“Come on, let’s go and see.”
His excitement was contagious. We pulled on our clothes as quickly as we’d taken them off and rushed outside. The snow had covered the paths, the branches of the plane tree, and the shrubs in the borders. Everything was coated in a glittering, sparkling, magical blanket, as if someone had waved a wand over it. But the only possible space to make snow angels was on the patio, which was sheltered slightly by the house and therefore had a lot less snow. So when we threw ourselves down on the paving slabs and moved our arms and legs up and down, we were actually moving as many bits of stick and old leaves as we were snow.
“Scarecrows are the new snow angels,” joked Mark.
He looked ridiculous with leaves and bits of old twigs in his hair. Gorgeous, though. Happy too. Definitely happy.
“Did you know,” Mark said from the paving slabs, “experts estimate that Mount Everest weighs three hundred and fifty trillion pounds?”
There were snowflakes on his eyelashes. I had no idea whatsoever why he was spouting random facts about Mount bloody Everest, but God, he was beautiful.
My stomach gave an unromantic lurch. Well, I hadn’t even had breakfast. The croissants I’d bought to share with Rosie were still in their packet on the kitchen table.
“Wait a minute,” he said, looking at me. “Was that cement-mixer sound your stomach?”
“Might have been,” I said cagily.
He laughed, pushing himself off the ground, holding out a hand to pull me up. “Come on, I’ll cook you some lunch.”
Indoors, we took our wet jackets off.
“The snow’s gone right through my jacket,” Mark said, pulling his damp jumper away from his skin.
“Want to borrow some clothes? I’ve probably got something to fit you.”
His gaze narrowed. “Not if it’s that T-shirt you lent to Eagle Man last year.”
“Eagle Man? Oh, you mean Jake,” I said, transported straight back to that awkward encounter in the hallway with Jake, gorgeous and bare chested, holding the I’M NOT RUDE, I JUST HAVE THE BALLS TO SAY WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS THINKING T-shirt.
“Did anything ever happen between you two?”
I shook my head. “It might have done.”
“Only I ruined it by turning up when I did?”
I nodded. “That’s what always happened. I’d meet someone, think, This could be it at last. This could be something. Then I’d see you, and suddenly . . . Nobody ever matched up, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “Jake’s in love with someone else now. It’s fine. Anyway, are you going to cook me some lunch or what?”
He hung his sodden jacket up on a coat peg, suddenly becoming businesslike. “I am. Go and sit yourself down. Leave me to it.”
I did as I was told, watching Mark move about the kitchen, pulling ingredients from the fridge and the store cupboards with a big, stupid grin on his face, which was no doubt echoed on my own. Tossing bell peppers into the air and catching them like a cocktail bar manager. Making me giggle when he held a leek suggestively low at the front of his jeans and twerked it playfully. Flipping the switch on the radio and breaking into a dance that involved a great deal of butt wiggling.
How many times had I seen Mark in full-on make-as-much-mess-as-you-can cooking mode? Many, many times. Only not so much lately. Not at all lately, in fact, because I had never once been invited over to eat in all the time he’d been with Grace. But even though I hadn’t been over to their flat for dinner, I was pretty sure Grace would have put a cap on the number of saucepans Mark used and insisted on him doing the washing up as he went along, instead of leaving it all until the end.
Uh-oh—Grace. We were going to have to speak about Grace, weren’t we? No matter if it would take some of the shine off this gleaming, glittering day. She was the elephant in the room. And elephants were big creatures capable of trampling and crushing things out of existence just by moving from place to place.
I waited until we’d eaten Mark’s delicious stir-fry and he was smiling at me across the table in a way that made me think about the crumpled sheets on my bed.
“What happened between you and Grace? Why did it go wrong?”
“You mean apart from the fact that she was probably in love with Jaimie all along?”
“D’you think she was?”
“I do, yes. I think she spent our entire marriage trying to turn me into him.”
“Did she try to get you interested in becoming a naturist?”
He flashed me a grin. “No. But then, I have a sneaky suspicion Jaimie won’t be a naturist for very much longer. Grace may love him, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to do everything he wants. This is Grace, after all. She’s very controlling.”
A flicker of something crossed his face. Remembered hurt. Sadness. He reached for my hand across the table, turning it over so he could caress my wrist. Tingles of desire instantly shot right up my arm. I knew he didn’t want to talk about any of this. That he’d much prefer we go to the bedroom to create some highly effective oblivion. But he took a deep breath, sighed, and pressed on.
“Grace controlled me right from the start,” he said. “I thought I was the one making the moves, deciding it was high time I grew up and got married. But it was all her. She was beautiful. Successful. She wanted me. To be married to me. But then we were together, and nothing I did measured up. I didn’t measure up. I’d spend my whole damn time trying to change.” He ran a hand through his hair, remembering. “If we’d had a child together, I bet I still wouldn’t have been good enough for her. She’d have criticised every little thing I did. Don’t hold him like that. He doesn’t need that. That’s not the right way to change a nappy. I’d have spent my whole time trying to be the type of father she wanted me to be.” He shuddered. Then he said, “God, I can’t tell you how happy I am that I’m not a father.”
I can’t tell you how happy I am that I’m not a father.
The words reverberated around my head. On and on, like the gong bath Rosie had dragged me to once. I’d hated it with a passion, emerging afterwards feeling as if my brain had been chewed up by a tiger rather than soothed and unblocked, the way it was supposed to have been.
“What?” Mark asked, instantly sensing something was wrong.
I don’t suppose it was very difficult to sense it. My heart and my mind and my body had all done a sort of emergency stop, turning me rigid, inside and out.
I withdrew my wrist from his grasp, putting my hand on my lap, out of his reach. I looked down at the table, away from his anxious, probing gaze.
If Mark had constantly tried to change himself to be what Grace had wanted him to be, then I had spent an inordinately large amount of my life waiting for him to notice me. And now he was doing just that—noticing me and apparently loving all that he saw. Only he couldn’t see all of me, could he? Because there were still things about me he didn’t know. Huge things. Things I wasn’t prepared to change.
I couldn’t become the person he’d been with Grace, constantly doing my best to adapt, leaving myself and all that I was behind in the process. I couldn’t let anyone—even Mark—stop me from pursuing my dreams.