AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Now she does.
She is with Peter because he made her feel safe. But as the cab pulls up outside their beautiful home, with its thick walls, its security system and all its locks, safe is the opposite of how she feels.
Once inside, she checks her phone. There is a text message from Peter asking if she’s OK and a voicemail. She listens closely.
‘Hey, Samantha, it’s Sally here. Thanks for your message. Yes, that’s my scarf, and yes, you’re right, Peter would never have remembered. If you could give it to him, that would be great, as Livvy’ll kill me if she finds out I’ve lost it.’ A chuckle. ‘Thanks again.’
Samantha gasps, almost laughs. Peterdidgo to the conference with Sally. Hedidgive her a lift home and thatwasSally’s scarf.
Oh, but where does that leave her? Where the hell does that leave her?
Emily begins to grumble. Their child. Their flesh and blood. If she’s been wrong about the cheating, wrong about the poems, it’s possible she’s wrong about the drugs. Peter might have changed for real. She, Samantha, might be more than his last port in the storm. His past stinks, yes it does. But she might be his redemption.
She lifts Emily out of the pram and holds her tight.
‘Hey there, lovely girl,’ she says. ‘I think your daddy has changed his ways, yes he has, yes he has. He’s been rotten, but we’ve fixed him, you and me. Shall we give him a second chance, shall we, eh?’
In all the stress of the first raw months of motherhood, the sudden and cataclysmic change in her life, her first professional job, those awful poems, the whole business with Lottie, she has lost her way. Peter is the love of her life. He is flawed, very flawed, but no amount of white noise can alter that love. He might have used all his lines on her, but only because he knew they would work. Yes, he has behaved badly, but like he told her, it was a long time ago, he wasn’t that much older than Lottie and she was of legal age by the time things became serious between them. He didn’t know, could never have imagined the hurt he caused that young girl.
‘If you see the good in people,’ her mother always told her, ‘they will see it in themselves.’
Everyone deserves a second chance. Samantha takes out her phone, pulls up her father’s number and composes a text:
Heard you and Rhianna are expecting. Congratulations. See you next time I’m back. X
The evening is better than any she and Peter have had in a long time. Peter gets home earlier than usual. He has been worried about her, he says, and wanted to make sure she was OK. Samantha puts Emily to bed at seven, keen to re-establish her routine. A little after seven, Peter hands her a glass of dark red wine. On the stove, tomatoes simmer in a deep frying pan. She can smell garlic, chillies, olive oil. He really is a wonderful cook.
‘Chianti Classico, 1996,’ he says. ‘I thought we should open something special to celebrate having our little girl back safe.’
She smiles at him, brings the glass to her nose. Inhales but can’t smell anything suspicious. But then, if she’s used to it, she wouldn’t smell anything unusual. She shouldn’t be thinking like this. Hopefully, with time, she’ll learn not to. And she won’t mention that the wine is the same age as her.
‘Look at you,’ he teases. ‘Nose to the glass. Very good.’ He holds his own glass by the stem, takes a large mouthful. ‘Actually, we should have a toast.’ He really is all smiles this evening, like a man from whom a heavy weight has been lifted.
‘Here’s to us,’ he says. ‘A little prosaic but no less profound for that. To you and me, to putting what is past behind us and embracing what the future has in store. Cheers, my darling.’
‘Cheers.’ She drinks, only a little, tries to discern a bitter note. But he wouldn’t do that, not to the mother of his child, not while she’s still breastfeeding. She averts her gaze. She was, she realises, staring at his hair.
After dinner, they watch a French film with subtitles, set immediately after the Second World War. She longs to chill out in front of a comedy or a box set, but Peter tells her it’s good for her post-baby brain to watch challenging films, to read only the best literary fiction, that she must not let herself fall into bad habits: inane TV, pacy books, women’s magazines. She agrees with him about the magazines; they are, as Marcia says, propagandist tosh, but she makes a mental note to buy a Kindle, then she can read what she likes.
In bed, he is his usual mix of tender yet insistent. He hardly ever misses a night, which can be exhausting and a little stressful. It isn’t that he forces her, no. Just that she knows that if she doesn’t respond, he will continue until she relents. She is so tired by evening and it is better, quicker, easier to comply – that way she can sleep sooner rather than later.
‘That was terrific,’ he says, lying back.
She is not sure who or what he means, since she has done little more than lie there. He rubs the hair on his chest as if to give himself a congratulatory massage, before rolling over to face her and teasing into his fingers the white-gold necklace he bought for her when Emily was born. He commissioned the piece from a jeweller in Strawberry Hill. On the fine chain is a tiny pair of hand-made white-gold bootees, which is what he is holding now between his thumb and forefinger.
‘So, now that this horrible ordeal is over,’ he says, ‘how about getting married?’
She cannot meet his eye. His past is in the past, yes, but it bothers her like a stain she can’t remove. That he is not, as she suspected, unfaithful is a big thing. But as the hours have worn on, her certainty about his new-found moral compass has waned. The question of the hidden drugs and whether he is giving them to her without her consent is still, she realises, live. Trust does not rebuild in one flashing epiphany. But rebuild it she must. Peter is, after all, the father of her child.
She gives him the warmest smile she can. ‘Ask me again. I’ll say yes eventually.’
To her surprise, he doesn’t sulk or pick a fight or accuse her of not loving him as much as he loves her, but instead laughs and kisses her on the nose.
‘You play so hard to get,’ he says. ‘I love it. But I will wear you down.’
And I you, she thinks.And I you.
Thirty
