Fiona Harper - Don't Go Breaking My Heart - Break Up to Make Up / Always the Best Man

She blinked and her lids stayed closed only a fraction of a second longer than was necessary.

I am not going to cry. I will just harden and harden until I can’t feel any more and then I will chat and finish my soup and leave as if nothing was the matter.

It wasn’t Andy and Phoebe’s fault. She shouldn’t punish them by falling to pieces at the lunch table.

It wasn’t even Nick’s fault. The doctor had said it was one of those things—as though she’d left her umbrella on the bus—and that there was no reason why she shouldn’t try again in a couple of months. Only that had been a bit tricky when her husband and his vital ingredients had vanished from her life, never to return.

Adele watched her hosts as, in a strange kind of slow-motion, Andy passed the basket of warm bread to Phoebe and she gave him a little smile.

Such a lot passed between them in that tiny moment and Adele’s heart clenched at the memory of times when Nick had looked at her that way. Now he was just glaring at her over his soup.

She’d been wrong. This wasn’t a horror story; it was a fairy tale.

And, if she’d believed in fairies and magic, she’d have stepped through the looking glass and taken their places. But this was real life, and real life was cold and hard and ultimately lonely.

There was no way she and Nick were headed for a happy ending.

Nick’s eyes never left Adele as he shovelled soup into his mouth. At first everything had seemed fine—the conversation had been flowing, but then he realised it was flowing around her as if she were a rock sat in the middle of a gushing stream. None of it made an impact.

He should have known she’d react like this. It wasn’t part of her neatly manicured plan and Adele did not like veering from the plan. Not one little bit.

But, stupidly, he’d hoped that bringing her here might remove the blinkers she wore so firmly strapped to her head. She wasn’t even trying. Slow-burning anger warmed his belly.

Phoebe had asked her a question and she hadn’t even pretended to be interested. She’d just stared into space and ignored her. He’d seen the hurt look on Phoebe’s face, caught her eye and shrugged an apology.

How dared Adele do this?

Maybe he should have warned her about his little detour. Maybe he should have warned Andy and Phoebe that things were less than cheery in the Hughes household. But that did not give his darling wife the excuse to behave like a spoilt child. He was going to drag her into this conversation even if she came kicking and screaming. A little civility was not too much to ask.

‘What do you think of the soup, Adele?’

She turned to look at him slowly. ‘Hmm?’

‘The soup. What do you think?’

‘Oh.’ She hurriedly took another spoonful. ‘It’s nice.’

Well, monosyllables were better than nothing.

He faced Phoebe and grinned. ‘The closest we ever came to home-made soup was buying the over-priced ones in cartons and emptying them into a pan.’

‘I’ve got some recipes for really tasty but easy ones, if you’re interested,’ Phoebe said, looking hopefully at Adele.

Adele smiled back. Sort of. Progress at last.

‘Thank you, but I really don’t have time.’

She went back to playing with her soup, although hardly any of it made its way into her mouth.

He’d have done better if he’d let her stay in a sullen lump at one end of the table. Jumping right in and hoping Adele would follow had been a bad idea. That was what he’d tried to do with this whole trip in the first place, and look how that was turning out.

When was he ever going to learn?

The kitchen seemed darker and more oppressive than it had done when they’d started eating and it took Nick a few moments to realise it had nothing to do with Adele’s mood and everything to do with the fact it was about to rain. Huge grey clouds hung precariously in the air, darkening the sky as if the sun had just set.

Andy stood up. ‘Give us a hand, mate? We left half that motor outside the barn and the bits will rust if they get left out in the rain.’

Nick ran out to join Andy as they scooped various bits of scrap metal off the grass in front of the barn he used as a workshop and dumped them inside. It had always fascinated him how cogs and shafts and odd little shapes fitted together to make something useful. Something that worked—each bit playing its part.

The rain started to splash down in big drops that ran through his hair and down his face as he collected the last pile of stuff.

He’d been so confident when they’d started their journey this morning that he’d be able to win Adele round, but now he wasn’t so sure. Their marriage wasn’t just on hold, it was lying in pieces and he wasn’t sure they could put it all back together and still have something that worked.

Adele swished a damp tea towel round a soup bowl then placed it on the stack with the others. At least she couldn’t mess up helping with the dishes. The added bonus was that it was a chore that involved very little talking. None at all, if she were lucky.

She glanced over her shoulder to see Phoebe wiping her son’s face and unbuckling the harness of his high-chair. He smiled at her as she lifted him up and immediately thrust his chubby little hand into Phoebe’s hair and tugged. She didn’t seem to mind. She just laughed and kissed him on the nose.

The dish Adele was wiping slid through the soggy tea towel and didn’t even attempt to bounce off the tiled floor.

Nothing could go wrong while wiping up, huh? Famous last words.

‘I’m sorry, Phoebe. I should have changed to a fresh towel when this one got damp.’

Phoebe shook her head. ‘Don’t worry. I drop stuff all the time. I now only ever buy cheap white crockery from the market. It’s never hard to find something that matches when the inevitable happens. I’ll go and get the broom. Here—’ she extended her arms and held Max towards her ‘—if you could take him, I’ll be back in just a tick.’

Adele looked at the little legs swinging in mid-air and swallowed. However, before her mind had made a conscious decision, her hands had found their way under Max’s armpits and she drew him to her chest.

Phoebe disappeared out through a little wooden door and Adele was left alone in the kitchen with a warm little body in her arms.

Max had stretched his neck to breaking point almost to follow his mother as she crossed the kitchen and, now that she was gone, he let out a squeal of part-rage, part-despair.

Max didn’t understand his mummy was coming back in just a minute and it would do no good to calmly explain that, just because he couldn’t see her for a bit, it didn’t mean she was gone for ever. Adele stroked his hair and whispered what soothing words she could. The truth that Mummy was coming back soon did nothing to negate this little one’s sense of abandonment. She just couldn’t communicate that to him. He stiffened against her, arched his back and screamed.

Know how you feel, she thought. Only she’d learned early on that stamping and screaming never worked when the people you loved disappeared. They left anyway and they didn’t come back, no matter how good you tried to be.

She tried bouncing Max up and down, hoping his life turned out better. But there was no way Phoebe and Andy would leave this little one to wither away at boarding-school, spending some of the school holidays with distant relations that didn’t really have room for him.

Thankfully, Phoebe returned and Max stopped yelling. He seemed quite happy to take hold of her jumper with his fists and babble to himself as long as he could see Phoebe sweeping up the pieces of the broken dish.

He even looked up at her and beamed now he felt safe again. Adele’s heart stuttered. He was so adorable, with his tufty black hair and toothless smile. And he smelled so good—of baby powder and innocence. It was all she could do not to cook up a kidnapping plot.