Читать книгу The Dilemma - Б. Э. Пэрис, B Paris A - Страница 19

Kirin turns off the main road into an all-too-familiar street and my heart immediately starts beating faster.

‘What are we doing here?’ I ask, trying to hide my alarm.

Kirin laughs. ‘Picking up Jess, of course!’

‘She’s coming with us?’

‘Yes! We wanted it to be a surprise.’

I take a minute to digest the news, to control my emotions. I’m glad Jess is coming, of course I am, she’s my oldest friend. But it’s become complicated.

‘Will she be alright?’ I ask Kirin. ‘It won’t be too much for her, will it?’

‘She’ll be fine. But she doesn’t want to drive anymore, which is why we’re picking her up.’

As we pull up in front of Jess’s house, I take my bag from the floor and rummage inside, feeling awful that I didn’t know she no longer felt up to driving. But how could she tell me when I haven’t seen her for weeks?

‘I need to send a text,’ I say apologetically, taking out my phone.

Kirin snaps off her seatbelt. ‘No problem, I’ll go and get her.’

I keep my head bent over my phone, listening to her footsteps as she walks up the path. There’s the peal of the doorbell and for a moment I forget to breathe. Then I hear Jess saying hello, the front door closing behind her, and the two of them coming back down the path, chattering excitedly together. Only then do I get out of the car.

‘Jess!’ I say, as she walks towards me, leaning heavily on her stick. I give her a hug, careful not to knock her off balance.

‘Happy birthday!’ she says, hugging me back.

‘Thank you. It’s so lovely to see you!’

‘It’s been a while,’ she says softly.

‘I know and I’m sorry. It’s been a really busy time, with the party and everything. Here, let me help you.’

‘I’m fine sitting in the back,’ she protests.

‘Don’t be silly, you’re going in the front.’ I take her arm, helping her in. She seems frailer than I remember and worry stabs at me.

I’ve known Jess for years. We were at school together and I was with her the night I met Adam at a friend’s party. Adam was with Nelson and although Nelson was the one with all the jokes, I was immediately drawn towards Adam, not just because he was amazingly handsome in the way most boys his age never are, but also because of the way he looked right into my eyes when he spoke to me. His eyes have always mesmerised me; they’re the most beautiful grey, and Marnie has been lucky enough to inherit them.

By the end of the evening, we’d arranged to go out as a foursome the following week and I couldn’t wait to see him again – until Jess asked me if I’d mind if she paired up with Adam. He must have been looking into her eyes too, I realised miserably. But seeing him with Jess was better than not seeing him at all, I decided, and Nelson was a lot of fun to be with. And it was only for an evening. We went to a club – something my parents would have forbidden if they’d known – and I found myself alone with Adam. He admitted later that he told Nelson he’d only go on the date if Nelson agreed to babysit Jess for the evening, so that he could be with me.

In one of life’s unexpected twists, Jess is now married to Rob, Nelson’s younger brother. Their daughter, Cleo, is Marnie’s best friend, I’m Cleo’s godmother and Jess is Marnie’s, so we’re a kind of extended happy family. Then, two years ago, Jess was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

‘Everyone in?’ Kirin asks, starting up the engine.

‘Everyone in,’ I confirm, fastening my seatbelt. ‘This is such a lovely surprise. I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday than with my two best friends.’

I might not have known Kirin as long as I’ve known Jess, but ever since Nelson introduced her to me and Adam, she’s become a really close friend. There were times when Adam and I wondered if Nelson would ever get married. He finally did, at thirty-four, which isn’t old, it just seemed that way because we’d been married for fifteen years by then. It happened quickly too. His and Kirin’s was definitely a whirlwind romance, but I’m not surprised. Not only is Kirin incredibly lovely, she’s also incredibly beautiful, with long dark, sleek hair and gorgeous olive skin, a legacy of her Indian heritage.

I think Adam was relieved that Nelson was no longer single. It had been hard for him during those early years, seeing Nelson going off on his Harley Davidson with his friends from the motorcycle club, while he took Josh and Marnie swimming, or to the park, or on nature walks. Even when Nelson met Kirin, our day-to-day lives remained poles apart because they had the freedom to do whatever they wanted, go wherever they wanted, without having to think about anyone else. Then the twins came along, then Lily, and now Nelson doesn’t go anywhere without them in tow, except on Sunday mornings when he gets to ride his bike down to the coast.

‘Rob was asking if Adam intends taking his bike out tomorrow,’ Jess says, catching uncannily onto my train of thought. ‘You know, as you won’t get to bed until the early hours of the morning.’

‘I doubt that only getting a couple of hours’ sleep will stop Adam from doing what he loves best,’ I say shortly. And then I want to kick myself because I’ve made it sound as if I don’t want Adam to go out on his bike, which isn’t the case at all.

It’s true that motorbikes used to be a sore point between us, but only because of what happened a couple of years into our marriage. When Josh was a few months old, we moved from his parents’ house, where we’d been living since our wedding, into our own flat. Money was tight, as everything Adam earned seemed to go on Josh, so I began to take in ironing. People would drop off baskets of crumpled clothes on their way to work and pick them up, on their way home, neatly ironed. I only took two baskets a day, but ten a week meant we could just about make ends meet because, in an attempt to get Adam to turn up for work on a regular basis, Mr Wentworth only paid him for the hours he actually worked. It meant that his salary varied from month to month and sometimes, we couldn’t pay the rent.

