don’t complain, you’re in the golden age of parenting.
I turned back to Patrick. ‘Will Cory keep his mouth shut? He’s the one who’s piqued Victor’s curiosity by making out he knows something.’
Patrick shrugged. ‘He’s a decent man, Jo. He was devastated that you were so upset. I think – because he doesn’t have any experience of marriage and kids – that he thought once you’d got over the shock, you might even be pleased that Victor was related to us in some way?’
I stood with my mouth open. ‘Did Cory actually say that or is that you putting words into his mouth? What you would like to happen?’
Patrick put his glass down. ‘Jo. I don’t know what you want me to do. I wish I’d dealt with it earlier and it hadn’t blown up in our faces. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you. I love you and that hasn’t changed. I didn’t love Ginny except as a friend. It’s a long time ago and I really hope you’ll forgive me and let us be a family. I need you on my side to sort out what we do next. We can’t tell Victor without telling Phoebe, so we can’t just improvise.’
Patrick apologising and acknowledging that he could have done it differently made my heart thaw slightly.
He stood up and held his arms out. I wasn’t sure whether I was that defrosted yet. ‘Jo. Come on. Stick with me. We’ll find a way through this.’
I put my head into his shoulder, hingeing forward at the neck rather than relaxing into him. But the smell and warmth of him fired all the synapses in my brain that recognised safety and comfort. Within moments, I’d leant into him and the tears I’d refused to let him see, entrenched as I was in my sense of injustice, poured out of me.
He nuzzled into the top of my head. ‘Jo. I’m sorry I’ve dragged us into this mess. I wish I could fix it. Victor has a right to know, but I’m really worried about how to broach it with Phoebe.’
‘Can we not think about it for one evening? Just watch crap TV and deal with it again tomorrow?’
He kissed my cheek. ‘Good plan.’
And for the first time in a month, since that horrible evening at Cory’s, the chill that had been pervading our house dissipated, though every time I heard the creak of the floorboard in Victor’s bedroom above, something snagged in my chest. This wasn’t going to go away with us sticking our heads in the sand. And it wasn’t as if we only had that one issue to resolve. Despite my best efforts to talk to Phoebe about whether she was experimenting with drugs and sex, nearly keeling over with the effort of not sounding judgemental but approachable and caring, any conversation inevitably ended with her slamming out. I veered between draconian sanctions – ‘Right, no more going out in the evenings until I know you can behave’ – which on current performance would probably be 2030 – and trying to allow little freedoms so that she could build up trust and I could praise her for it.
I’d been encouraged by her desire to take part in a musical production at school, and, at 9 p.m. I was just about to fetch her from a rehearsal, when my phone beeped.
Going for fish and chips with Georgia. Jordan will drop me home about 11.
I relayed the message to Patrick, who said, ‘She shouldn’t be out that late on a school night.’
‘So should I go and get her?’ My irritation that I’d have to be the bad guy because he’d been drinking threatened the fragile truce.
‘I’ll ring her,’ Patrick said.
The phone rang and rang. One of the miracles of modern technology and teenagers that despite them being glued to their screens 24/7, they never actually picked up when you needed to talk to them.
I texted:
Phone me.
Nothing. I shifted from text to WhatsApp, our TV programme long forgotten.
‘I’ll text Faye and double-check what’s happening.’
The response came back immediately.
Georgia went to bed half an hour ago and Jordan is staying in Southampton on a university open day. Do you want me to see if I can find out where she is?
I relayed her message to Patrick, my heart plummeting at yet another scene which would keep the Stedhurst mums in gossip for at least another week. I’d deliberately kept a low profile after the party but I was sure that more than one mother had made full