Page 38 of The Rest is History

Charlie

B aby Aurelia won’t stop staring at Elodie. Jack’s carrying her facing out, his palm a seat for her nappy-clad bum. Her huge blue eyes dance over Elodie’s face. She’s totally transfixed. Not that I blame her. She reaches out two gorgeous, chubby little hands in Elodie’s direction.

‘Da. Da.’ She arches forward, wriggling in my brother’s arms.

I glance at Elodie to see that the feeling is mutual. She’s staring at Aurelia with utter adoration.

‘May I?’ she asks my brother. I take her wine glass off her, and she holds out her arms to take my niece.

‘Be my guest.’ He transfers his bundle of joy, and Elodie gazes down at her, an enormous smile on her face.

‘Hi there!’ She brushes the back of a finger across Aurelia’s face and bounces her. ‘Hi! Aren’t you so gorgeous?’

My niece rewards her with a face-splitting smile. ‘Da.’ She touches Elodie’s face wonderingly.

‘How old are you?’ Elodie asks her.

‘Da.’

‘She turned one last month,’ my brother supplies. ‘Emmy may or may not have gone totally over the top. We even had alpacas in the garden, I’m sorry to say.’

‘Alpacas aren’t OTT in the slightest,’ Emmy says, waving a hand dismissively, and Jack sniggers.

Elodie gasps theatrically and lets Aurelia grab her finger. ‘Did you? Alpacas? Aren’t you a lucky girl? I bet you had so much fun!’

‘Mmph.’ My niece blows some spit bubbles, and Elodie laughs.

‘Oh, isn’t that delightful?’ She turns to me, her face rapt. ‘Isn’t she the cutest baby ever?’

I look down at her. She’s bouncing my niece in her arms like a pro. I suppose she got some good practice in when Olive was a baby. She’s totally absorbed. Utterly smitten. Her eyes are shining. It’s painfully clear how much pure joy merely cuddling Aurelia is bringing her.

And I feel sick to my stomach.

I swallow and wrap an arm around her, pressing a kiss to her temple and closing my eyes for a second so I can drink in her scent without distraction. My niece is cooing happily and experimenting with her limited repertoire of noises.

‘Cutest baby on the planet,’ I tell her.

My gaze flicks away from the madonna and child next to me to the others.

Em and Stace are cooing over Elodie and Aurelia.

But my brother is watching me, and I see in his eyes that he knows exactly what’s going through my mind.

I see my own pain reflected there. He swallows hard, holding eye contact, before raising his eyebrows in a question.

Have you told her?

I give him the briefest, tightest shake of my head.

There are kids everywhere, any adult who isn’t driving is a few glasses of rosé down, and the mood is perfect for a warm Sunday evening, but I’m struggling to achieve the necessary levity.

On the surface, everything is perfect. My family is swarming around my girlfriend like moths to a flame. She’s been a huge hit. Obviously.

And yet, the unrest that’s sat deep within me since I started messing around with her is coiling into something more sinister. More potent. Something that refuses to be ignored.

I knew this was coming, for fuck’s sake.

I’ve known it since the second I saw her. It’s the singular reason I put my walls up. Stayed away from her for so long. And nothing has changed, but in a haze of love and carnal insanity, I’ve been ignoring it. It was never going away, and now I have to deal with it.

I’ve always said it. Elodie Peach is not the type of woman you do casual with. She’s a woman upon whose mercy you throw yourself as you wrestle a ring onto her finger—preferably one a size too small, so she can’t take it off. She’s the woman who would make me happy for the rest of my life.

But not at her own expense.

I could never do that to her. Will never do that to her. And seeing her here, surrounded by my family, slams that right home to me, in such a brutal way that even my thick skull can’t fail to compute it.

I want Elodie to have everything her heart desires. She’s such a good, true person. She deserves the world.

It’s clear from watching her today that she’ll make an amazing mother. That she’ll want to have children of her own.

And while I would lay down my life for her, the one thing I cannot do is give her children.

The tests six years ago irrefutably robbed me of any hope on that front.

I sit and jiggle my three-year-old nephew Bertie on my knee as the others chat around me.

The plates piled in the middle of the table are empty, and our stomachs are full.

Bizarrely, even though Bertie’s the only one of Jack’s kids who’s not my flesh and blood, it’s he who holds the most special place in my heart.

I suppose I was younger when Jack and Stace were popping out kids left, right, and centre. Younger and more gung ho.

As they bred, I looked on with amusement and affection and that entitled assumption that Adeline and I could do the same when we felt ready. Like Jack and Stace, we’d been together since uni, and the future felt long and pregnant with potential.

Bertie, on the other hand, arrived three years after our divorce.

I’ll be honest. My brother’s attitude to Emmy’s pregnancy was difficult for me to handle.

They had a whirlwind romance before he found out she was already pregnant with another guy’s baby, and he hit the fucking roof.

