He watches her intently. ‘Good girl,’ he says, ‘good girl. And the rest.’
She smiles grimly and necks the rest, almost choking on it as it goes down too fast.
He beams at her, shark-like, and says, ‘Oh, good girl. Good girl.’
He takes the empty bottle from her and then turns to pull two wine glasses from a cupboard. ‘Shall we?’ he says, gesturing towards the door into the garden.
‘Let me just finish this.’ She indicates the tomatoes still only half chopped.
‘Finish that later,’ he instructs. ‘Let’s have a drink first.’
She follows him out to the patio, holding the bowl of crisps and her handbag.
He pours two large glasses of wine and pushes one across the table towards her. They toast each other again and then he pinions her with his eyes. ‘So, Lucy Lou, tell me, tell me everything. What have you been doing for the past ten years?’
‘Ha!’ she says shrilly. ‘Where on earth do you want me to start?’
‘How about you start with the man who gave you your daughter?’
Lucy’s stomach flips. She’d known from the moment Michael set his eyes upon Stella that he would have been thinking about her having sex with another man.
‘Oh, really,’ she says, ‘not much to tell. It was a disaster. But I got Stella out of it. So, you know.’
He leans towards her, fixes her with his hazel eyes. He is smiling but it doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I really don’t know. Who was he? Where did you meet him?’
She thinks of the passports sitting somewhere in this house. She cannot afford to make him angry. She cannot tell him that Stella’s father was the love of her life, the most beautiful man she’d ever set eyes on, that he was an exquisite pianist whose music brought her to tears, that he’d broken her heart and that she was still carrying the shattered pieces of it around in her pockets even now, three years since she’d last seen him.
‘He was an arsehole,’ she says. Then she pauses and takes a large sip of wine. ‘Just a pretty boy, a criminal, with nothing between his ears. I felt sorry for him. He didn’t deserve me, and he certainly didn’t deserve Stella.’ She speaks the words with conviction, because while she looks Michael directly in the eye, little does he know that she is describing him.
This description seems to sate Michael for a moment. His smile softens and he looks real again.
‘Where is he now, this idiot?’
‘He did a runner. Went back to Algeria. Broke his mother’s heart. His mother blames me.’ She shrugs. ‘But really, he was always going to disappoint her. He was always going to disappoint everyone. He was just one of those guys.’
He leans towards her again. ‘Did you love him?’
She snorts derisively. ‘God,’ she says, still thinking of Michael. ‘No.’
He nods, as though giving her approval. ‘And was there anyone else? Over the years?’
She shakes her head. It’s another lie but an easier one to tell. ‘No,’ she says. ‘No one. I’ve been living hand to mouth with two small children. Even if I had met someone, you know, it wouldn’t have worked. Logistically.’ She shrugs.
‘Yeah. I can see that. And you know, Lucy’ – he looks at her earnestly – ‘you know, any time you’d asked, I would have helped. All you had to do was ask.’
She shakes her head sadly
He says, ‘Yeah. I know. Too proud.’
This is so far from the truth that it is almost funny, but she nods, knowingly. ‘You know me so well,’ she says, and he laughs.