I still be able to be the husband my wife needs right now? Does she deserve me to be? I toss the keys between my hands, pull up the collar on my coat and walk into her house.
I sit down at Nessa’s kitchen table, and she places a cup of coffee in front of me. I thank her, blowing over the rim, and try to stop myself from shaking. I’ve never really shaken before a conversation, not even when I asked Jen to marry me, because, I suppose, I already knew she would say yes. I notice the school letter about a trip to a local farm. The return slip is missing; Erica must have taken it back today. I make an exhausted mental note to make sure I fill in Oscar’s.
Nessa sits down opposite me. In contrast to Jen, Nessa looks well, made-up, ironed, fresh.
‘Do you love her?’ I ask. I have no control over these words, and I find my face has arranged itself into something that resembles astonishment or shock. Probably both.
‘Ye-es.’ The word rolls forward, lilting at the end like a question. Nessa squints at me like I’m mad.
‘Because if you love her, you will see that this isn’t what she needs right now, she needs stability not, not—’
‘Ed, what is this about? Has something happened?’
I take a sip of my coffee, which goes down the wrong way so I spend the next minute coughing and spluttering and waving my hands. Control regained, I continue. ‘I saw you both . . . together . . . in the pool. The day you made the cardboard house.’
She tilts her head, her eyes looking upwards as if trying to recollect something. Then realisation dawns and her hand flies to her mouth.
I expected a reaction, but I didn’t expect her to try and hide laughter.
‘Oh, God.’ Both hands fly in front of her eyes now, like the beginnings of a game of peek-a-boo. She’s laughing loudly, and I honestly don’t know what to do with myself. ‘I bet you got a shock!’
‘Well . . . yes, I—’
‘We’d had a few drinks.’
‘I know, but—’
‘Naked Macarena, now there’s one to tell your grandkids.’
Naked. Macarena. Two words I wasn’t expecting to hear today. Nessa stops laughing and looks at me.
‘You’re not angry, are you? Jen said she had never played naked in a paddling pool and, oh I don’t know, it was a good idea at the time. I’m mortified you saw it though! What must you have thought?’ She shakes her head in a, I suppose, good-natured way.
‘I, um, I didn’t see the Macarena.’
‘Thank the Lord!’
‘I saw you both, you were . . . entwined.’
She seems to register my tone, my face. ‘Entwined? Oh, Ed . . . tell me you didn’t think? That Jen and I were—’
My face must conclude that ‘that’ was indeed what I thought.
‘But Jen’s not gay, Ed!’
‘I know, but I thought, I thought, she’s not herself, she’s—’
‘That doesn’t mean you suddenly turn gay! Oh, Ed.’ She reaches over and holds my hand. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been thinking that Jen and I have been having an affair?’
‘No, yes, I don’t know. I don’t know what to think any more.’
She holds my face in her hands and kisses my cheek. ‘You stupid, beautiful man. Jen has been in love with you ever since you met. Do you know that she spent two hours walking around with a hair repair kit the day before you were coming? That she was pruning and pampering like a teenage girl just because you were coming over?’ She kisses my head and gets up. Then she tells me about what happened when Jen couldn’t see Kerry, when she thought she had lost her.
‘Jen needs you now more than she ever has, Ed. She wants to choose you, but in order to do that . . . she has to choose to kill her sister.’
Chapter Sixty-One
Jennifer
Ed is the type of man who can make it feel like the sun is shining when outside the rain and wind are throwing things around, desperately shouting for your attention. He is the type of man who will step into an argument and calm it . . . pouring oil over troubled waters. He is the type of man who can make you feel loved, safe, worthy even though you know you are acting irrationally because you’ve only had an hour’s sleep, or you have just had one of those days that tarnishes your routine with bad