Kate Field - The Man I Fell In Love With

I didn’t mind today: the opportunity to tramp the fields around Stoneybrook, our village located deep in the Lancashire countryside, letting the fresh air sting a trail down to my lungs and the cold numb every sense, was exactly what I needed. It was good to exchange hellos with normal people, who had normal lives, and who knew nothing of mine. Or I hoped they didn’t – but as the walk went on, my paranoia grew. Was there something suspicious in that smile, something judgemental in that look? Was I being scrutinised for signs of trauma? Then, as we were on the home straight, squelching through the field that backed onto our house, a greyhound and its owner caught us up: my fault for dawdling, reluctant to get home.

I knew the owner, a tall, stocky man in his early forties: he was a teacher at Broadholme school, where Jonas and Ava were pupils, and had taught Jonas art in his first couple of years – a vague connection we acknowledged with a nod and a smile if we ever passed on our walks. I was more wary of acknowledging him today. There had been a group of teachers at the Christmas charity dinner. What if he had been one of them? Was he sneakily weighing me up, curious about the woman who had driven her husband gay? I hunched down into my scarf, and quickened my pace, tugging on the extending lead, but Dotty had other ideas. She pounced on the greyhound as if they were long-lost best friends; a manic, wagging, bouncing bundle of fluff, while the greyhound gazed nobly into the distance, refusing to acknowledge her.

The man – Owen Ferguson, I remembered, from two excruciating parents’ evenings, when we’d all had to fake enthusiasm for Jonas’ artwork – smiled and tipped his head towards Dotty.

‘Quite a handful, I imagine?’

‘Yes.’ I examined his words for hidden layers of sarcasm or innuendo, but couldn’t detect any. ‘She certainly throws herself at everything with unchecked enthusiasm. Literally,’ I added, as Dotty leapt up at the greyhound again. ‘Sorry. Dotty! Come here!’

She ignored me; my voice had a unique pitch that neither dogs nor teenagers could hear. Owen whistled and the greyhound sauntered immediately to his side.

‘Impressive,’ I said, tugging the lead to drag Dotty back. ‘Do you use that trick on the children too?’

‘No, they’d never hear it over the ear pods.’ His smile flashed up, a deep, brief smile that reminded me of Leo. ‘I need a klaxon to round them up.’

I smiled back, but it faded quickly, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

‘Are things … okay?’ Owen asked. I nodded, once, and he repeated the movement back at me, which could have looked odd, but was strangely comforting. ‘Good.’ He bent down and ruffled Dotty’s head. ‘Goodbye, Dotty. I expect we’ll see you around.’

He headed off diagonally across the field towards the village, while I went straight on to the kissing gate that opened onto the road a little way down from our house. As Dotty stopped to water the bottom of a telegraph pole, Leo’s car approached and pulled onto the drive. He got out and slammed the door, a rare sign of temper for Leo. Seconds later, the passenger door opened and Ethan emerged. It must have been two years since I had seen him, but he had scarcely changed: hair as thick and blond as ever; immaculately dressed despite a seven-hour flight; confident, athletic movements, even in the way he pushed the car door shut and hauled his suitcase from the boot. It would be impossible to guess, from looks, character, or temperament, that these two were brothers. I watched as they paused in front of the car. Raised voices carried towards me, the words muffled by the mist, but the anger behind them clear; and then Ethan turned and looked right at me. Leo followed his gaze, and after one final heated exchange, they stalked off in different directions, Leo to our house, Ethan next door.

Clark was joining us for Christmas lunch. It had been my idea, and I still wasn’t sure if it was the best or the worst one I’d ever had. But I wanted Leo to be with the children for one last Christmas – wholly with us, body and mind, not sneaking off to make furtive phone calls, or leaving before the pudding in an attempt to split his day between us. So Clark had to come; and the delight on Leo’s face when I issued the invitation clarified things for me. It was the best idea for him, and the worst one for me.

The present opening was a subdued affair, despite the jolly Christmas music, the defiantly twinkling fairy lights, and glasses of Buck’s Fizz all round. It all went on too long: I had overdone it during a manic spending spree the day before, as if somehow a bigger stash of presents could compensate the children for the impending loss of Leo. They were pleased; they smiled; but it wasn’t the carefree joy of previous Christmases. I couldn’t see how we would ever get that back.

I had agonised over whether to buy a different present for Leo. In my usual efficient fashion, I had ordered his Christmas gift months ago: a handmade pair of silver cufflinks, each one in the shape of a miniature book, engraved with the title of his favourite novel by the Victorian author Alice Hornby, Lancashire’s answer to Charlotte Brontë. Leo had spent his academic career studying Alice’s life and work, with me as his eager research assistant; he had already published an annotated edition of her novels, and his biography would be launched in a few months, the culmination of a lifetime of work for both of us.

The cufflinks had seemed the perfect present, and in many ways, they still were. But would he want to wear them, and be constantly reminded of me, and all we had achieved together? I gave them to him anyway, and the delight on his face was almost as great as when I had invited Clark for Christmas. And though I had braced myself for a boring gift from him – because, after all, he had known that our time was almost up and could have shopped accordingly – I should have known him better. He gave me a necklace, with a thick round pendant made of green Murano glass, which reminded me at once of that green Fruit Pastille he had found for me on the day we met. There were tears in his eyes as he watched me open the box, and his hands trembled as he fastened the clasp around my neck. And though I recognised that it had been chosen to mark the end, I knew that it promised a beginning too.

‘A bit late to be making an effort, isn’t it?’ Mum said, when she toddled across from the garage with a bottle of cheap sherry for me, wine for Leo, and a Terry’s Chocolate Orange each for Jonas and Ava. ‘Is that a new dress?’

Of course it was: another emergency purchase yesterday. Clark was coming. I wasn’t going to meet him properly for the first time in the same dowdy skirt and blouse I’d worn for the last four years.

‘A new necklace too?’ she carried on. I fingered it: the glass pastille was comfortingly smooth under my finger. ‘Who’s been buying you jewellery?’

‘One of my lovers dropped round with it early this morning.’

‘From Leo, is it?’ Mum asked, ignoring what I’d said: clearly the pitch of my voice was inaudible to pensioners too. ‘Has he dumped the boyfriend then? You should take him back. You’ll struggle to find anyone else, in the circumstances.’

I turned and led her into the living room, without giving her the satisfaction of asking which particular circumstances she had in mind. My age? My looks? My crabby mother living in the garage, overseeing my every move? Leo drew her over to the sofa, distracting her with his quiet, charming conversation, while I hovered in the doorway, wondering how on earth I was going to survive without him.

Audrey and Ethan were next to arrive. Audrey looked stunning in a red wrap dress, blonde hair piled into a sophisticated messy bun, and yet still managed to hug me and say I looked beautiful with impressive sincerity. Ethan was … Well, Ethan was Ethan, no more and certainly no less than he had always been. He had lived a charmed life, and now even age was favouring him; his face had perhaps filled out a little, but it suited him; the confidence that had once seemed a size too big now fitted him like a jacket tailored to the millimetre. With my confidence so recently shattered, I felt oddly flustered to see him again; so much so that when he leaned forward to kiss my cheek, I opened my mouth to wish him a merry Christmas instead, twitched my head, and somehow managed to catch his kiss perfectly on my parted lips.