“I hope not.” His thoughts must echo my own. “We’ll keep in touch, though, Lara. I promise.”
“Yeah, of course.” I try not to let him see my miserable expression. I should be pleased for him—and I am—but it’s come as a shock. Everything’s changing, slipping out of my grasp. First Beth moves away, and then Alex is at his mum’s. Now I’m losing David, as well. I push myself off the bricks, rearranging my face into a smile. “Hey, you could be seeing Mathilda again within a month.”
For the first time, he smiles. “Yeah, I know.” Though his voice is still low I detect a little wonder inside it.
“Then why the long face?”
He looks at me through baby blue eyes. When he blinks his eyelashes sweep down his cheeks, sandy and thick. “She’s not going to know me at all. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been thi
nking about her, or that she has my genes and my blood. She hasn’t seen me for months, she won’t even recognise me.”
I glance down at Max from the corner of my eye. Mathilda is older than him by a few months. She must be walking, saying her first words. Maybe ‘Mama’ and ‘Dada’. Words that should be meant for David. “She’ll get used to you. It won’t take long. She’ll only have to look at you to know how much you love her. Kids are resilient like that.”
When I glance at him, David doesn’t catch my eye. Instead he stares at his feet, kicking the toes into the dusty concrete slabs. “There’s something else, too.” His voice takes on the tone of a confession, low and pleading. I reach out and take his hand, sensing this need for connection.
“What is it?”
“I’ve… met someone.”
“As in a girl?”
His expression is pained. “Yeah.”
I guess that explains a lot. The reason why I’ve hardly seen him for the past few weeks. I don’t doubt he’s had a lot of work on, but that’s obviously not the only thing that’s kept him busy. I remember the early days of love enough to know how it feels. That opaque fog that surrounds you, the need to be with the other person constantly. The feeling that the world has stopped and the only thing moving is you.
“She lives in London?”
He seems agitated. Stepping back, he wrings his hands together. It’s not until he speaks again I realise the reason why. “It’s Andie.”
I blink, momentarily silenced. It takes a couple of moments for me to process his words. “Andie? As in my sister-in-law Andie? Andrea Cartwright? How the hell did that happen?”
I run through my memories, trying to place them together. I can only remember them being together once, at the festival.
Oh, and the hospital, too. I guess somewhere along the line his librarian fantasies really did come true. My stomach aches for my kind sister-in-law; the one who’s always calm and supportive.
“I haven’t told her about the mediation yet. I’d rather you didn’t say anything.”
“But you’re going to tell her, right?”
David starts walking again, pushing Max’s buggy in front of him. I follow behind awkwardly, my mind full of questions that don’t want to be voiced.
“I’m going to tell her.” He’s back to the monotone. “I just haven’t worked out how.”
“You should talk to her soon,” I say. “Keeping secrets isn’t going to help your relationship.”
“You should know I’m rolling my eyes now,” David replies. And though all I can see is his back, I know he’s telling the truth. “I’m not going to take relationship advice from you.”
“How rude.”
He cough-laughs. “Have I upset you?”
“Nope. I’m practically uninsultable. It’s like water off a duck’s back.”
“I think you made up a word.”
“Duck?”
“Uninsultable.”