Caroline Anderson - From Christmas to Eternity

Weeks ago?

Months?

No. Surely not months.

He was too tired to work it out, but the hollow ache of regret in his chest was preventing him from sleeping, and he lay there, staring at the ghostly white moonlight filtering round the edge of the curtains, until exhaustion won and he finally fell asleep.

‘Did he come home?’

‘Not until very, very late,’ she told Emily. ‘Here, eat your toast. Megan’s had hers.’

She painstakingly spread butter onto the toast, then stuck the buttery knife into the chocolate spread and smeared it on the toast, precisely edge to edge, her tongue sticking slightly out of the side of her mouth in concentration. When it was all done to her satisfaction, she looked up and said, ‘So didn’t you go at all? Even later?’

‘No. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes, it does, Mummy. He broke a promise!’

She blinked away the tears and hugged her daughter. Their daughter. So like her father—the floppy dark hair, the slate blue eyes, the tilt of her lips—everything. Megan with her light brown curls and clear green eyes was the image of her mother, but Emily and Lottie were little clones of Andy, and just looking at them broke her heart.

Em was so straightforward, so honest and kind and loving, everything she’d fallen for in Andy. But now …

‘Where is he? Is he still sleeping?’

‘I think so. He came to bed very late, so I left him. What do you want to do today?’

‘Something with Daddy.’

‘Can we feed the ducks?’ Megan asked, glancing up from the dog’s bed where she was curled up with Stanley gently pulling his ears up into points. The patient dog loved Megan, and tolerated almost anything. ‘Stanley likes to feed the ducks.’

‘Only because you give him the bread,’ she said drily. ‘Yes, we can feed the ducks.’

‘I’ll go and wake Daddy up,’ Emily said, jumping down off her chair and sprinting for the stairs.

‘Em, no! Leave him to sleep—’

But it was too late. She heard voices on the landing, and realised Andy must already be up. The stairs creaked, and her heart began to thump a little harder, the impending confrontation that had been eating at her all night rearing its ugly head over the breakfast table.

‘Daddy, you have to say sorry to Mummy because you broke a promise,’ Em said, towing him into the kitchen, and Lucy looked up and met his stony gaze and her heart sank.

‘I had no choice. Didn’t Mummy explain that to you? She should have done. I can’t leave people to die, Em, promise or not. That’s my biggest promise, and it has to come first.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have promised Mummy.’

‘I would have thought our marriage vows were your biggest promise,’ Lucy said softly, and he felt a knife twist in his heart.

‘Don’t go there, Luce. That isn’t fair.’

‘Isn’t it?’

His glance flicked over the children warningly, and she nodded. ‘Girls, go and get washed and dressed.’

‘Are we feeding the ducks?’

‘Yes,’ Lucy said, and they pelted for the door.

‘I want to carry the bread—’

‘No, you give it all to Stanley—’

‘ Are we feeding the ducks?’ he asked when their thundering footsteps had receded, and she shrugged.

‘I don’t know. I am, and they are. Are you going to deign to join us?’

‘Luce, that’s bloody unfair—

‘No, it’s not. You’re bloody unfair. And don’t swear in front of Lottie.’

He clamped his teeth together on the retort and turned to the kettle.

‘For heaven’s sake, Lucy, you’re being totally unreasonable. I didn’t have a choice, I let you know, I apologised—’

‘So that’s all right, is it? You apologised, so it makes it all OK? What about our marriage vows, Andy? Don’t they mean anything to you any more? Don’t I mean anything? Don’t we? Us, you and me, and the children we’ve had together? Because right now it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like we no longer have a marriage.’

He turned and stared at her as if she was mad. ‘Of course we do,’ he said, his voice slightly impatient as if her faculties were impaired. ‘It’s just a rough time. We’re ridiculously understaffed at work till James gets back, and I’m trying to get this assignment done, but it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with our marriage.’

‘Doesn’t it? Just sleeping here for a few hours a night doesn’t qualify as marriage, Andy. Being here, wanting to be here—that’s a marriage, not taking every shift that’s going and filling your life with one academic exercise after another just so you can avoid us!’

‘Now you’re really being ridiculous! I don’t have time for this—’

‘No, of course you don’t, that would involve talking to me, having a conversation! And we all know you won’t do that!’

He stalked off, shut the study door firmly and left her there fuming, the subject once again brushed aside.

He watched them go, listened to the girls’ excited chatter, the dog whining until the door was opened, then trotting beside Lucy and the buggy while the girls dashed ahead, pausing obediently on the edge of the pavement.

They went out of the gate and turned right, and Lucy glanced back over her shoulder. She couldn’t see him, he was standing at the back of the study with Emily’s words ringing in his ears, but he could read the disappointment and condemnation in her eyes.

He’d been about to go out into the hall, to say he’d go with them, but then he’d heard Em ask if he was coming.

‘No,’ Lucy had replied. ‘He’s too busy.’

‘He’s always too busy,’ Emily had said, her voice sad and resigned, and he’d felt it slice right through him.

He should have gone out into the hall there and then and said he was joining them. It wasn’t too late even now, he could pull his boots on and catch up, they wouldn’t have got far.

But he didn’t. He really, really had to finish this assignment today, so he watched them out of sight, and then he went into the kitchen, put some toast in, switched the kettle on again and made a pot of coffee. His hand shook slightly as he poured the water onto the grounds, and he set the kettle down abruptly.

Stress. It must be stress. And no wonder.

He tipped his head back and let out a long, shaky sigh. God, he’d got some work to do to make up for this. Em’s voice echoed in his head. Daddy, you broke a promise . After all he’d said to them, everything he believed in, and he’d let them down. Lucy should have explained to them, but frankly it didn’t sound as if she herself understood.

Well, she ought to. She was a doctor, too, a GP—or she had been until they’d had Lottie. She was still on maternity leave, debating going back again part time as she had before, just a couple of sessions a week.

He didn’t want her to go back, thought the children needed her more than they needed the money, and it was yet another bone of contention. They seemed to be falling over them all the time, these bones.

The skeleton of their marriage?

He pressed the plunger and poured the coffee, buttered his toast with Emily’s knife and then pulled a face at the streak of chocolate spread smeared in with the butter. He drowned it out with bitter marmalade, and sat staring out at the bedraggled and windswept garden.

He couldn’t remember when they’d last been out there doing anything together. June, maybe, when Lottie was three months old? He’d mowed the lawn from time to time, but they hadn’t cut the perennials down yet for the winter, or trimmed back the evergreens, or cleared the summer pots and tubs. Lucy had been preoccupied with Lottie, and he’d been too busy to do anything other than go to work, come home to eat and then shut himself in the study until he was too tired to work any longer. If he’d made it into the sitting room so he could be with Lucy, he’d had the laptop so he could carry on working until he fell into bed.