Adam’s Boys (17 page)

A sob caught in Abbie's throat and she hurriedly busied herself with rummaging through her handbag in search of a tissue.

“Here, take this,” Tony offered gently, passing her a clean handkerchief.

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” he replied kindly. “I understand things better than you think.”

But Abbie couldn't answer because she was too busy trying to take long, steady breaths to keep tears at bay.

“Are you sure you don't want to go up to the house before you leave? Adam will be …”

“No, thank you,” Abbie interrupted quickly. “The bus leaves soon and everyone will be busy with Kate. I don't want to intrude. Give Pete my love and please, thank Clarissa for her kindness. It was a privilege to meet you both.”

“I know she feels the same about you.”

“Thank you,” Abbie said, touched by the sincerity shining in his eyes. “I'd better go and explain things to Henry.”

But it didn't take much explaining. Henry soon had things all worked out in his head.

“I'll come with you,” he replied abruptly after she'd spent several minutes sitting next to him on a low stone fence and talking through her plans for the next few days. He was to stay with Adam and Pete at his grandparents' and then she'd meet him in London where they'd spend some time with JP and Alex before flying home.

“Henry, coming with me is not a good idea,” Abbie said quickly, completely taken aback by her son's reaction to her news.

“Why not?” he asked irritably, pinning her down with those clear blue eyes of his.

“Because everyone here will be sad if you leave.”

“They'll be sad if
you
leave, and you're going,” Henry retorted with a look of defiance.

“That's different,” Abbie replied quickly, but wasn't sure she'd be able to come up with a clear explanation as to how it was different if he asked for it. The truth was she was completely thrown by his reaction.

“Did you and Adam have a fight?” he asked in challenge.

Abbie stared at Henry, grappling with which way she should jump: adult evasiveness or brutal honesty.

“Yes we did, but …”

“Are you going to make Adam and Pete go away now?” he threw at her bitingly, tears springing to his eyes as he got to his feet. Turning away from her, he began to kick the bottom of the stone wall over and over again with the toe of his boot. “I'll come with
you
then.”

“Henry, you've got this all wrong,” Abbie replied in despair, hankering to pull her boy into her arms and convince him that everything would be okay. But she knew he wouldn't believe her, and she knew he would be right not to.

“I'm not going to make Adam and Pete go away,” Abbie declared summoning everything she had within her to smooth the wobble out of her voice. “They're your family now and I'll never let that happen. Please, Henry, do this for me. Stay here until the end of the week. It's important to Adam and his family.”

Henry looked at her with the very same crushed look Adam had given her earlier that morning when she'd given him his marching orders out of the cottage. He didn't reply, and Abbie watched on in agony as he struggled to steady his quivering bottom lip. But then he nodded and turned to walk away. In an almost directionless amble, he stumbled over the rough patches of ground as he made his way up the road to Tony and slipped his small hand into his grandfather's large one.

Ten minutes later Tony was parking his Land Rover near the bus stop in Stow and pulling Abbie's luggage out of the boot. Henry ran ahead and Tony walked her to the stop and carried her suitcase—both at his insistence.

“We'll wait with you until the bus arrives,” he announced, taking a seat on a bench as Henry wandered off to explore some nearby vending machines, Abbie's anxious eyes following his every move.

“There's really no need,” she protested gently.

“I know there's not, but that's what I'm going to do. Sit down and I'll tell you a story to pass the time—a story I've never told anyone before.”

Abbie sat down next to Tony and he patted her hand affectionately.

“Good girl. Now, the story begins with a young man thirty-five odd years ago who had everything the world could offer: money, privilege, education—you name it. But the one thing he hadn't found for himself was the girl of his dreams. And he was beginning to think he would never find her because he was getting on a bit in age you see—at least thirty.”

Abbie couldn't help but laugh at that point.

