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After I reach our bedroom, I stare at his sleeping form and visualise myself shaking the answers out of him. Words would fall from his skin, answering all my questions with perfect truth. If only questions could be answered this way.
Nathan grumbles quietly in his sleep, sprawled on his front, his face directed towards the window. I slip out of my clothes and into my pyjamas as silently as possible.
Every grunt that Nathan seems to make in his sleep has me wanting the couch. The thought of his arms around me at this point makes me want to cry.
Carefully I pull back the blanket and tuck myself into a ball right on the edge, as far away from him as possible. My mind, though a torrent of thoughts, soon settles in its exhaustion and darkness claims me.
“Daaaaaaaa!” Dillan squeals and I feel Nathan shift beside me. “DAAAAAAADDDDYYY!”
“I’ll go,” Nathan whispers and kisses the shell of my ear. “Don’t open your eyes; you had a late night.”
I do as I’m told, mostly because my eyes are filling with tears. How can such a perfect man be so imperfect? Does he know how badly his lies are going to break my heart? Does he honestly think I’m never going to find out?
Staying in bed because I just don’t have the strength to exit it yet, I listen as he chases Dillan around downstairs. Emily must still be sleeping, the lazy git that she is. Part of me wants to go back to before the phone call yesterday. Why did I have to answer it?
When I do finally get up it’s as Nathan is coming to collect Emily. He kisses my cheek, pinches the skin of my hip and opens the bathroom door for me.
I can do this. Chanting this to my reflection in the mirror, I grip the basin with both hands and then mentally pep talk myself. He’s been living a lie for months now; I can handle just three more days.
Chapter Twenty
The days don’t exactly fly by but it’s easy enough to pretend that things are normal. That is until Wednesday comes around. Watching him leave with my children, knowing where he’s going with them, makes me want to claw at something. He seemed so normal, so at ease with his lies.
But then again, so did I. When I told him I was definitely working tonight, it fell from my lips so easily and tasted bitter on my tongue. I’ve never been a liar and when I’ve tried I’ve never been good at it. Because of this, he could sense something was wrong. I could tell because he kept giving me glances when he thought I wasn’t looking. Fortunately, he didn’t bring up his outing today beyond reminding me of the time and I didn’t ask because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to keep my cool. It sliced through me like a knife through butter when he acted as though today was just another normal day.
Even though I’m inwardly raging, I manage to calm myself down enough to follow him to his destination. I already know where he’s going, but I don’t want to risk missing any changes in his plans so I stick as close behind him as possible without him noticing.
My heart is such a frantic melody, I feel like I’m the one doing something wrong and maybe I’m going about this completely the wrong way, but I can’t help it. I’m doing this alone. Maybe I should have spoken to somebody first, Sasha or Tommy or even my mum. I just don’t feel as though they’d understand without knowing Nathan’s background and I’d never out him like that to them.
“Fuck,” I cry as we finally pull into a playground in Edmonton, London, quite far from where we live and never an area I must cut through to get to work so there’s no risk of me catching him.
He put a lot of thought into this web of lies.
Parking isn’t too difficult and I wait for him to get himself and my babies out before I pull into my chosen spot, only a few cars down from his. I love seeing how much he loves the kids; he’s holding Dillan’s hand as he skips along beside him, kicking up the grass as he goes. Emily is balanced on his hip; she’s lazy and so happy to be carried everywhere at the moment. Her dad is too happy to oblige.
Climbing from my car, I rest against it, watching as he cuts across the grass to the playground. Kids run riot, their parents close by. He’s never brought me to this park before, though it’s not that different from the one near our house.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end and I know that I’m in the presence of a demon. I feel her before I see her and when I do see her I have to press my back against the side of my car to remind myself why it’s a bad idea to launch myself at her and rip her hair out.
