Three’s a Crowd (31 page)

‘Rachel!'

She looked up. Lexie was pushing the pram across the road towards her, holding Riley by the hand. Oh shit.

She had reached the kerb, and was negotiating the pram up onto the footpath. How was Rachel going to play this? She took a deep breath, walking sedately to meet her.

‘Hi! What are you doing here?' Lexie beamed at her.

‘Well, I was . . . in the neighbourhood,' she began, ‘and, actually, I just called by your place, but you weren't there, obviously,' she added with a nervous laugh.

‘No, I just took the kids for a paddle, but we're heading home now, so come on back.'

‘Oh, I better not,' said Rachel, consulting her watch and shaking her head regretfully. ‘See, now I'm out of time.'

Lexie frowned. ‘But haven't you just come from my place?'

‘Um, yeah . . .'
Think!

‘Mu-um,' said Riley, yanking on his mother's arm.

‘Excuse me, Riley, Mummy and Rachel are talking,'

‘He's fine, go ahead, Riley,' Rachel said. Interrupt away, kid.

‘I have to do a wee, Mum,' he winced, clutching at his crotch.

‘Best not hold you up then,' said Rachel, relieved, unlike poor Riley.

‘But you'll come with us?' Lexie persisted.

‘You know, the thing is, when I got to your place, Tom was out the front, he was getting into his car, and well, we got talking, and you know, it must have been twenty minutes, half an hour, and now, well, I really am out of time. I was only dropping in to say hi.'

A car pulled up behind her, and Lexie looked past Rachel. ‘Oh, here's Tom now.'

Rachel turned around. She hoped he had the sense to follow her lead.

The passenger window slid open and he leaned into view. ‘Hi ladies, what's happening?'

Rachel came closer, ducking down to look at him. ‘I was just telling Lexie how I called by to see her, and she wasn't there but you were out the front, getting into your car, and we were talking for ages, and well, now I'm out of time.'

‘Oh, you should have said. Can I give you a lift somewhere?'

Good save.

She looked at her watch again. ‘You know, that'd be great actually, thanks, Tom.' She turned back to Lexie. ‘I'll call you soon about lunch, okay?'

Lexie looked a little bemused, but she raised her hand in a wave. ‘Okay, bye guys.'

Rachel jumped into the car and Tom took off from the kerb with a toot of the horn. He turned out of the street before reaching over to plant his hand on her knee. ‘Are you all right?'

‘Tom,' she sighed, removing his hand. ‘I don't think this is a good idea.'

‘You don't think what's a good idea? Going to your place to talk?'

‘Yeah, well, that's what I'm worried about, I don't know how much talking is going to happen.'

‘See, you can't pretend there's not something going on between us.' He slowed the car to a stop as traffic bottlenecked ahead.

‘That doesn't make it right.'

He turned abruptly to look at her. ‘You think it's wrong?'

Of course she thought it was wrong. How could she not? Kissing and cavorting in his dead wife's house, what could be right about that? Annie was supposed to have been her friend.

‘I think a lot of things,' said Rachel. ‘What happened back there, with Lexie, for example.'

‘What's the problem? We covered it.'

‘Exactly, and we had to lie to a friend to do it.'

‘Well, technically, you did the lying,' he said, a twinkle in his eye.

‘Tom,' she chided, ‘don't try and make light of this.'

He faced to the front as the traffic started to move again. ‘I'm not making light, Rach, I just don't think we did anything wrong. Or that we're doing anything wrong.'

‘I'm not so sure about that,' she said quietly.

‘Come on, we're consenting adults. Why does this have to be so hard?'

She looked at him, amazed. ‘I can't believe you're saying that. If you don't understand the enormous issues involved, then we really do have a problem.'

He straightened his arms out, clenching the steering wheel. ‘So I suppose now we're going to talk about what's appropriate or not again? I thought I didn't have to do that with you.'

‘It's not that simple, Tom. Other people are involved.'

