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Vivien blinked furiously, before turning away from Audrey to hide her face. ‘You’re twenty-two, you have no idea.’
Was Vivien right? Was she being naive to think that when she met the right person, love could last a lifetime? Audrey had never been in love, not really. She’d had boyfriends she liked spending time with, but no one who made her grin the way Vivien had just now.
As she lay on her bed that night, she found herself taking the photo strip of the boy from Baker Street out of her wallet. She looked into his green eyes and imagined what he might be doing now. Then she wondered, not for the first time, who his ‘I will find you’ message might have been for.
After their illicit weekend, Benedict went back to New York, and Audrey heard no more about him. She hoped that whatever it had been, that was the end of it. Three weeks later, she and Brian were in the kitchen, Brian emptying the dishwasher while she worked on a maths problem at the kitchen table. She threw down her calculator in frustration. Maybe she’d been foolhardy to drop geography. Maybe a science subject was beyond her ability.
‘This is impossible.’
Brian came to rest a hand on her shoulder. ‘It is a lot, trying to cram a two-year maths syllabus into five months.’
‘If I don’t take the exam now, I won’t be able to apply for a place in September. I’ll waste another year.’
‘If it takes another year, it takes another year. The stars aren’t going anywhere,’ Brian said, coming to sit down beside her. ‘You need a break. Come on, let’s order Thai takeaway from that place your mother likes and watch the new BBC crime drama, take one night off.’
Brian got up to wash his hands and asked Audrey to hand him the phone. As she picked up the handset from the counter, she noticed there wasn’t a tone and instinctively pressed it to her ear. That’s when she heard Vivien, talking in that sickening, simpering voice, then that unmistakable accent – Benedict. Audrey felt her hands tense around the phone.
‘What’s wrong?’ Brian asked, sounding genuinely concerned as he took in her expression.
She should have slammed down the handset, made up an excuse, composed herself, but she just stood there with it clasped in her hand, feeling like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a huge truck.
Brian’s eyes narrowed. He walked across the kitchen and took the handset out of her hand. She could have held on or made a sound to warn Vivien, but she did none of these things. She just let the phone slip out of her palm into his. As Brian held it to his ear, she saw his face harden, his eyebrows draw into a frown. But he was frowning at Audrey, at her strange behaviour.
‘Why did you make that face, hearing your mother talk to her friend on the phone?’ he asked, his voice breaking as he put the receiver back. Audrey shook her head.
‘No reason,’ she said, her voice a whisper, and now they both knew she was lying.
‘How long has it been going on between them?’ Brian asked slowly. He looked so hurt, discovering her a conspirator.
‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ Audrey said. And then dramatically fled upstairs to her room, put some music on her headphones and buried herself under the duvet.
When she ventured downstairs later that evening, she found her mother sitting at the kitchen table, red-eyed.
‘He’s gone, Brian’s gone.’
‘What? Why?’ Audrey asked, every limb feeling leaden with shame.
‘He heard me talking to Benedict on the phone. We were only talking, we’re friends. I don’t know why he thought it was something else...’ And then her words jumbled into tears.
Audrey sat down on the floor and gave her mother a hug, guilt cutting at her bones. She looked across at the kitchen table and had a distinct flash of déjà vu to a dimly remembered conversation sixteen years earlier over herb roast potatoes. To the last time she’d ruined her mother’s life by failing to keep her secrets.
Brian moved out and Vivien took to her bed. She cancelled rehearsals for the play she was opening in a month’s time. She saw no one, even when the frantic director came knocking. Audrey called Brian. ‘Won’t you talk to her, please?’
‘Audrey, you will always be a daughter to me, always, but don’t involve yourself in this. There’s history here.’
This wasn’t the first time. Did that make it better or worse?
Audrey hoped their separation might be temporary, but then, one Sunday Audrey opened the door to find Benedict, with a large suitcase in each hand.
‘Hello?’ she said, her face full of confusion. She was wearing a bed shirt with no bra, and Benedict’s eyes fell briefly to her chest. She reached a hand up to her shoulder, covering herself with one arm. ‘What are you doing here?’
His eyes were now on her face, and she wondered if his eyeline had been accidental.
‘Your mother needs me,’ he said, bringing his cases into the hall.
Audrey left him by the door, charging up the stairs and bursting into her mother’s bedroom.
‘Why is he here?’ she hissed. Her mother was out of bed, doing her hair at the dressing table. It was the first time she had got dressed in days.
