Ruth pulled a tissue from her sleeve. ‘Well, aren’t you? You’re never around. You barely speak. You’re not…’
‘Not what?’
‘Not interested in me.’ Ruth unfolded the tissue and dabbed inside her glasses where tears were streaming now.
Mark was smiling, indulgently but soft too. ‘Not interested?Not interested?I’ve cut my fingers to shreds turning over all that coral, hunting for the ring I gave you that day at the registry office because I promised then it was a sign of my bond to you, and there was you walking around without my ring on your finger. Well, it just doesn’t make sense. Like me without you. Us without the boys. We’re a family. We’re joined forever, all four of us.’
Ruth let her tears fall and, seeing her, Mark followed too.
‘Coming here has been the best thing we’ve ever done, apart from getting married in the first place and having our boys,’ he told her, trying to keep his voice steady.
‘But you’re… so sick of me,’ Ruth replied, somehow sadder than she’d ever felt.
Mark rubbed her hand, falling silent again. This was familiar territory. Him nervous and unspeaking; her upset about something or other. Ruth ran with it.
‘We don’t talk. I’m not sure we ever did much, but, now, I’m lucky if I get a “Good Morning” from you. And you work all the time, or you play golf, or you’re asleep on the sofa. What kind of marriage is that? What kind of life is it?’
Mark swallowed but said nothing.
‘I thought if we came here for a good long holiday it would be the start of a new chapter. We’d get back to being us again.’
Mark spoke up at this, adamant. ‘We have, haven’t we?’
‘I thought we’d started to, but then you retreated again. You disappeared into yourself again. You were working all night last night on some paperwork or other. We’ll go home and nothing will have changed. You’ll get just as absorbed in work there too, just like you always do.’
‘Of course things won’t be the same,’ he said, and Ruth froze this time, staring at him. ‘How can it be the same as it was? When we’re both so sad about our Stuart moving away.’ At this, Mark’s face contorted so horribly with grief, Ruth’s heart cracked to see it. He sobbed. ‘I miss him. I miss him every day. I go into his room and he’s not there and I sit there on his bed and I… I miss him.’
Ruth’s shoulders shook from crying.
Mark wouldn’t be stopped now. ‘All those years, Ruthie, all those years worrying for him, celebrating every little victory and milestone, rooting for him, wanting the best for him, and fighting for every little accommodation for him at school and every doctor’s diagnosis, and listening to the opinions of all those bloody psychologists and physicians and clinicians and teachers and not one of them knew what was better for him than you or I did. And all the laughter and the silly times, all the things he loved doing. I want to do them all over again. I said I’d never want to see that bloody DVD about the steam trains one more time, but I’d give anything to have him here now to watch it with him.’
Ruth gripped his hand and hung her head.
Mark had found his voice and was going to use it. ‘I miss him, and I think you miss him even more than me, if that’s possible. And I know you feel guilty too, because God knows I do, but he loves having his own place, and his own friends, and he’s learning things and doing things we couldn’t give him at home.’
‘I know. I know.’ Ruth blew her nose. ‘He made the right decision.’
‘He did, and we must respect that and let him live his life. And we must live ours. That part of our life where we were raising children is over. Our boys are grown and living independently. That’s all we ever wanted. That was our biggest dream and it came true.’
Ruth breathed deeply, nodding, her face blotched with crying.
‘I’m sorry I never said all this before,’ he told her. ‘I was trying to be strong for you. I was trying to be the man.’
‘I thought I’d lost you just when I needed you the most,’ Ruth said shakily. ‘I thought you were going to leave too.’
‘Leave? I’ve only just found you again.’
They looked at one another through their tears.
‘Come here.’ Mark shifted until they were side by side and he pulled her close. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so… far away. I’ll do better. I’llbebetter.’
‘I don’t want much. I just want you to see me, and talk with me. I want you to be interested in me, and interested in yourself.’
Mark exhaled, his shoulders sinking. ‘All I’m interested in right now is putting that ring back on your finger. That’s what I wanted to tell you. When I was out on the coral beach in the pissing rain all I could think about was how we never really had a proper wedding. The registry office and our boys with us on that honeymoon at Grange-over-Sands was all very well, but it’s not much of a honeymoon, sharing a put-up bed in a guest house with your twin boys, is it?’
Ruth laughed and sniffed into his jacket collar. ‘Not really.’
‘Let’s do it properly. Let’s really go to town. Anything you want. A wedding cake, a horse and carriage, Bermuda or Barbados, anything. Just put that ring back on and remember I gave it to you for a reason.’
