Page 10 of All the Things We Never Knew

‘Mum! I’m fifteen, not five.’

But she kissed us both, her hair smelling of coconut conditioner and her breath of strawberry chewing gum, before clomping away again.

Gray and I had sat in silence until we heard her bedroom door slam two floors above.

Then I said, ‘I can’t do this any more. I’m going to bed.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll clear up down here. See you in a bit.’

He’s going to text her, I thought. He’s going to tell her he’s told me.

But I’d just nodded, picked up my own phone and left him there alone.

Now, staring at the burgundy-and-navy-striped back of Gray’s pyjamas but not really seeing anything, I sifted through my scattered memories of what he had told me about her.

Laurel. At first I thought he’d said Lauren and he’d had to correct me – Laurel with two Ls. Like the plant. I wondered if that was what she had said to him, the first time she’d told him her name. I wondered if she’d gone through her whole life saying it. It was a pretty name, more unusual by far than Lauren. I wondered if she was as pretty as her name. For a brief moment, I’d thought of asking Gray to show me a photo of her, but I couldn’t bear to – just knowing he might have one right there on his phone, to look at whenever he wanted to see her face, was too painful to consider.

They’d met by chance, he’d said. Randomly, in the street outside our house. That was better, I suppose, than him having actively sought her out on some app for cheating husbands. And they’d been seeing each other for a year. Twelve months, and until days ago I’d been oblivious. They saw each other once a week, maybe, he’d said. At hotels they rented for a few hours, or sometimes at her place, when her flatmate was at work.

How old is she? I’d demanded, and his answer had surprised me: she was forty-one, just a year younger than me. I thought, And still sharing a flat with a friend? Loser.

Then I thought, Maybe not such a loser. Because if she doesn’t have youth on her side, if she’s not some naive twenty-something stunner nearer Lulu’s age than mine, then she must have something else, something even more special.

I couldn’t bring myself to ask what that was.

She was a nurse, Gray had told me. That was why she’d noticed things: the yellowing of his eyes that I’d been unaware of, the intensity of his sickness. That was why she’d insisted on driving him to the nearest hospital the morning after the first full night they’d ever spent together.

On Valentine’s Day. Lovely. But Gray spending all night puking would have been quite the buzz-killer, I thought spitefully.

That thought snapped my mind away from her – Laurel – as smartly as if it had been pulled by a string.

Gray was sick. Gray might have cancer. If he did, it was the sort that meant he would almost certainly die.

I squeezed my eyes shut, but when I opened them again seconds later, his pyjamas were still there, and so was that fact.

He’s forty-seven. That’s wild. He can’t be going to die. It’s no age at all.

That’s what people would say if they heard he’d died. It’s no age at all. Poor Anna. Those poor children.

Except now there’d be some people – people I didn’t know and would probably never know – who’d say, Poor Laurel.

And what about me? What about poor Anna and the poor children?

Lulu had her GCSEs coming up. Barney was just entering the turmoil of his teenage years. They needed their father.

Just this afternoon, Barney had a football match. Taking him to football had always been Gray’s job – the few times he hadn’t been able to make it, I’d spent ninety miserable minutes shivering on the sidelines vowing I would never, ever do it again. If Gray died, I’d have to do it every single Saturday for the next six years.

I turned over. It was lighter now, but the sky was still laden with clouds as heavy as slate, and rain was still falling.

Thinking about those endless football games had focused my mind. Lulu wouldn’t be up for hours; Barney’s friend’s mum would be dropping him off at some point during the morning. I had the next few hours to myself, and I was going to use them. I was going to get out my laptop, make some strong coffee and do some research.

I was going to find out what was what. Because there was no way I was going to allow this to happen. Gray was going to get better. He was going to see his children grow up and graduate and get married and have kids of their own. And he was going to stay married to me.

Laurel was just going to have to suck it up.

SEVEN

LAUREL