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Philipa raised an eyebrow. “More like fourteen, if I remember certain locked doors when you habitually abused my generous invitations. But perhaps fucking each other over the billiard tabledoesn’tcount as a genuine relationship? Good, I’m glad you see that for yourself.”
Ben refused to back down and hoped he wasn’t reddening. He knew she must have known. He’d always suspected it. She was only trying to intimidate him. “You may have been married to him, but you never really saw him at all. You swallowed the act. Hook. Line. Sinker.”
That got a genuine chuckle. “Oh, I swallowed a lot more of Nikki’s than that, Ben, trust me.”
The rug under Ben’s feet tugged sharply sideward. It was the only way to explain the slight stagger that made him put a hand to the bedpost. It didn’t explain the pain that shot behind his eyes though, the heat in them that threatened to spill out in angry trails down his cheeks.
She seemed to regret her choice of words and glanced around in embarrassed distraction as if looking for cigarettes she didn’t smoke. Ben wondered if she had once—with another smoker. He realised with a hollow sense of triumph, that was no real victory at all, that she was as much harmed by her admission as he. Possibly more. Definitely more, given the paraphernalia of an incipient wedding surrounding them. He only suffered temporary pain. It would go. A tiny kernel, perhaps, would remain in his heart like a sharp knot, digging to the surface when he least needed it, but maybe this was karma—Nik had one of those seeds of pain in his heart every time Kate’s name was spoken between them.
Although Ben knew he was not overburdened with insight into relationships, even he sometimes wondered about Nikolas’s evident and intense love for Molly given her provenance. How did it make Nik feel—every time he held this child born of betrayal?
They were flawed individuals, chipped and dented by life, but together they made a perfect whole. Philipa could not, or, wilfully, would not see this.
He roused from his gloomy thoughts to find a pale face with set jaw attempting to stare him down, despite being the one still in bed. Haughty. Regal. He couldn’t believe it. “Go home, Benjamin. Nikki and I made a bargain, and, so far, I have kept my side of it. Don’t make me break it over this.”
He’d apparently been mistaken about her fear, or she’d rallied exceedingly quickly. It was infuriating coming on top of the knowledge that she did, apparently, know Nik far better than he had ever realised. That whilst he and Nik had been lying to and deceiving her,theyhad been doing just the same to him…
He was wrong: there was agreat dealof pain yet to come for him from her revelation. He knew he would lie awake at night, picturing them…how, when…
And now he was being told to go home, like a naughty schoolboy who’d dared come play with the adults.
Nik spoke to him like that sometimes, still, after all these years.
Anchor round my neck...
He had been entirely derailed now, shunted off-track and confused.
Bargain?
He leant in closer. She appeared to realise the protection her bravado gave her was paper thin. He was not one of her little charges. He was not even the Ben Rider she had once known.
But then, any sudden move from a six-foot-four angry man in the middle of the night in your own bedroom would come over as a considerable threat to anyone.
A lit phone was suddenly thrust towards him. She’d apparently had it concealed in her dressing gown pocket. She had pressed one number. Speed dial. Clearly someone she kept close.
Ben had the immediate and hideous thought that he might be being asked to speak to the Queen.
To Ben’s astonishment, however, he heard Nik’s voice.
“Fuck off, Pippa. I’m asleep and drunk. What do you want now?”
It was Nik…yet not him. There was a familiarity in his choice of words and tone of voice Ben had never heard him use with Philipa before—whenhewas present. This was apparently his preferred voice for his ex-wife in the middle of the night when no one else was around. Who knew?
She spoke distinctly. “Ben’s here. In my bedroom.”
Ben actuallyheardNikolas freeze. For a long time.
“Give the phone to him, Philipa. Please. I will speak with him. Explain.”
“No, just tell him to come home like a good little boy, Nikki.”
Ben almost laughed, surreal as the moment was. Despite their angry confrontation earlier, after the mood Nik had been in, caused entirely by her and her future husband, he was looking forward to the choice words this demand, thisinsult, would engender in his defence.
Instead, he heard, “Ben? I assume you can hear this. Come homenow. None of this concerns you. You are embarrassing yourself.”
It was Nik’s voice. The familiar one Ben knew. The tortured vowels, the heavy, sometimes impenetrable accent. But, somehow, it was less Nikolas than a total stranger.
He managed, “What the fu—?” before there was the distinct sound of tyres on gravel as a vehicle pulled slowly up to the front of the house. Ben shot to the window and saw a familiar figure in a tattered waxed jacket emerge from an old Land Rover. Appearances, apparently, didn’t matter as much as Ben had assumed they would.
