Or had Luke’s monumental presence put a wedge between us all? I’d tried several times to organise another dinner so we could all sit around the table together, Jack included, but there was always something stopping it. How could a friendship like ours wither out and die like that? Were we like icebergs slowly drifting apart on a silent sea, going out without a fight on the gelid currents of life?
30
Gone With The Wind
Because I promised Chloe I wouldn’t call incessantly like I always did when she was out and about the village, I stalked her instead. Chloe loved to post pictures of herself, and this time I saw with joy that she and Chanel were once again #BloodSisters as the post assured me they were alive but not kicking anymore, which was music to my ears.
About an hour before the kids were due home, Phil showed up on my doorstep, looking like something that the cat had dragged in.
‘Hi, Nina!’ he called, barely recognisable, when I opened the front door.
The red nose, not to mention the flabby abdomen, were a gift from too many beers and evenings on the settee when instead he could have taken the kids for a hike or a picnic, were all a result of the way he lived his life.
His boyhood beauty was rapidly fading, and knowing him as I did, I knew he was panicking about it, and if I had once found things about him endearing, such as his fondness for lounging around in bed on a Sunday morning, they were now the part of him that I resented most. And even the slowest girl on the planet would eventually come to her senses and ditch him before he put an unwanted baby inside her. I hoped, for Tracy’s sake, that she would open her eyes and walk away before he ruined her life as well.
‘What do you want?’ I said, blocking the door with my body.
‘To apologise for not coming to get the kids myself. That’s why I came the other day, but I didn’t want to say anything in front of your Hollywood friend.’
‘You could have called them, Phil. They waited for you on the stairs. And what’s this rubbish about you sending your girlfriend?’
‘Jealous, huh?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Nauseated, actually. Did you really think I was going to hand my children over to a perfect stranger?’
‘Our children, Nina. Our children.’
‘Not that you’d know, Phil.’
‘Look, I know I screwed up with you years ago. But I want to make it up to you.’
‘Really? You mean you’ve found the money you took from me and a time machine to get back all my years wasted on you?’
He opened his mouth but then closed it again, defeated. And then he remembered his ammunition.
‘I’m not happy about you and that Yankee rubbin’ more than just shoulders,’ he said, quite pleased with his new-found wit. ‘Sleeping with him with the kids around and all.’
Which I didn’t, of course. I took off my glasses and speared him with my best Cross-Mum look that put even him in his place. ‘I beg your pardon?’
He looked at me, his once lovely forehead lined. ‘When did I lose you, Nina?’
When had he lost me? Probably while I was holding down several jobs, preparing meals, scrubbing the floors (and his muddy sweatshirts fresh from a football game), managing the household and writing three novels all the while he sat on the sofa munching on junk food, completely ignoring me as I ran rings around him with my duster and mop while trying at the same time to help the kids with their homework.
‘Because I see you have lost your way,’ he said.
I had lost my way? ‘Out.’
‘What? I’m not even in yet.’
‘Nor will you be. Now piss off.’
‘Nina, all I’m sayin’ is that… I’m jealous.’
‘Don’t be. For some reason I can’t explain, the kids love you.’
‘It’s not them I’m worried about!’
I snorted. ‘No surprise there.’ And then I understood. He was jealous about the movie and the money I’d hopefully be making. It wasn’t enough that I had never, nor would ever be dependent on him for survival.
‘Nina – when are you gonna get it through your thick skull that I still love you! And it kills me to know you an’ ’im are sleeping in our bed.’
‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,’ I informed him. ‘I threw that bed out three years ago.’
He wrung his hands like a child about to get scolded. ‘That should be me with you upstairs, Nina. Not him. I wanna come back, babe.’
‘You what?’
‘You heard.’
‘So what happened to Tracy, then?’
He shrugged. ‘She’s just a girl, Nina. You’re a woman. My woman.’
‘Not anymore, Phil. You had your chance and blew it.’
‘But I don’t like you sleeping with that man. And you are legally still my wife.’
Dear oh dear. ‘I owe you nothing, Phil, and what I do with my time or whom I sleep with is my business. Is that clear?’
He crossed his arms and slid me a sullen glance as if I’d taken his crisps from him.
‘Now get out, I’m busy.’
‘Nina, wait.’
‘What now?’
He crumpled his face in his best I’m sorry expression, the one he used to make when he came home drunk or spent our weekly grocery money at the gambling tables.
‘You will always be my love – no matter what you do, or where you go. You are the mother of my children. How can I ever forget you?’
I snorted, sad but also grateful that life had been so unkind to me as to make me wary of men. It was, after all, his fault that I could no longer believe that love conquered all. It was his fault that I was taking Luke one day at a time, rather than abandoning myself to the joys of
