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‘Meetingher here?’ Harry is taking off his coat. ‘She was supposed to be in this evening. She lives here, for God’s sake.’
‘I know that!’ So intense is Sam’s relief, he actually laughs. ‘But… no offence, but what are you guys doing here? Do you have a key, or…?’
The couple exchange a glance so purposeful it is almost comical. But instead, a ball of something close to terror lands in his gut. When they look at him, they do so as if he has lost his mind.
‘What do you mean, what are wedoinghere?’ It is the woman, Cheryl, who has spoken. The man, Harry, is frowning hard. His face is dark pink. He looks livid, frankly. Furious.
‘I mean…’ Sam falters. ‘I mean, why are you here solate?’
Cheryl gives a rather unpleasant half-laugh, her eyebrows drawing close together. ‘Er, we live here.’ Her tone is sardonic, as if she is explaining to an idiot.
Sam feels the rims of his eyes strain, air cold on his eyeballs. ‘Youlivehere?’
Harry laughs – like Cheryl’s, the laugh is not kind. It is not a laugh of amusement but something meaner, a kind of scoffing disbelief.
‘Of course we live here,’ he says. ‘This is our house. And I’m sorry, but I think I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
CHAPTER 54
‘Leave?’ Sam looks from one to the other, bewildered. ‘I can’t leave. I only moved in this evening!’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Harry has raised his voice. His hands are fists, the knuckles white.
‘I live here.’ Sam too has raised his voice. ‘I should be askingyouto leave!’
Cheryl throws up her hands. ‘Guys! Let’s just… let’s just take a step back, shall we? Nothing to be gained by falling out. I think we should all sit down. Let’s sit down and sort this out like grown-ups, eh? Come on.’
For a moment the two men stand looking at one another, before Harry throws his coat on the sofa and sits down next to it. He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. Cheryl sits next to him. Sam takes the armchair, perching on the edge like a kid in a waiting room.
‘Maybe one of us should go first,’ Cheryl says. ‘Whoever speaks speaks to the end; the others don’t interrupt, OK? Does that work for everyone?’
Sam nods, chastened by this woman’s natural authority. ‘OK.’
‘OK,’ Harry says.
When neither Harry nor Cheryl says anything more, Sam clears his throat.
‘Shall I go first then? OK? OK. Naomi’s my ex. Well, she was my ex…’
He does his best to explain, throwing up his hands but persevering when Cheryl fails to suppress her gasps of incredulity or a franticShe said what? She did what?He tells them how he and Naomi met by chance after a year apart, how they got back together slowly after he learnt he had a son. He ploughs on doggedly.As he speaks, he keeps his eyes on theirs, which grow wider and wider with shock, willing them not to interrupt; the words are becoming more and more painful, the weight of dread in his belly getting heavier and heavier and heavier. If they stop him, he doubts he could carry on. But he does. He tells them about looking after Tommy on Wednesdays, about how he and Naomi fell in love again and how, because they knew each other so well, things went really quickly from that point on. He has the impression he is telling a story, the details of which are hazy. He tells them about Joyce’s violent death, how in the aftermath Naomi took care of everything, literally everything, and how they returned this afternoon from their honeymoon in Devon in order to hand over the keys to his gran’s place.
‘Naomi told me to wait at the house,’ he says, pausing a moment, only then noticing light leaking between the bare boards of all he has said. It is the truth, everything he has told them is the truth, and yet… ‘Naomi told me…’ he says again. ‘Naomi told me…’ He can get no further. Naomi told him. She told him to wait for a man who did not come. And when he got here, she told him she had to go and see Cheryl, her friend, her childminder, who had split up with her boyfriend. And yet here are Cheryl and her boyfriend, holding hands. Naomi said boyfriend earlier, he’s pretty sure. But they are both wearing wedding rings. They have told him they live here. With Naomi.
‘You guys are married,’ he says. ‘To each other.’ It is almost a question.
‘We are.’ Cheryl glances at her husband, back at Sam. ‘So, to clarify, Naomi told you this washerhouse and that Tommy wasyourbaby?’
The noise that leaves him is no kind of word but a strange choking sob. When he makes himself look up, he sees two faces locked in incredulity and something else – a terrible, terrifying sympathy.
‘Sam.’ Cheryl says his name so softly, so gently.
Please, he thinks, don’t say anything else. Please don’t tell me. But she does.
‘Tommy is Harry’s child,’ she says. ‘He’s Harry’s.’
And although he has known this for seconds now, still her words send the breath from him, a thick pain like a kick to the chest. He glances from Cheryl to Harry, his head throbbing, blood pulsing in his ears. And sees the likeness. The blonde hair, the blue eyes, but also the same mouth, a mouth not his, nothing like his, and actually now he sees that the set of Harry’s brow is the same as his son’s, as Tommy’s, his baby’s… not his baby, though, not his son.
Not his.
