She held the phone even closer to her face. He saw how lovely, and how tired, she was.
‘Please, Noah – while you’re over there, you need to really think about whether you want a family, and what it’s going to take for things to improve between us. I don’t want the same thing to happen to us as happened to your mum and dad. I couldn’t stand it. Not for Lily, or for me.’ He started to say something, but she kept talking. ‘Please, just listen for a change.’ He shut up. ‘I want you to think about what sort of father – and partner – what sort of man you want to be. Really think. If you can’t do that, I don’t know what we’re going to do.’ And with that, she hung up.
She was right – that was what was so hard to deal with. There’d been too many trips away with work, too many missed bedtimes, too much chasing other priorities, too much running around.
But even as Noah found himself agreeing with what she’d said, he began to argue with her in his head.
Josie didn’t understand. He was doing it for them – to make them secure, put some money in the bank for when they needed it. That’s what a man was supposed to do, wasn’t it? Provide for his family. It was all right focusing on emotions and exploring what she needed in order to feel loved, but life didn’t operate on love and caring and listening. There were practical considerations – some of them huge and pressing. It was like worrying about the mood music and the canapés while the ship headed straight for the iceberg. Josie was still blithely ignorant of what it had cost him to scrape together the deposit on the house in the first place. Oblivious to how close they had come to losing it when he was out of work and she was on maternity leave. Without his dad’s help, they would never have managed. Josie’s willingness to accept his assurances that it would all be fine was a sign that she simply didn’t want to know. When it came down to it, despite all her talk of feminism and equality, the cost of their living was his responsibility.
Standing in the cold and the darkness, Noah stoked his sense of persecution and fear. He was the one in an impossible position. He was the one mourning his father while fighting to put his family on a safe footing. The one standing outside in the cold and the darkness while she sat at home, in the warmth, with their daughter safely tucked in her bed upstairs.
He coughed. His throat was suddenly full of phlegm, but instead of swallowing it down, he spat. The sound in the still night air was disgusting.
Christ, how would they manage without him?
And, even more importantly, how would he cope without them?
Chapter 35
THEY WERE all drinking solidly. Liv’s glass seemed full to the brim all evening. It was only a matter of time before something kicked off. The conversation about which items they each wanted to remember their father by nearly lit the fuse, but the simultaneous arrival of Megan’s home-made cheesecake and the abrupt departure of Noah helpfully prevented a flare-up.
The cheesecake was consumed in surly silence.
Noah reappeared just as Megan was clearing the table – a pack of cards in one hand and yet another bottle of red in the other. It was going to be a long night. He proceeded to deal Liv, Chloe, Angus and himself a hand, as Megan reached awkwardly between them, removing the last of the plates and glasses.
Eloise refused to participate in the game or the clearing up.
She curled her legs up underneath her and settled back on the couch. A good vantage point. The couch was new. And although she was loath to admit it, it was a vast improvement on the uncomfortable old chesterfield that used to dominate the room. This sofa was comfortable, squishy, designed for cosy nights in, snuggled up in front of the new, sleek TV. It was disconcerting to feel fresh jealousy after all this time, and after all her efforts to expunge such emotion from her heart. Eloise idly wondered if she was sitting in Jonathan’s or Megan’s spot. An image of Jonathan, his left leg crossed over his right, popped into her head. She blinked and stared at the kids to dispel it. The noise level was ratcheting up, voices raised and cards slapped down. Competitive to a fault, all three of them. Another of Jonathan’s legacies.
After a while their shouts and squabbling began to grate. Eloise got up and left the room quietly. None of them noticed.
The rest of the house was blessedly quiet, apart from the clink of glassware and the sound of a tap running – Megan slaving away in the kitchen? A tagine, a cheesecake, an eye for soft furnishings: the woman was a walking advert for Homes & Gardens. One item that had escaped her remodelling was the gloomy seascape that hung in the hall. It was a reproduction of a John Atkinson Grimshaw painting of the South Bay. Milky moonlight. The sea like a millpond. The fragile masts of the boats silhouetted against the coppery sky. A traditional, wistful evocation of life by the sea. Eloise walked over and studied it. The calmness of the scene was in stark contrast to what was going on behind her in the dining-room. She’d never really liked the picture. But there again, she’d never really looked at it before. It had come with the house – just another of the old-fashioned fixtures and fittings they’d inherited from Jonathan’s mother. Jonathan had claimed to like the picture when she’d threatened to take it down. Now Eloise saw why. It had a quiet, seductive charm.
The sound of Noah celebrating a win broke
