‘Youlivedwith Will Sargent?’ Brian asked accusingly. ‘You never told me that.’
‘What? Oh no!’ Kate gasped, realising he’d misunderstood. ‘I didn’t live with him – I mean, not inthatway. He stayed with my family for a year. It was a long time ago,’ she added. Will had impinged on her consciousness quite enough for one weekend. She didn’t want to think about him any more.
But Brian wasn’t going to let it go. ‘How did that come about?’
‘His parents had split up and he was living here with his mother but she committed suicide. His father brought him to England and packed him off to boarding school. He absolutely hated it, so one day he ran away and came to our house.’
‘Oh, you’re not telling it right,’ Freddie said crossly. ‘He walked all the way from some godforsaken hole in the north of England,’ he told Brian, ‘turned up at the O’Neills in the middle of a storm and practically collapsed on their doorstep. It’s a wonderful story, isn’t it?’ he said wistfully. ‘SoDavid Copperfield.’
‘It must have been really traumatic for him,’ Brian said. ‘He should come to my abandoned-children group. He might find it helpful.’
‘Will is thirty-two,’ Kate said drily.
‘It’s not for children, as you well know,’ Brian said patiently.
‘Anyway, he’s English,’ Kate said, with an air of finality.
‘What’s that supposed to mean? English people have feelings.’
‘He has that kind of English reserve. Sitting around moaning about his childhood with a bunch of strangers wouldn’t be his scene.’
‘It’s not about “sitting around moaning about your childhood”,’ Brian said huffily.
‘Well, whatever it is – drumming your pain or dancing the abandoned child within – I don’t think it’s him. Besides, it was a long time ago. He’s got over it.’
Brian looked at her pityingly. ‘You don’t “get over” being abandoned by your parents just like that,’ he said, clicking his fingers. ‘Feelings of abandonment run very deep, Kate. I have people in my group well into their fifties who are still dealing with abandonment issues.’
‘Really?’
‘Believe me, deep down Will is still that abandoned child, crying out for love and security.’
‘God, do you really think so?’ Kate was horrified. She had two abiding images of Will: one of him standing alone by the grave at his mother’s funeral, his pallor emphasised by his dark suit and black mop of hair, the other of him sitting in their kitchen, soaked and shaking like a puppy when he’d run away from boarding school. It broke her heart to think that, deep down, Will could still be the lost, unhappy boy who arrived on their doorstep all those years ago.
‘Well, maybe not,’ Brian said, watching the play of emotion on Kate’s face.
Kate raised her eyebrows at his sudden about-face. ‘But you just said?—’
‘You know him better than I do. Lack of sensitivity and self-awareness has its advantages.’
‘Will is not insensitive or lacking in self-awareness,’ Kateprotested, ‘just because he’s not constantly navel-gazing and having breakthroughs. Suzanne isn’t self-aware, she’s self-absorbed. There’s a difference.’ Kate was aware that she sounded catty, but she couldn’t help it. Suzanne was the person she’d figured Brian had in mind when he’d suggested they see other people. ‘I suppose Suzanne is in the abandoned-children group?’ she asked.
‘Actually, she is. She was adopted.’
‘I’m not surprised. If she wasmychild, I’d abandon her.’
‘She is a bit intense,’ Brian admitted, to Kate’s surprise. The fact was, the break with Kate had allowed him to explore his relationship with Suzanne and he had found her neediness very trying. It had proved to him that Kate was the person he wanted to be with. She was the least neurotic person he knew, which was relaxing and restorative when he spent his working life dealing with other people’s pain. ‘I thought we’d go for a pizza,’ he said breezily. ‘I know it’s your favourite – and don’t worry about money. It’s my treat, to celebrate your first night back.’
* * *
‘Vegetarian deluxe,’ the waitress announced cheerfully. Kate made a strenuous effort to hide her distress as a twelve-inch pizza was plonked in the middle of the table. Early on in their relationship Kate had discovered, to her dismay, that when Brian suggested going for ‘a pizza’ that was exactly what he meant – a pizza, singular, which he had proceeded ceremoniously to carve down the middle. That first time Kate had said nothing. Brian had already been faintly shocked to discover she wasn’t a vegetarian and she hadn’t wanted to compound it by having him watch her wolf down a pizza big enough to feed a small Africannation for a month. One of Brian’s favourite themes was the shortage of food on the planet, and she didn’t want him to think she was partly responsible for it. Besides, she hadn’t expected the relationship to last long, so it hadn’t seemed worth making a fuss – which meant that now she was stuck with hiding her irritation and anxiety as Brian cut the pizza in half. It also meant she was always limited to having the vegetarian, while she longed for pepperoni, leaching its oily spiciness into the tomato sauce.
Still, she mustn’t be ungrateful. Brian had come here to please her. It wasn’t his fault she had never come clean with him about her pizza habit. Determined to cheer up, she tucked into the pizza, which was delicious.
‘I’ve really missed you,’ he said, smiling across at her.
Kate wished he hadn’t sounded so surprised about it. ‘I’ve missed you too,’ she said. Sometimes she still couldn’t believe he was her boyfriend. His thin, angular face was so handsome, and he had a fantastic body, honed from years of strenuous yoga and in peak condition from always eating the right stuff in moderation and getting enough sleep. And he was so caring and considerate. It was all very well for her family to be derisive about him, but they didn’t know how sweet he was to her. Freddie could rant all he wanted about Will being ‘the one’, but the reality was that he hadn’t always been very nice to her – and it was screwed up to keep hankering for someone who wasn’t interested in you. She had adored Will, but what she had with Brian was real, grown-up and, best of all, mutual.
The sex was fantastic too. She looked at his long, thin fingers playing with his wine glass and thought with longing of the pleasure they could give her. Suddenly overcome with lust, she considered abandoning the pizza and dragging him home to bed.