It took him a while to get his shit together and work out that you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth—and by gift horse, I mean a stunning woman who loves you, and her unborn child.

My brother had kids coming out of his ears, and my choice back then was simple. Resent him for it, and let that resentment eat away at me, or see my nieces and nephews for what they were: a gift. A chance to have children in my life, even if not on the terms I would have hoped for.

So I doubled down with Bertie. Made a real effort, for myself and for the kid. Showed him and his mum that he was a real part of our family, even if he wasn’t my brother’s flesh. And I’m thrilled I did, because he’s one of the coolest little guys I’ve had the privilege to meet.

He looks up at me now, his massive brown eyes the main giveaway that he’s not a Fisher by blood.

His dad’s Italian—a massive twat who got himself fired from the City for sexual misconduct and harassment at the same time that he was banging his secretary (Emmy).

Thankfully, nature seems to be overpowering nurture where Bertie’s concerned because he’s the gentlest little man with an old soul.

And my brother’s besotted with him. He was a lockdown baby, so he got a tonne of time at home with both parents before the world started to return to normal.

‘Ice keem?’ he asks me, batting his thick black eyelashes. ‘Ice keem, Charlie?’

‘Honey, we’ll have ice cream later,’ Emmy tells him. ‘We’re just waiting for everyone’s tummies to settle after supper.’

He gives her a what a crock of shit look. ‘Want ice keem.’

I tickle him on his tummy, which is pretty distended under his tiny pale blue polo.

‘No room for ice cream in there, buddy.’

I note the Ralph Lauren Polo logo and grin inwardly. Stace definitely bought that for him. It’s not Emmy’s style at all. She’s way too boho to put high-end labels on grimy kids.

I admire the way my brother, sister-in-law and ex-sister-in-law run their crazy family.

Stace is happy to take the younger two off Jack and Em’s hands on a regular basis, despite having no blood ties to them.

And Stace's two stepsons with Ariel are often here. No one’s territorial.

All the kids are made to feel equally welcome in everyone’s homes.

It’s all one massive, crazy, loving mess.

Bertie looks at me in outrage. ‘Dere’s room!’ You fucking traitor, his tone says.

‘Talk me through this new car,’ I say, picking up his toy and driving it up over his belly. ‘I bet you don’t know what kind of car this is.’

‘Do so,’ he says. ‘Lamborghini.’

I laugh. Maybe he does have some Italian blood flowing through those veins, after all.

Beside us, Aurelia makes a grab for the car. ‘Da. Da.’ She stretches out her tiny fingers from the safety of Elodie’s lap. Yep, she’s back there again. These two can’t get enough of each other.

For a moment, I allow myself the most fucked-up fantasy.

I’m sitting with my beautiful wife, and we’ve been blessed with two angelic children. We’ve each got one on our lap, and life is perfect.

Except that it can never happen. I’ve made sure to manifest the majority of the sexual fantasies I’ve had about Elodie over the past few weeks, but this fantasy is dangerous.

Because it hurts too fucking much.

Bertie hugs the car to his chest, and I know there’s no point in trying to persuade him to share with his sister. I pick up my napkin and cover my face with it.

‘Aurelia. Peekaboo.’ I pull the napkin down and she shrieks in delight and claps her hands.

‘Da! Da!’

I do it again. More shrieks. More claps. Not sure what I’ve started here, but her reaction is like crack. I’ll do it as many times as she wants me to.

As I pull the napkin off my face for the fourth or fifth time, I catch sight of my girlfriend’s expression. I swear there are hearts pumping out of her eyes. She’s staring at me like she wants to jump me right now.

Next to her, Grace leans forward.

‘Oh boy, Charlie. Careful there. You’re making my sister seriously broody.’

‘Grace!’ Elodie says in mock horror. ‘Stop it! You’ll make him run for the hills.’ She turns to me and smiles a smile that tells me she’s not really scared at all. Because she knows how fucking infatuated I am.

My smile is pained. Empty. And I hope she and Grace don’t notice the sudden awkward silence around the table.

I have to do it.

I have to fucking end it.

I’m like a condemned man. Each moment with her feels like torture. Knowing we’re coming to an end means I can’t enjoy the parts where we’re together.

She comes home with me after the barbecue and I know I should speak to her, but I can’t. Because, in the worst timing of all time, she’s just met my whole family and the mutual appreciation society is well and truly established.

They are going to have my guts for this.

So instead of talking to her like I should, I take her to bed and I worship her body.

Running my nose and mouth down over her smooth skin.

Finding her centre and using my tongue to make her crazy.

Driving into her so deep it feels physically impossible.

Trying to make my mark. To leave something behind.

I’ll speak to her at school tomorrow. My strong, two-term track record tells me I’m far better at boxing off my feelings there than I am when I have her here, in my home. In my bed.

Because when she’s here, it’s too easy to believe that she’s right where she belongs.