(It wasn’t like Patrick was buying flowers for another woman. A rival for his affections. A mistress. Certainly not. And it wasn’t as though Patrick had never bought flowers for Ellen before. He had. Many times. Beautiful bunches. So, then, why was she even thinking about the damned flowers when there was nothing to think about, nothing at all?)
“No, I want you to come.” Patrick turned off the ignition and unbuckled his seat belt. He turned to look at her and smiled uneasily. All morning, he’d been in a jumpy, skittish mood, laughing too loudly at her jokes, overly stern with Jack, and then suddenly hugging him to make up. It was as though he had intense stage fright about an upcoming performance.
“I’d sort of like to introduce you to her,” he said quietly.
“Ah,” said Ellen.
“Is that too weird?” He put his hand over hers.
“Of course not,” she said, while silently shrieking, Of course it’s weird! Are you out of your mind?!
Patrick turned to the backseat. “Ready to come and see Mum, mate?”
“Just let me—” said Jack without looking up, his thumbs moving rapidly.
“Jack,” said Patrick sharply.
Jack sighed and tossed aside the Nintendo. “Fine.”
They all got out of the car. It was even colder than Ellen had expected and she pulled her coat more tightly around herself. She looked about, as she always did now, to see if Saskia had followed them today, but there was only an older couple murmuring to each other as they walked hand in hand back from the graveyard. The woman smiled at Ellen.
Since the book and flower incident, Ellen had only seen Saskia once, when she and Patrick and Jack were at their local supermarket. Jack and Patrick were arguing over breakfast cereals, and Ellen had looked up to see Saskia walking down the aisle toward them, pushing an empty trolley. Their eyes had met and Ellen had automatically smiled because it was Deborah Vandenberg she first saw: a client suffering chronic pain who was doing well with her treatment, who had chatted and joked with Ellen, a woman of a similar age to Ellen, who reminded her a little of Julia, who could so easily have been a friend.
A second later she remembered the true, peculiar nature of their relationship, and for some reason her nervous system had reacted as though she was embarrassed and her cheeks had flooded with color. Her throat dried up and her eyes flew to Patrick and Jack, who were still obliviously discussing crunchy nut cornflakes. Saskia shook her head, almost imperceptibly, as if to say, Don’t tell them, and glided silently past.
“Are you all right?” Patrick had looked around, just as Saskia turned her trolley at the end of the aisle.
“Feeling a bit dizzy,” she’d said. (Pregnancy was so handy in that way.)
She’d felt obscurely guilty about that ever since. It felt like she and Saskia were somehow in cahoots to deceive Patrick. But there had been no point mentioning it to Patrick. Ever since Noosa, his hatred of Saskia seemed to have reached a new, more intense level. Ellen was frightened sometimes by the look in his eyes when he spoke about her. The night she’d thrown her grandmother’s plate against the wall, he’d come home with another lot of boxes to stack in the hallway (and flowers to apologize for slamming out of the house earlier) and he’d said, “She was at the house tonight. Psycho bitch.”
Why had Saskia shaken her head at Ellen? There had definitely been something conspiratorial about it. But didn’t she normally like Patrick to know she was there? Wasn’t that the point? And if not, what was the point? Did she really think that Patrick would eventually take her back? When and how would this all end? Saskia was a puzzle Ellen couldn’t stop trying to solve.
Now Patrick leaned into the back of the car and pulled out the bunch of gerberas. He held them in front of him with both hands clasped around the stems, like a nervous beau about to walk up to his girlfriend’s door. He gave Ellen a strange half smile.
“So,” he said.
Jack scuffed his foot against the grass and made a pow-pow sound through his lips like a machine gun.
“Jack,” said Patrick.
“What?”
“Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Come on. Let’s go.”
Jack ran ahead. Ellen walked alongside Patrick, looking at the names on gravestones, and wondered if it would be inappropriate to mention that she felt sick. She longed for the little pile of dry Vita-Weat biscuits she’d carefully wrapped in plastic for this morning’s journey and then left on the kitchen counter.
She was exactly eleven weeks pregnant today and it seemed that the nausea, which up until now had just been like a mildly unpleasant background noise, had suddenly intensified. She’d vomited this morning. She never vomited. She didn’t even like the word. It was horrendously uncomfortable and undignified, kneeling on the bathroom floor, bent over the toilet bowl. She’d wanted to cry for her mother, which was absurd, because her mother hadn’t been much use when Ellen was unwell as a child. Anne would always try to comfort Ellen by telling her about the much sicker children she’d treated that day.
Apparently Colleen hadn’t been sick for a single moment when she was pregnant with Jack. She’d played tennis every week right up until she was eight months pregnant!
She wasn’t imagining it. Patrick was definitely talking more about Colleen since their engagement. In fact, she’d started keeping a tally in her head, and there had been at least one reference to Colleen every single day for the last week. She’d learned that Colleen had put headphones over her pregnant stomach and played classical music to the baby every night (Ellen had wanted to do the same thing for her baby, but she’d gone off the idea now); Colleen had craved salt and vinegar chips throughout her pregnancy; Colleen had actually lost weight in the first few months of her pregnancy, which had worried Patrick; Colleen hadn’t suffered any mood swings; Colleen had a completely natural childbirth, and so on and so forth.
If Colleen had been an ordinary living ex-wife or ex-girlfriend, Ellen could have banned all further mentions of her, but as she was dead, and as it was perfectly understandable that having another child would be bringing back memories for Patrick of Jack’s birth, and as Colleen was Jack’s mother and he loved hearing stories about when his mother was pregnant with him, Ellen felt she not only had to listen politely, but she even had to encourage further revelations about the seemingly perfect Colleen by asking Patrick interested questions with a bright, loving, empathetic expression on her face.