Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (24 page)

“Chloe,” Willow said. “I know I don’t have the right to say this, but I . . . I care about you so much. And I love that you want me to adopt your baby, it’s the nicest thing I think anyone has ever wanted to do for me. But darling, your dad is right. I’m not the right person. I’m always at work, my flat is a mess and I don’t know the first thing about being a mum—”

“You do,” Chloe protested. “You were a good mum to me.”

Willow and Sam looked at each other, each trying to read the other’s face, that they had briefly known so intimately.

“Not good enough, though,” Willow said eventually. “Your dad was right, I had a chance to be happy and
I
screwed it up, not him. I saw what a wonderful life I had and I ruined it. And I . . . I knew what I was doing, Chloe. I was trying to hurt your dad and . . . and you before you hurt me. And I succeeded. I’m not the kind of person you want to adopt your baby.”

“You didn’t walk out, Dad threw you out and he wouldn’t let you come back, would he?” Chloe said. “You tried to come back, didn’t you? But he wouldn’t let you. That’s what happened, isn’t it? Because you wouldn’t just leave me, would you? Not when I’d already lost my mum. You wouldn’t do that!”

“Chloe.” Sam spoke her name softly, desperate to spare her hearing the answer. “Come home, darling. Come and sleep in your own bed tonight. I’ll make you some spag bolognese and treacle pudding for dessert, your favorites. Not a leaf of arugula in sight. Come home and you and me, we’ll work it out. We’re a team, Chloe. Team Wainwright. We can do this.”

Chloe didn’t take her eyes off Willow.

“You wanted to come back, though, didn’t you?” she repeated slowly.

Every day,
Willow wanted to say. But she didn’t. She didn’t say that there hadn’t been a day since when she hadn’t ached for Chloe and the life that she had once had with Sam. When she hadn’t cursed herself for what she had done. And she didn’t say that she had tried to see Chloe, tried to write to her, but that Sam simply refused to let her anywhere near his daughter again and that she’d given up all too soon, because after all she didn’t blame him. Willow knew if she said any of those things, then it would be Sam that Chloe would never forgive and he didn’t deserve that.

“No,” Willow said. “I . . . thought it was for the best not to.”

Chloe bit her lip, tears springing in her eyes. “But you were so happy to see me, I saw it. I saw it in your face.”

“Yes, I was,
I am,
but—”

“I’m not coming home.” Chloe looked at Sam, pointing at Willow. “She’s lying. She wanted to come back and you didn’t let her. She’s lying to protect you. And I’m not coming home and I am giving Willow my baby.”

“I don’t want your baby,” Willow said, slowly, carefully, quietly.

“I’m not coming home,” Chloe repeated, and without looking at Willow she turned her back on her father and ran into her bedroom.

There was silence in the living room.

“Thank you,” Sam said, after a moment, exhausted, defeated, his strong shoulders slumped. “Thank you for not blaming me.”

Willow ached to touch him. And yet after all this time, after everything that had passed between them, he was the last person she could touch.

“How could I possibly blame you? It was never your fault,” she said softly.

“I know now that I could have . . . I could have dealt with it better,” Sam said. “Maybe there wasn’t any hope for you and me but . . . I didn’t give either of us a chance to find out. Angry, stubborn, cut off my nose to spite my face. That’s what my mum always said about me. She was right. The thing was, I felt so useless, Willow, so . . . powerless to do anything. I wanted to be the man you needed, but being with you made me half the man I was. I’ve never forgiven myself for that, I’ve never gotten over how I let you down.”

“How on earth did you let me down?” Willow took a step closer to him. “You let me into your life. Into Chloe’s life. You let me be part of your family. I should never had told you—”

“Of course you should have,” Sam said, shocked. “If not me then who could you tell?”

“No one, I should have kept it all locked away. I should have let us be happy, perhaps we could have been happy if I never told you the truth.”