After a couple of months, without telling Adam, I began to put ten pounds out of the hundred I earned each week into a shoebox, which I kept at the bottom of the wardrobe. I missed the holidays my parents had taken me on and I wanted to rent a cottage in Cornwall as a surprise for him and Josh.

One Saturday, about the time I was thinking of booking the holiday – because after two years, I’d finally saved enough – I came back from the supermarket, heavily pregnant with Marnie, and saw a motorbike parked in the road outside our flat. Guessing that Rob was there, because I knew from Jess that he’d recently bought a bike, I touched it and found the engine hot. I was glad he’d only just arrived; any earlier and he’d have woken Josh from his afternoon sleep. But when I went up to the flat, there was only Adam, sitting on the sofa, and I knew straightaway that something was wrong from the look on his face.

‘Where’s Rob?’ I asked, putting the shopping bags down on the floor.

‘He’s left.’

I put both hands on my back, easing the ache from it. ‘Isn’t that his motorbike outside?’

‘No.’ He paused. ‘It’s mine.’

‘Yours?’

‘That’s right.’

Stunned, I sat down opposite him.

‘I don’t understand. How can you afford a motorbike?’ He didn’t say anything and my heart sank. ‘Please don’t tell me you took out a loan. I thought we agreed no loans, that we only buy what we can afford.’

He lay his head back against the sofa. ‘Oh, don’t worry, we can afford it.’

I looked at him, puzzled by his attitude. Had my parents relented and sent a cheque or something? When I’d found out I was pregnant again, I’d written to ask if they could restore the allowance they’d paid me since my sixteenth birthday from money my grandmother had left me. My father had refused, telling me my grandmother would be as ashamed of me as they were. I didn’t think they’d have changed their minds and even if they had, the allowance was in my name so Adam wouldn’t have been able to touch it. Maybe his parents?

‘Did your parents lend you the money?’

‘No,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

‘A bonus from Mr Wentworth?’

He gave a snort of laughter. ‘I wish.’

‘Well, maybe if you turned up for work a bit more often, he’d give you one!’ I retorted. ‘Stop playing games, Adam. Where did you get the money from?’

He lowered his head and looked me straight in the eye. ‘You know damn well where.’

It took me a moment to realise what he meant. Running into the bedroom, I found the shoebox open on the bed, empty except for a handful of one and two pound coins. When I’d last counted, there’d been over a thousand pounds. Now there were barely ten. Sick with fear that he could do such a thing, I picked up the box and went tearing back to him.

‘How dare you?’ I cried. ‘How dare you steal my money?’

He was on his feet in an instant.

‘How dare you?’ he countered angrily, his face close to mine. ‘How dare you keep money from me when you knew how much I wanted a motorbike.’

‘Only since Rob bought one! You never mentioned wanting a bike before that!’

‘Because I thought I’d never be able to have one, not with a child to bring up! But then Rob enlightened me, told me the reason I couldn’t afford one was because you’d been hiding money from me. So, when exactly were you planning to leave me?’

I stared at him. ‘What are you talking about? When have I ever said that I wanted to leave you?’

‘Why else would you have been hoarding money?’

‘Not to leave you! I love you, Adam, although sometimes I don’t understand why, not when you behave like you do.’

‘So what was the money for then?’

‘I was saving to take you and Josh on holiday!’

From his bedroom, Josh began to cry, woken by our raised voices. A flash of fear ran through me.

‘When? When did you buy the bike?’

‘This morning, while you were out.’

‘I was only gone two hours.’

‘It was long enough.’

‘Was Rob here? Did he stay here while you went to buy it?’

‘No, it was one of his friends who was selling it, so he came with me.’

I stared at him, hating that he hadn’t even grasped what I was getting at. ‘How did you get it back here?’

‘How do you think? I rode it!’

‘How?’

‘What do you mean, how?’

‘I mean how did you ride it when you had Josh with you?’

I could see him working it out, see him thinking – Josh? The blood drained from his face.

‘You forgot, didn’t you?’ I moved towards him, so mad that I wanted to scratch his eyes out. ‘You forgot about Josh. You look after him so rarely that you forgot he existed. You went off to buy yourself a motorbike leaving your son here, your son who could have woken up and found himself alone in the flat.’ I looked behind him to the open window. ‘Josh is nearly three, Adam, three! He can climb!’

‘I didn’t know,’ he stuttered. ‘I didn’t think.’

‘You never think, that’s the problem! You think about yourself, but you don’t think about me, or Josh, you never have and you never will! So this is what you’re going to do. I’m going out and when I come back, I want you gone! Go and live with Nelson – you think more of him than you do of us. Here’s the money for your fare!’ And I flung the contents of the box in his face.

For days after, I could see the marks on his forehead where the coins hit him.

Although Adam returned the bike that afternoon and managed to get the money back, he’s never forgiven Rob for misleading him. Neither have I, because I know that when Jess told him what I’d told her in confidence – that I was secretly saving – she would also have mentioned why. At the time, I wondered at Rob’s motive. Then I remembered how persistent he’d been in asking me out, even though I’d already met Adam, even though each time I refused. Even now the only thing I can think of is revenge. As I sit behind Kirin and Jess, watching the beautiful countryside fly past the window, a shiver goes down my spine.