Greg says.
Miles looks at me. “Where are your brother and his family?” he asks quietly. There’s a strange, pale light in his eyes, like a big cat’s.
“They’re not here.”
“Why not?”
I barely hesitate. “Their flight was delayed.”
“Which airline?” Miles’s voice is soft.
“We didn’t fancy coming to Cornwall,” I say defiantly. “It was a white lie, okay?”
There’s a long silence. Miles shakes his head. “No. It is not okay, Madelyn. It is not okay at all.” He speaks in the same distant voice I heard last time he was here, eerily calm.
“Mate—” Pete begins. Miles turns.
“I’m not your mate, Pete. Though God knows I’ve tried to be, for the sake of my son.” He looks at the table. “Well, budge up. Two more for dinner, now.”
Another silence. There is clearly no way anyone can squeeze up any further.
I take a deep breath. “Miles, Lucy. It’s always great to see you, but this isn’t a good time. As you can see, we’ve got guests.”
“Guests,” Miles repeats. “And they’re more important than the mother and father of that little boy upstairs, are they?”
“It’s not like that—” Pete protests.
“We’re not good enough for you, is that it?” Miles says. “Because we don’t work in the media or take drugs or read the fucking Guardian?”
“Jesus,” Sophie says nervously. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“You should go,” I say firmly to Miles.
“Yes, Miles.” Lucy’s voice is little more than a whisper, and when Miles turns toward her, she flinches. It’s a tiny movement, barely more than a twitch, but with a sudden flash of intuition I think: She’s scared of him. “Let’s go home.”
“Give this to Theo,” he says to no one in particular, pulling a box out of the shopping bag. It’s an Easter egg, a huge one. He puts it on the table.
I suddenly realize that Pete and I should have gotten something for David. We should have investigated low-protein eggs, or thought of a non-chocolate alternative. But it hadn’t even occurred to us.
Miles puts the wine on the table as well. “Come on,” he says to his wife. “Let’s get out of this shithole.”
45
Case no. 12675/PU78B65, Exhibit 23, email from Peter Riley to Miles Lambert.
Miles,
After a day’s reflection, it seems to Maddie and I that none of us handled yesterday evening very well. Certainly, we shouldn’t have told that white lie about Maddie’s brother coming over from Australia. Please understand that we only did so out of a desire to spare your and Lucy’s feelings. We’ve been seeing quite a lot of you recently, which has been on the whole a great pleasure, and we just wanted a little time to ourselves.
Also on reflection, it was remiss of us not to sit down with you both much sooner and work out some ground rules for how this is going to work. Clearly, the effort we’ve all been making to keep it friendly and informal is going to have to be supplemented by some agreements about visiting times, responsibilities, how much input we should each have into each other’s parenting styles, things like that. And we are all going to have to be very clear about what is and isn’t acceptable language to use with each other.
In many ways we think it’s a good thing that harsh words have now been spoken and the air has been cleared. That’s what happens in families, isn’t it—a row, followed by reconciliation. And we definitely are a kind of family, even if it’s an unconventional one.
What do you say—shall we agree to put last night behind us, for the sake of our children, and take it from there? There are so many positives to be had from this situation, even if it is going to take effort and commitment on both sides to make it work smoothly.
Best wishes,
Pete and Maddie
46
MADDIE
PERSONALLY, I THINK THE email is way too conciliatory. I’m still furious at the way Miles and Lucy ruined our evening, and it’s taken all Pete’s powers of persuasion to convince me that the future relationship with them is worth swallowing my anger for.
“Think of David,” he said quietly. “Think of our biological son, sitting in that huge house with a father who virtually ignores him because he’ll never make the first eleven. Are we really going to walk away from our son just because Miles is turning out to be trickier than we first thought? David needs us to be bigger than that, Mads.”
At which, I burst into tears and told him to write whatever he liked.