‘Come on, Chris, that isn’t fair. You know as well as I do that this job was 24/7. I was doing it for us. It was what we agreed.’
There was sadness in Chrissie’s eyes now, as well as the anger, and her voice was more gentle as she spoke this time. ‘No, Sam, I never agreed not to see you for months and months on end, and that isn’t what you thought either. Why did you stay away so long? Why didn’t you come back months ago when you knew I’d taken as much as I could? I still don’t understand, and you gave me the impossible job of explaining it to Holly.’
Sam scraped his hands through his hair. Trying to find the right words. She was right; he knew that he was avoiding something, but he wasn’t sure he could even explain it to himself, let alone Chrissie.
‘Well?’ Her eyes were full of questions. Ones he couldn’t answer.
‘I don’t know.’ They stared at each other. ‘I just don’t know the answer, Chrissie, but I’m trying to work it out – I want to work it out, you know how much you and Holly mean to me, don’t you – how much I—’
But before he could tell Chrissie how much he loved her and Holly, how he desperately wanted to sort things out, she stepped towards him and placed the tips of her fingers over his mouth. ‘Don’t say it,’ she whispered. ‘Please. I can’t bear it. You need to go back to Dolly’s house now.’
Sam could feel the situation slipping away from him. He reached out to Chrissie but she gently pushed him away.
‘Please don’t send me away, Chris. You know how good we can be together,’ he said, the desperation in his voice impossible to hide.
‘I used to, Sam.’ More silence followed. ‘But now …’ She paused and briefly closed her eyes before carrying on, ‘I’m not so sure.’ Silence swung in the air between them like an enormous pendulum pushing them further and further apart. ‘It’s time to go,’ Chrissie continued. ‘Maybe you should take some time to really work out why you didn’t come home until now.’ She looked away. ‘Because I’m not sure about anything any more.’
As Chrissie followed Sam towards the front door, both of them turned on seeing Holly standing on the stairs. They looked at each other, united briefly in concern in case their daughter had overheard the conversation.
‘I don’t want Dad to go!’ Holly stated, her voice a mixture of petulance and fear.
‘Dad has to go now, Holly. You’ve got your homework to finish.’
‘But that’s not fair. Dad has just come back and I got hardly any time at all with him.’
‘Holly, will you please do as you’ve been asked?’ Chrissie said tightly, fiddling with the crystal drop necklace that he and Holly had chosen together for her fortieth birthday. At least she was still wearing it – that was something, Sam thought, resisting the urge to play peacemaker; he didn’t want to undermine Chrissie. He knew how much she hated that, trying to remember all the rules around bedtime or screen time; he’d always been useless at keeping on top of all the boundaries. But before either he or Chrissie could play their next move, Holly suddenly exploded.
‘Fine! But I HATE you!’ And then, after glaring at Chrissie, she shot back up the stairs to her bedroom, two at a time, and slammed the door, making the mini-chandelier hall light jangle precariously above them. Sam instinctively stepped towards the foot of the stairs and called after her.
‘Come back here and apologise, you mustn’t talk to Mum like that—’
‘Just leave her, Sam.’ Chrissie indicated with her head after Holly, before turning to look him in the eye. ‘She doesn’t mean it … Besides, there’s been a lot of that lately. I’m hoping it’s just a phase and she’ll grow out of it.’
‘But she shouldn’t say stuff like that to you. Or slam doors.’
‘True.’ Chrissie lifted her left shoulder. ‘Maybe not. And having you around to tell her so every now and again might have been quite helpful, don’t you think?’
Sam knew that Chrissie had a point. He hadn’t been around to do his proper share of parenting. And, on top of everything else, this tension between her and Holly was another worrying development.
‘Look, I’m sorry but I really need to get on …’ Chrissie glanced at her watch.
‘Err … OK,’ Sam said, baffled by her distraction now. ‘But we really need to spend some proper time together – tomorrow, the day after, any time,’ he urged, keen to have a plan, however tentative …
‘Yes … we’ll sort something out,’ Chrissie said, quickly glancing at her watch again. Why does she keep doing that? And why does she look so edgy now? Sam followed her line of sight and saw her staring at the door.
And then a weird feeling shrouded him. He inhaled sharply. And then the proverbial penny dropped. He got it.
‘Are you expecting someone?’ he asked, turning to go. Chrissie nodded quickly, as if keen all of a sudden to get rid of him as swiftly as possible. She even darted around him to pull open the front door, standing by it to make it absolutely clear that his time was up. Sam went to leave and then something inside him – a feeling, a hunch in the pit of his stomach, he wasn’t sure, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but whatever it was made him stop, abruptly.
Of course! The perfume, the lipstick, the new hairdo.
‘Is it a bloke?’
Sam’s heart lurched as he stared at her, willing the pulse in the side of his neck to stop flicking like an overcharged piston. But it was all too much to take in.
His wife?
Another man?
‘Is that really any of your business?’ Chrissie’s face was hard to read, but Sam could feel a jumpy anger rising inside him, making his own face smart.
‘Are you seeing someone else?’ As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he hated how pathetic and whiny he sounded. He had to pull it back. Chrissie was never going to give him a second chance if he carried on like some kind of possessive teenage boy. But Sam often felt as if he was muddling through when it came to women and properly understanding them. His mother had always been the boss in their house when he’d been growing up, and sometimes unreasonably so. Yes, his dad had always been the peacemaker, but he had also pandered to her too, almost as if he was overly grateful to be her husband and would do whatever it took to keep her. As if he was punching above his weight. But Chrissie wasn’t like his mum at all.
‘I can’t believe you have the nerve to ask me that question,’ Chrissie said, clearly annoyed now too … but she hadn’t denied it.
Sam suddenly felt a strong urge to run, a feeling he always had when things were going badly. ‘Look, I’ve gotta go. But we really need to talk.’ He backed away before turning on his heel and setting off down the path towards his car.
Chrissie called something after him. But Sam couldn’t really hear any more. He had to get away. Suddenly, he felt like a teenage boy again, out of his depth, making it up as he went along, trying to get it right.
Sam reached his car and, after quickly diving in and pulling