She didn't want to even think about the way Catherine would react, but hitting roofs would surely be involved. And poor Lexie would just be confused; she had such unwavering loyalty to Annie, it would seem like a betrayal to her. And wasn't it? Surely there was some kind of statute of limitations on something like this? And Rachel bet it had to be longer than a few measly months. Annie deserved better. The knot of guilt in Rachel's stomach tightened another notch.

‘Nobody's going to be able to handle this,' she muttered, least of all herself.

‘It's nobody else's business,' Tom said bluntly.

‘What about your daughters?'

She saw the first hint of understanding flicker across his eyes.

‘It's too soon, Tom. And it'll be weird for them.'

‘Okay, I agree,' he relented. ‘It is a little too soon for the girls to process. So we just have to wait a while, keep it to ourselves, and then introduce the idea to them, slowly, and sensitively. That's possible, isn't it?'

‘I guess,' she faltered. Again, this was heading in a direction she hadn't planned at all. They weren't supposed to be talking about how they were going to be together; they were barrelling along entirely the wrong track.

He was watching her. ‘What is it, Rach?'

‘There's just a lot more to it.'

‘All right, what else?' he said in a businesslike way, as though they were running through items on an agenda.

Rachel sighed. They had to talk about Annie. She had to get Tom to talk about Annie. They couldn't just go on as though she never existed. It wasn't right. But not here in the car, it didn't seem . . . respectful somehow.

‘We're nearly there, let's talk about it when we get inside.'

Ten minutes later, Tom was perched on the edge of her couch, a glass of water at hand, watching her expectantly. Rachel had pulled an armchair over to face him, with the coffee table between them – she needed to keep a little distance.

‘So,' she began, ‘all we've really talked about are the logistical problems involved in you and I –' Rachel couldn't believe she was about to say this ‘– being together, but I think that's the least of our problems.'

He was listening intently, waiting for her to go on.

‘I'm a little nervous about bringing this up again because of the way you reacted earlier, back at the park.'

He sighed, sitting back and dragging a hand through his hair.

‘See, you're annoyed already and I haven't even said anything.'

‘I'm not annoyed,' he denied. ‘Or maybe I am. I don't know. But I'll hear you out.'

‘Okay,' she said. ‘I'm sorry if it seemed like I was patronising you, or analysing your feelings, so I'll try not to do that.' Rachel looked straight at him. ‘Which means you have to tell me what's going on with you.'

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?'

She took a breath. ‘You don't talk about Annie, you barely even mention her.'

He sighed loudly.

‘Catherine said –'

‘Fucking Catherine. This'll be good.'

‘Just listen to me,' Rachel said firmly. ‘Catherine said, and I have heard it elsewhere, that the more pain someone is in after a loss – that's any kind of loss, separation, whatever – the quicker they'll want to fill the gap with someone else.' She stared down at a stain on the carpet, she couldn't look at him. ‘And I don't know if I can be that person, Tom,' she added quietly.

‘You think that's all you are to me?' he said.

She shrugged, still not looking at him.

He sat forwards, leaning his elbows on his knees. ‘Okay, well I think it's time we talked about us, before Annie.'

Her eyes flew up then. ‘Tom, we were kids.'

‘We weren't kids. Maybe we were young, but what I felt for you was real.' He paused. ‘And you treated me like I was your brother.'

‘That's not how I thought of you.'

‘Yeah, well, not the night before you left.'

Rachel clenched her hands together. ‘We were drunk, Tom.'

‘Why do you always say that?'

‘Because it's always true,' she said, looking up at him again. ‘Both times we . . . we were heavily under the influence.'

‘Yeah, well, I could argue that it just helped us lose our inhibitions, express the way we really felt.'

She didn't answer that.

‘I was in a pretty bad way after you left, you know, Rach,' he went on. ‘I remember I woke up, it was nearly eleven and you weren't there, and I knew your plane was already gone. I rang the airport anyway, just to check.'

She looked at him. ‘Did you think I wasn't going to get on that plane, Tom?'

‘No, I knew you had to go,' he shrugged. ‘I just hoped you also knew you had something to come home to. Someone.'

Rachel blinked back tears that were creeping into her eyes again. Why did he have to go and say that?