“Don't laugh,” Tony pretended to scold. “Fifty now is the same as thirty then. Anyway, this man wasn't prepared to settle for anyone. He was waiting for someone spectacular, and one day, at an equestrian event, he saw a young woman with fair hair streaming out behind her as she led the cross-country course. She had such brio that he was quite spellbound by her. He soon learnt that the majestic young woman was one of four sisters—all of them free spirits—allowed to roam the countryside untethered from the time they were able to walk. He never imagined she would look his way because she was sparkling and spirited, and he was rather serious and duty-bound you see. But incredibly, this beautiful girl fell in love with the young man and agreed to marry him.”

“And so they lived happily ever after?” Abbie suggested hopefully.

“Not exactly,” Tony replied, flickers of pain dancing at the corners of his permanently smiling eyes. “Everything went along swimmingly for a while. Or at least the young man thought everything was going along swimmingly. But then one day, two years into the marriage, his young wife came to him and told him it was over. She'd fallen in love with the man who'd been restoring the painted ceilings in their home for the previous three months.”

“Not quite happily ever after,” Abbie offered uncertainly as Tony watched the traffic and then sighed.

“No, not quite. Well, this came as a complete surprise to the young man who was devastated, needless to say. He couldn't imagine what he'd done to make her so unhappy so he asked her. She said he'd been so busy building his life and being all things to all people that he'd hardly acknowledged her existence since the day they'd married. She also said she'd never been as lonely or unhappy in her entire life as she had been with him.”

“What happened then?” Abbie asked tentatively, by then knowing the story was his own. She was stunned that he was sharing it with her.

“Incredibly, he didn't lose her, Abbie—although he deserved to. She broke the relationship off with the art restorer and stayed. And the young man, who much later became a very old man, never, ever took her for granted again. You see, he had to nearly lose her before he discovered how much he needed her. And until you realise you need someone—body and soul—you can never know true love.”

“So Clarissa stayed,” Abbie ventured with a small smile of understanding.

Tony looked across at her and smiled back at her with his eyes and replied, “Yes, Clarissa stayed.”

“You would never guess you and Clarissa had ever had any heartache. Does Adam know?”

Tony shook his head. “It's not the sort of thing a father confides to his son. It would have upset him, and he wouldn't have learnt a thing from it anyway. All he would see was that his mother had an affair and nearly left me. I wasn't prepared to risk him blaming her when it was my fault. A daughter on the other hand, well, a daughter would learn the lesson in the story and take it into her life.”

“Would you have liked a daughter?”

“Very much. We wanted more children but Clarissa couldn't have any after Adam. But Ellen was like a daughter to us. And as Henry's mother you'll always have a special place in our hearts, and I hope our home too when you visit again soon.”

Abbie smiled as she stared at her fingers woven together on her lap. “Are you trying to make me cry again, Tony Cooper?”

“Oh no, dear no,” Tony laughed and put his arm around her to give her shoulder a squeeze.

With a bit more steady breathing Abbie managed to fight back the tears that threatened again, but only until she had squeezed the life out of Henry in a robust bear hug, succumbed to a warm one from Adam's father, and then lost sight of the old man and the little boy standing on the chilly English street, waving goodbye at the bus pulling out from the curb.

* * *

Slowing to a jog, Adam made his way up the frigidly cold London Street, his body in mutiny after running full pelt through Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park and St James', and then back again.

He didn't care that the cold air felt like razor blades in his lungs and had frozen every muscle in his body solid. All he cared about was not feeling anything anymore.

It hadn't worked.

A fit of coughing took hold—a latent hangover of childhood asthma. He stopped and rested his hands on his thighs and doubled over, breathing slowly and steadily until the attack passed. Then with every part of his body aching he straightened again.

Casting his eyes down the long line of elegant Georgian terraces he noticed that lights were coming on here and there as those within woke up and began to get ready for their day. From one he could hear a mother calling to her children to get out of bed—his heart lurched. Because for all the pain that he inflicted upon himself each morning as he ran through London's parks like a man hounded by wild animals, nothing compared to the gnawing, haunting ache of missing Abbie.

