I charged out of my bedroom feeling as though I might start smashing things and screaming, ‘You want to ruin your life? You want to kill yourself? Here, let me help!’ The minuscule fraction of sanity remaining acknowledged that a scene like that probably didn’t need an audience of teenagers standing round agog.
Instead, I marched into Victor’s room. He wasn’t going to be immune from the mad mum rampage. For the first time ever I didn’t knock, and he jumped as the door flung open. I don’t know who was more relieved that he was just helping Georgia put her jacket on. Even in my anger, I recognised the chivalry of that gesture, though, of course, the rumpled bed suggested that it hadn’t been an evening of unbridled politesse.
In a tight voice, I said, ‘Everyone is going home now,’ and slammed out again. Georgia and Victor. Faye wasn’t going to like that. Then again, served her right for not carrying through with her big threat of grounding Georgia till Christmas.
I stormed downstairs. Teenagers were milling through the hallway towards the door. I went into the kitchen, taking in the floor tacky with drink, the chewing gum stuck on my worktops, the fags and joints stubbed out in my plant pots and little silver dishes that I’d brought back from Morocco, where Ginny had taken me for a long weekend for my fortieth birthday. The disrespect of that ignited another torrent of fury.
I grabbed a bin bag, chucking in half-empty bottles of beer and vodka, nearly full cans of cider, and lugged it, dripping, towards the garden, no longer caring that the sticky liquid was seeping down between the parquet tiles. I thrust it onto the lawn, hearing everything crash down with a satisfying smash, before slumping onto the wooden bench by my flower bed and letting the tears stream out into the freezing night.
I made no attempt to stifle my crying. I leant over and howled my hurt in a manner that Ginny would have dismissed as dramatic. At the most, even when she got the ‘no more treatment options left’ news, she allowed tears to roll silently down her face, muttering, ‘My poor boy, I’m sorry I didn’t live longer for you’ to herself.
No doubt Phoebe would be teased about me when she got to school on Monday. But, right now, I was claiming centre stage of unhappiness. I couldn’t begin to imagine how anything would ever be right again. Me and Patrick. Could I really sit by every day and observe the biological connection he’d had with my best friend? Could I witness the little quirks of nature that triumphed nurture without them underlining the big lie that had sat alongside our marriage for eighteen years? Would every shared gesture, every lightning-quick understanding that comes from a genetic bond act like the sun on a magnifying glass, angled directly at my wounds until I combusted under the strain of pretending it didn’t matter?
And that was before I tackled the whole issue of how we would tell Victor without him bursting into flames himself. God knows how we’d explain it to Phoebe without creating more problems than the skyscraper of shit we were already failing to scale. On the upside for her, she’d have a great line to tell any future therapist. ‘Yeah, well, when I was only sixteen, my half-brother, my dad’s son, came to live with us, but no one told me… So, yeah, it’s not to my credit but I did find cocaine helped me forget…’
I had a child who, by the looks of things, had taken coke. I couldn’t figure it out. We were so ordinary. So unremarkable. Just two normal parents, not perfect, but until now I would have said good enough.
Footsteps coming closer stopped my train of thought. I didn’t sit up. I didn’t want to talk to anyone and I certainly couldn’t trust myself to speak to Phoebe. Someone sat down next to me and, from my bent-over position, I recognised the trainers as Victor’s. The bench creaked as he leant back.
‘Can I do anything?’
That voice. The same intonation as Ginny. That Welsh inflection underpinned by equal amounts of steel and kindness.
‘Nope. Thank you. I probably just need to be left alone.’
He did what Ginny would have done. Completely ignored me. ‘You’re shivering.’ He got up and went inside. I had that strange sensation of asking to be left alone and then feeling abandoned when I got my wish.