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‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Freya.’
Freya sighed. They’d had this conversation already too. She knew Jolene’s attitude. Despite there being no particular affection between her best friend and Theo, Jolene had reminded her that she was engaged and had implied she shouldn’t be off gallivanting with Tarek. For someone who on the surface appeared to have no scruples with bending the rules, or flouting conventions, Jolene was all smoke and mirrors; she was, in fact, quite conservative when it came to relationships and norms. For her, if you committed to someone, if you were engaged and had accepted a marriage proposal, then you didn’t go back on your word. Freya knew that she used to be like that herself. She still was, really. It was just that Tarek had confused her.
She whirled around at the sound of a creaky floorboard outside her bedroom door. ‘Dad, is that you?’
There was a pause. ‘No, it’s me, Theo.’
Freya walked over to the door and opened it. He was standing the other side with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits. ‘Elevenses.’ He caught an expression on her face. ‘What?’
Her eyes dropped to his tea. She could still see a whirl of steam that suggested he’d just made it and hadn’t been standing outside her door, listening. She hoped not.
His eyes drifted to her case. ‘Going soon?’
‘Yes. I’m nearly packed.’ She felt a pang of guilt.But nothing is going on, you’re just making the trip with a guy you fancy, that’s all.Freya swept that thought aside, focusing on his plate of biscuits. He liked the same biscuits her dad did. They were like two peas in a pod. She didn’t know how far Theo had got with the novel he was writing in his spare time under her dad’s tutelage, and she felt guilty that she couldn’t be bothered to ask. Perhaps she was ever so slightly jealous. Theo was like the son her dad had never had. She suddenly wondered, in passing, why her parents hadn’t had more children.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come? I could bring my laptop and work in the hotel.’
Freya swallowed. There had been an awkward moment the previous night when she’d told him she was going on a work trip, and he’d invited himself along, saying that he could work in the hotel room while she attended an archaeological dig she’d told him was going on in Suffolk. Thinking on her feet, Freya had admitted the reason she was really going – one of the reasons, at least – she had told him about the conversation she’d overheard between her dad and a woman, and about finding out the phone number of the last caller and tracing it to a guest house in Suffolk.
A row had ensued, their first one ever, when Theo discovered she’d lied to him. Freya thought back to that conversation.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this in the first place?’ he’d said.
‘There is a guy staying there, an eminent archaeologist apparently, so it is kinda work-related,’ she’d replied.
‘But that’s not the main reason you’re going.’
‘No,’ she’d admitted.
She’d then told him about the days out with her dad as a child where they’d inevitably met up with a woman and her child – a girl that Freya believed had been around the same age as herself. ‘We played together while my dad chatted to her mum,’ she’d told Theo.
Theo had shrugged, and said, ‘So? People meet and chat in parks all the time.’
‘But it was the same parent, the same child, the same park –everytime. Don’t you think that’s a bit of a coincidence?’ she’d said. Then she’d shared her theory that her dad might have had a brief fling, and this other girl was the result.
Theo had appeared quite defensive and upset. Anyone would have thought it was his own dad she was accusing of having an affair. He’d said exactly what Jolene had said: ‘Why don’t you confront your dad?’ On top of which, he’d voiced her own sentiments, ‘Personally, I just don’t think your dad is the type to have an affair, or a fling, or a one-night stand, or whatever you think it was.’
Perhaps that was the reason she didn’t want to confront her dad. Because if it wasn’t true, then what would he think of her accusing him of something he hadn’t done, and listening in on his phone conversations? She’d told Theo that too.
‘Then I think you should go,’ Theo had said. ‘If for no other reason than to put your mind at rest that nothing was going on.’
So here she was, packing her case. She paused to look at Theo. After that conversation the previous night, she knew he was convinced there was nothing going on with her dad and another woman.
‘Why do you think my mum just walked out?’
‘I think she doesn’t want to move house.’
That didn’t surprise Freya. ‘But why not sit down and talk about it?’ Something was off, and she knew it.
He added. ‘You know, it’s not unusual when a child leaves home, for good, that relationships, even long ones, fall apart.’
Freya knew what he was talking about – empty nest syndrome. But why now? She’d left home and moved in with Theo ages ago, and now she’d returned. She didn’t think that was the problem.
‘You don’t think it’s that, do you?’ Theo said, reading her mind.
‘Freya shook her head. All I know is that something is going on, with Mum and Dad.’
‘If that’s how you feel, then you should go.’