Tom sat back with a heavy sigh, folding his arms across his chest. ‘And then I got nothing, for how many weeks? Not a word, till that crappy postcard arrived.' He shook his head. ‘I told you, you broke my heart, Rach.'

‘Tom . . . I had no idea,' she said. ‘I never suspected you were attracted to me.'

‘So the making love part didn't give you a hint?'

Her cheeks went hot pink. ‘It was the night before I left,' she said in a small voice.

‘I know, it wasn't your fault. I should have done something a lot sooner. That you can blame on youth and inexperience.'

Rachel sat forwards. ‘It was a long time ago, Tom, and we would never have worked out anyway.'

He frowned, considering her. ‘Why do you say that?'

She hesitated. ‘Well, because you were obviously meant to be with Annie, or else Hannah wouldn't be here, and Sophie wouldn't have you as her dad.'

He nodded faintly. ‘Annie knew all about you, you know.'

Rachel's eyes widened. ‘What?'

‘She knew everything,' he said. ‘She was cool about it; it was before we met, after all. And you behaved impeccably when you came back home, so she didn't have any reason to be jealous.'

Rachel's heart was pounding. It seemed so strange that someone else knew about something she'd barely admitted to herself. She wondered what Annie had really thought, if she had been a little jealous, if she hadn't completely trusted her, if she'd ever watched her closely around Tom.

Well, she wouldn't have seen anything. Rachel had kept Tom at a distance over the years; he was someone else's husband, they couldn't have the same friendship as before.

‘I've never told a soul what happened,' she said.

‘Not even Catherine?'

‘Catherine'd be the last person I'd tell. You know she was a bit obsessed with you back then. I don't think it was that serious, it's more of a conquest thing with Catherine. But she was very jealous of poor Annie, in the beginning at least.'

Tom seemed uncomfortable at that, and a silence descended on the both of them. It occurred to Rachel that he'd diverted the conversation away from Annie to talk about them instead.

She looked at him, staring across the room out the window, apparently deep in thought.

‘What are you thinking about?' she asked.

He roused, meeting her gaze. ‘Nothing.'

She took a breath. ‘Why don't you talk about Annie, Tom?'

‘Because I don't have anything to say,' he said squarely.

Rachel frowned. ‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean there is nothing to say, nothing new to add,' he explained. ‘I miss her, every day. But I can't dwell on that, Rachel. Talking about her, about what happened . . . it's just painful, that's
all. The grief is always with me, I don't have to dredge it up all the time. It's not going to bring her back, it's not going to change anything. So what's the point?' He took a breath. ‘I told you before, Rach, I can't let the rest of my life be defined by something so tragic, so fucking incomprehensible. I feel like it could swallow me up. I want to move on. I have to.'

‘I just think that's harder to do if you don't deal with –'

‘For Chrissakes!' he exclaimed, getting up and striding across the room impatiently. He turned around to look at her. ‘I don't know if it's a gender thing, but Christ, it seems that all you women want to do is talk and talk and pick over the carcass and suck everything dry. It's okay to leave well enough alone sometimes.'

Rachel was too stunned to speak.

‘What do you want from me, Rachel?' He held his arms out wide. ‘Will you only be happy once I'm a broken, blubbering mess, curled up on the floor in the foetal position? Will that prove to you that I've grieved enough?'

‘You don't have to prove anything to me,' she said, her voice faltering.

‘Then what is it?' he went on, still angry. ‘You want me to feel guilty because I have feelings for you? Well I can't. I can't help what I feel, so I refuse to feel guilty about it.'

‘No, no, I'm sorry,' Rachel cried, getting to her feet. ‘This is about me, I'm the one who feels guilty. I couldn't cry for Annie, Tom, I told you that. I couldn't cry, and when I did cry, that night after the funeral, it was for you. I never felt as close to Annie, all these years, she was so kind to me, but I know I was holding myself back, because you were with her, and you couldn't be my best friend any more.'

‘Rachel . . .'

‘I promise, I didn't let myself think of you like that, I didn't even realise I still did till the other night, and so yes, now I feel guilty.' She covered her face with her hands as the sobs rose up in her chest.