“Nothing I did back then makes any sense to me now,” Sam told her. “I still wake up in the middle of the night trying to work out exactly at what moment I stopped holding on to you. The way I acted, the cruel things I said. I was just trying to hurt you, the way you hurt me. I didn’t have to freeze you out of Chloe’s life too, I didn’t have to do that too.”

“Maybe you did,” Willow said softly. “Look at me, look at the mess I make of things. I’m not the sort of person who’s good for other people. Sometimes I think I can be, I try but . . . I always end up making things worse. You were right. It’s better that I keep myself to myself.”

“No, that’s not true. You’re the one who put a smile back on Chloe’s face after her mum died. You did both of us a world of good. I was just so angry about what happened. I still am. I’m furious,” Sam said, bitterly. “I’m boiling with this rage and I don’t know what to do with it.”

Willow’s face fell, she was stunned by how much his anger still hurt her. “Really? You still hate me that much?”

Sam shook his head. “No, no . . . you don’t get it, do you? It’s not you, Willow, it’s never been you I was angry with, not even when . . . It’s me I can’t look in the eye anymore. I knew, didn’t I? I remember that night, after I’d asked you to marry me. That night we sat up until dawn talking and you told me everything. I knew everything about you, I knew how much you needed me to love you, needed me to protect you, and I failed. I couldn’t love you enough to make it better or to forgive you for what wasn’t really your fault. The woman I thought I fell in love with, the funny, sexy, sort of shy, sort of ballsy girl I
fell for . . . she wasn’t real. She was a front, to protect the real you hiding inside. And I tried to love that person too, but I couldn’t.” Sam shrugged. “Chloe’s right, when it came to the crunch, I wasn’t good enough for you. I will always be angry about that. There’s no one I can blame except myself, and you should blame me too.”

“Oh.” Willow pressed the palm of her hand over her mouth, willing the sob that ached in her throat to stay suppressed. “Don’t say that, Sam. You can be angry with me, but don’t say that.”

Sam looked at Chloe’s closed door. “Right now, I’m not angry at all. I’m tired and sad and I’ve been pretending for a long time that I don’t miss you, but I do.” He let his arms fall to his sides. “Listen, do you want a hug?”

Willow nodded mutely, and Sam crossed the room in two steps, putting his arms around her. Willow pressed her cheek into his chest and listened to the rhythm of his heart. After a minute, perhaps a little more, she moved her hand away from her mouth and rested it on his shoulder.

“How have you been, anyway?” Sam said into her hair.

“Okay, working mainly,” Willow replied, wondering at the wonders of making small talk with one’s ex-husband whilst locked in a tight embrace.

“Never met anyone else . . . important?” Sam asked.

“No,” Willow said. “But Chloe tells me you’ve got someone new. Makes her own pasta and everything.” Willow felt a single breath of laughter in her hair. Sam rested his chin on the top of her head, his stubble tickling her scalp.

“Carol. She’s nice. Decent. Funny. Kind.”

“Sounds perfect,” Willow said, feeling the tension in her shoulders flood away as she relaxed into Sam’s arms. It had been a long time since anyone had held her that way, in a simple embrace with no agenda, and Willow was certain of that.
For one dizzy moment she wondered if she and Sam might come together once again, but as she stood there in his arms, feeling closer to him than she had for most of their marriage, she knew that would never happen and she was glad. “Do you love her?”

She felt Sam’s body tense against hers. “I loved Charlotte,” Sam said, talking about Chloe’s mum. “And I loved you the best I could. And that’s it for me.” He pulled away from her a little so that he could look her in the eyes. “I think that’s it for me and love.”

Without thinking, Willow reached up and touched his rough cheek with her fingertips.

“Don’t let it be,” she said softly. “Don’t let it be the end of love for you. You deserve to be loved by someone good.”

“Don’t you too?” Sam asked her, his voice low, quiet as they stood in the darkened living room, the din of the city traffic dashing by outside.