He sighed and began to walk painfully forward to cover the last fifty metres to JP and Alex's house.

It had been more than a week and a half since he'd put Abbie and the boys in a cab bound for Heathrow. Yet the last accusing look of hurt and betrayal she'd thrown him before closing the cab door was still torturing him night and day.

God, how she despised him!

And who would blame her?

He'd behaved like an arrogant, spoilt child from the instant he'd laid eyes on her at the Incipio ball.

She was right. At no stage had he stopped to consult her feelings in the whole debacle of their reunion. She'd been more than prepared to meet him half-way with the boys, even agreeing to give up her home and move in with a man she barely knew, and trusted even less.

How could he have treated her so badly and yet discovered love with her all over again? That was the most disturbing thing of all—that he could hurt the woman he loved more than life itself and yet not know he was doing it.

She would never forgive him.

Why should she when he hadn't even had the decency to defend her when Kate was going for her throat? Even then he could think of nothing else but his life, his boys, his needs. And to cap it off, he'd blamed her for being neurotic and over protective of herself and her life. Why wouldn't she be wary of a man when that man was himself—a ‘cold fish', as she'd so aptly put it.

As he opened the front door he could hear Alex and JP chatting in the kitchen. He winced as he listened to their affection-loaded banter—a stark reminder of what he'd managed to blow to smithereens with Abbie. But he didn't regret taking up their offer to stay with them while he was working in the London office. In fact, he probably would have gone mad but for JP's boundless energy—his friend had kept him propelled through office and social commitments from the day he'd arrived.

But JP couldn't help him at night. For that was when he tossed and turned, missing her, missing the boys, missing the family they'd become for the briefest of times—knowing that he would never have that again.

“Morning!” he announced as he wandered into the kitchen to see JP and Alex drinking coffee and eating toast while poring over the newspapers. JP was half dressed in a suit and Alex looked cosy in her dressing gown and slippers.

Both greeted him in return but JP eyed him curiously. “Enjoy your torture session, did you?”

“Yes thanks,” Adam replied, pouring a coffee from the pot on the stove. “You should try it sometime.”

“Well, it's a toss-up,” JP replied drily. “Snuggling up next to Alex for an extra hour or freezing my buns off with you and the other lunatic joggers in London.”

“I'd go with you, Adam,” Alex threw in, grinning at him over her coffee, “if it was twenty degrees warmer.”

“You know with that attitude, Alex, you'll never run in England,” Adam replied with a smirk.

“That's why I'm looking into memberships at gyms with central heating. Oh hell, is that the time? I'd better fly—I've got a meeting at eight.” With that Alex leapt to her feet and dashed out of the kitchen.

Adam took her place at the table, dragging a section of the newspaper towards himself, but JP caught the other side and pulled it back again.

“What?” Adam questioned.

“We need to talk,” JP replied.

“Is that why Alex disappeared so quickly?”

“She's worried that you seem so unhappy.”

“I'm not unhappy.”

“Rubbish. You've been unhappy since Ellen died. But you've been unhappier than ever lately. Have you got any idea how much Justin and I miss the old Adam? Do you know how we used to rely on you to put a positive spin on everything, to always see the funny side of things, to never be affected by a dark mood?”

“I'm sorry I've withdrawn all my sweetness and light from your lives,” Adam replied drolly.

“So am I. Anyway, I need to find out what will make you happy, Adam. Because it's time you went out and got it. Ellen died a terrible death in terrible circumstances, but you've worn black long enough. It's time to change your wardrobe. What will make you happy?”

Adam desperately wanted to say Abbie's name in immediate response to JP's appeal. But she was so intertwined with all his friends' lives that he didn't want to make things messier by airing his heartache over her.

“There is one thing that I want to talk to you about,” Adam began tentatively. “It's not so much about what will make me happy but what I need to do.”