her what he thinks of her.

Pete will take great pleasure in telling her he never wants to lay eyes on her again, in telling her that if she contacts his family, he will kill her.

He only hopes that none of the other guests were privy to her big reveal; that none of them witnessed her rip Natalie’s world apart.

Especially Eve. She’ll be thrilled with this news.

Eve . Pete takes a deep drag on the cigarette and holds the smoke in his lungs, imagining it seeping into his bloodstream.

She’s another problem.

What was it Princess Diana said?

There are three of us in this marriage .

Something like that, anyway, and that’s exactly how Pete feels, even more so after his confrontation with her earlier.

How could Natalie confide in her before Pete, knowing as she does how Eve feels about him?

Pete knows Eve has spent years whispering in Natalie’s ear about how Pete isn’t good enough for her.

He thinks of what she said to him earlier, before she flounced out of the party.

You should pay more attention to what’s going on with your wife, instead of spending your evenings in that fancy gastropub in town with someone who isn’t your wife.

Does she know about Vanessa?

Or did she just see them that night of the leaving drinks?

His mouth is dry as he breathes out a long ribbon of smoke.

If Eve knows about the affair with Vanessa, it will be all the ammunition she needs to have Natalie packing his bags and throwing him out on the street.

Pete blinks, squinting as smoke curls around his head, suddenly seeing himself in a dingy one-bedroomed flat on the outskirts of Maidstone, pacing as he waits for Natalie to drop the girls off to spend the weekend with him.

He sees himself at the McDonald’s near the Lockmeadow cinema complex, Happy Meals on the table as Zadie picks listlessly at her food and Erin screams, theother parents – whole, happy families – casting him sympathetic glances, as they wonder what he must have done to become the weekend dad, the dad who doesn’t even know his kids any more.

And where would Natalie be?

Suddenly feeling sick, he stubs out this cigarette, too, even though it’s barely half-smoked.

Pete might be upset with Natalie for lying to him, but what he’s done is far, far worse, especially as he knew deep down that she wasn’t coping very well with things.

Instead of facing things head-on, he has to admit he has buried his head in the sand, too.

It’s been easier to slope off with Vanessa than to sit down with Natalie and ask what’s wrong, what can he do to help fix it.

He thinks of her face as she told him that maybe all of this was her fault.

Her eyes had been curiously blank, her voice thin and listless, croaky with tears.

Pete might have lied about a lot of things, but one thing he said to Vanessa is true.

Natalie isn’t well – hasn’t been well since Erin was born – and Pete was too afraid to do anything about it, choosing instead to hide away at work, or in Vanessa’s bed.

Now, his stomach churns and his hands shake, and his tongue feels fuzzy and thick with the taste of cigarettes.

He thinks of the way Natalie spends so much time slumped on the sofa, or lying blank-faced on the bed, of the disconnect she seems to feel between herself and Erin.

She hates me, Pete. His mother had suffered awful post-natal depression after the birth of his younger brother, although he didn’t realise it at the time – he’d only been five, after all – but she’d since described it to him as having a fierce black dog snapping at her heels.

She’d once confessed that the thought had crossed her mind that perhaps Pete and his brother would be better off without her.

Is that how Natalie feels?

He knows Natalie has been struggling – thinks now that maybe she is depressed – but surely, surely , she wouldn’t do anything to harm herself or the baby? Would she?