At some point, as they gazed into each other’s eyes, Willow was dimly aware of the phone ringing in the flat; it had to be a cold caller or a wrong number. No one ever phoned her land-line anymore.

It rang once, twice, three times, and just as Willow was almost certain that Sam was about to say something really important, Daniel’s Texas accent filled the room.

“Hey, babe. Have you dropped your phone down the toilet again? It goes straight to voice mail . . . anyway, this is just your quick pre—naked Monday-night call.”

“Is that . . . is that Daniel?” Sam asked, breaking their embrace. Willow rushed over to the phone and picked it up, but the message kept recording.

“Listen, I’m running a bit late trying to make Kayla’s shots look right. I’m seriously going to have to airbrush some tits on her, so can we push it back an hour. If I don’t hear from you
I’m going to assume yes. Looking forward to getting my hands on that lovely body of yours!
Ciao, bella!
”

“What does he mean?” Sam asked. “What’s naked Monday?”

“Um . . . oh, I don’t know, some sort of pretentious art thing he’s doing, you know the sort of thing?”

“I didn’t realize you still knew him.” Sam’s eyes dropped momentarily. “Are you and he . . . ?”

“Friends, we’re friends. That’s it,” Willow said emphatically. “He . . . he helped me out a lot, he was good to me.”

“I bet he was!” Sam’s laugh was bitter.

“No, Sam, it was never like that.”

“Sure, well . . .” Whatever moment of warmth there had been between them evaporated in an instant. “Look, I’m glad we talked, but I’d better go. I’ll say good-bye to Chloe if that’s okay?”

Willow nodded, feeling the chill sweep along the length of her body as he walked away, pulling at her as if he had physically taken part of her with him. Sighing, she went to find India.

India was lying on the bed like a silent movie damsel in distress, her phone in one hand, the other flung above her head.

“Am I sacked?” Willow asked her wearily, discovering at that moment that she rather hoped she was.

“I haven’t called Victoria,” India said. “I called Hugh. He didn’t pick up. Of course he didn’t. I thought—I thought maybe this was all lies, lies made up by Victoria to get me off the hook. I wanted him to tell me I was the only one, but instead I got an answering-machine message referring me to his publicist. Perhaps I can get her to tell me I’m the only one, maybe she has a statement on file for placating his long list of conquests. . . .”

Willow glanced over her shoulder. There was no yelling or
screaming coming from Chloe’s room. What were they doing, Willow wondered? Reluctantly she came into the room and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I’m so sorry,” she told India. “Victoria told me to tell you what she was planning, but I . . . I didn’t. You seemed to be pretty happy. I know it was wrong, but I just thought it would be nice for you to stay that way.”

“Cry my eyes out a couple of days ago, cry them out today. What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that you would have been prepared,” Willow admitted. “You would have heard it from me and not the papers, and I could have explained how Victoria was handling things. I wonder who left those papers there.”

“I don’t know,” India said unhappily. “Does it matter?”

“Well, anyway, you are utterly within your rights to phone Victoria and get me fired. She will do it, you know, and she’ll put a hit out on me. I’ll be toast before next Tuesday.”

“I know that perfectly well,” India said rather archly, sitting up. “What in God’s name is she thinking, hiding me away in this hovel day after day, I don’t know. I’m India Torrance. I’m five stars of woman any day of the week, according to
GQ
. What am I doing in this hovel crying my eyes out over someone who never loved me? What am I doing?”

It was a fair point and one that Willow didn’t especially have an answer to.

“Look, I know Victoria moves in mysterious ways, but she is usually right. And to be fair to her, as far as your future career is concerned, she has played it to perfection. A few more days and you will be out of here, all this squalor will be a dim and distant memory and you’ll be getting your life back, unless—”

“Unless I phone her now and demand Blakes,” India said. “The trouble is, I like you and the shouty pregnant teenager.
And I liked the weekend without being prepared, it reminded me of being at home with my sisters. It was nice, it felt real.”

“A little too real, sometimes,” Willow said.