They had reached stalemate already. The conversation that Ellen had rehearsed in her head a hundred times was proving far more difficult than she had envisaged. After she’d got back from Bea’s the previous night, she’d lain awake going through exactly what she wanted to say to Oliver and the best way to put it. However much his temporary absence was going to hurt, she knew Bea’s advice was right. He had to go, and for a short while they would have to pretend a different relationship in front of the children. Once Emma and Matt liked and accepted him, they could start their future together. All day at the gallery, she had been busy planning a new exhibition, speaking to two painters whose work she hoped to show and to customers, but her thoughts had kept running ahead to the conversation she must have. Dreading Oliver’s reaction, she hadn’t been able to broach the subject immediately. He’d welcomed her home as if he hadn’t seen her for days, not hours, and she hadn’t wanted to spoil the mood. His attention made her feel alive.
Eventually, as they sat down for supper, she’d told him that she was planning to go alone to Cornwall and began to spell out as gently and reasonably as she could what she felt was the best way of introducing him to the children. His response was as negative as she’d feared. As she talked, his expression had hardened. A barely perceptible steeliness slid into place behind his eyes. But she saw it. He pushed his chair away from the table and leaned back, folded his arms and waited, motionless until she’d finished. Then he spoke. Those five non-cooperative words.
For a second, Ellen’s panic was eradicated by the fleeting thought of how sweet he looked, like a frustrated child about to stamp his foot. She swiftly brought herself back to the moment. ‘Darling, at least try to understand.’
He reached for the bottle of Pinot Grigio and refilled his glass without offering any to her. ‘I am trying. But what’s so ridiculous is that I know deep down you don’t want me to go either.’ How true that was. ‘Why do you think meeting me will be so difficult for them? I love you and I’ll love them. It’ll all work out.’
But will they love you? She pushed the thought away, annoyed that it had burrowed in through her defences. How lucky they were that she’d met a man so ready to take on her children as well as her. To find someone so big-hearted was a blessing. Of course they’d love him just as she did. She remembered the conversations she’d had with Bea over the years since Colin had left her. Bea had been convinced that any potential partner would run a mile once they’d got wind of Ben’s existence. She could hear her now: ‘Why would they take on a middle-aged woman at all, let alone one with a child? Look at me. I’m like a leftover from a designer sale! Once a desirable bit of shmutter but still on the rail and no longer fashionable, desirable or even fitting.’ Ellen was no different. But she mustn’t waver.
Looking over Oliver’s shoulder to the wall behind him, she could see one of the large picture frames that, over the years, she’d filled with collages of family photos and hung all over the house. A grinning Matt stared out at her, snapped just after he’d triumphed with a winning goal in a school football match. Higher in the frame was Emma, two years older with a pretty, elfin face, her grip tight round Bonkers, her silver-grey flop-eared rabbit. She seemed to be looking straight at Ellen as if she was trying to say something to her. Ellen strengthened her resolve. ‘You don’t know them.’
‘I feel as if I do. You’ve told me so much about them. Everything you’ve said makes me sure we’ll get on.’ He clicked the middle and thumb nails on his right hand, again and again.
‘But coming back to find your mother has moved a strange man into your home is a lot to take on board. They’ve been used to everything being the way it’s been for so long that they’re bound to resent you at first. Surely you see that.’
‘Of course. But they’ll get over it and be pleased to see you happy again. Think of that.’
‘Not to mention the discovery that their mother’s enjoying a sex life all of a sudden! I should think they’ll be horrified, poor things.’ Ellen laughed. ‘But, most importantly, I don’t want them to think they’ve lost me to someone else. They’ve lost one parent – that’s enough. If we’re going to be together for ever, I want it all to be right from the start.’
But Oliver was not going to give in that easily. They carried on the discussion over the mushroom omelettes, the apple pie, the washing-up, the coffee. They took their mugs to the end of the garden where they sat in the near-dark on the bench, the summer smell of other people’s barbecues drifting round them as they tried to reach a resolution that suited them both. Lights from neighbouring windows cast a glow over the gardens while the sound of voices travelled across fences with the last gasps of barbecue smoke. Over the previous years, Ellen had always drawn comfort from the proximity of her neighbours but now she wished they would hurry inside so she and Oliver could have the night to themselves.
They talked round and round in circles, until finally she invoked the one person she had hoped not to involve. ‘I have to do this for Simon. I have to make sure that Em and Matt understand that I’m not writing him out of their lives or them out of mine. I know he’d want me to be happy but he’d want them to be happy too, so I’ve got to do this in the way I think will make that happen.’
They sat for a moment, neither speaking. Then Oliver took her hand and kissed it, pulling her towards him until she leaned against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart.
‘I think you’re the most wonderful selfless person I’ve ever met.’ He bent to kiss the top of her head.
‘I’m just their mother, that’s all. I—’
‘Sssh!’ He stopped her saying any more. ‘OK. I’ll do whatever you want.’ He ruffled her hair.
‘You will?’ His sudden agreement shocked her.
‘Yes.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to, but I will.’
‘Thank you so, so much.’ She sat up to face him, taking both his hands in hers. ‘Where will you go?’ Now she was anxious at the idea of being separated from him again.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘But you must have. What have you done with all the stuff you must have brought back from France?’ She pulled her pashmina tighter round her shoulders, aware of a chill in the night breeze.
‘I’ve stored it all at a friend’s place near Cardiff. Yes, I could go there.’
‘Near Cardiff! You never said.’
‘You never asked and it didn’t seem important.’
‘But you must have friends in London?’ This wasn’t what Ellen had imagined at all. She had imagined him nearby, in easy reach, so that he could call in regularly and gradually become more of a fixture in their lives without the children really noticing.
‘None. Not close enough to bum a bed from anyway – and I couldn’t afford a hotel, not for that length of time. No. I’ll have to see if Dan and Alice can have me for a few months. Do you think that’ll be long enough to sort this out?’
Long enough? It sounded like a lifetime.
‘But how will we see you, if you’re living there? When will we see you?’
‘It’s only a couple of hours on the train. Ellen, this is what you wanted. Remember?’
‘But I hadn’t imagined you quite so far away. I’d thought of you sneaking out in the early morning
