So Now You're Back (35 page)

‘It's OK, you didn't do anything wrong,' she said, tears pouring down her cheeks. How could her dad have hit him like that?

What the fuck is Dad even doing here?

‘Yes, I did,' Trey said, his voice breaking. ‘I shouldn't have touched you.'

She blanked out her dad's grunts and curses as he held Aldo off while her little brother punched and kicked, trying to batter him like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

It serves him bloody right.

‘But I wanted you to touch me.' She clung to Trey as he stood.

‘I should go.' He looked devastated as he dislodged her clutching fingers.

‘Don't go,' she pleaded, but her arms hung limp by her sides, unable to stop him.

Her mother touched Trey's arm, delaying him before he reached the door, but whatever she said, it wasn't enough. He pushed past her and left. The door slammed behind him as he raced up the outside steps.

‘Mum!' Lizzie's wail jolted Halle out of her stunned trance. ‘Mum, don't let him go.'

‘It's OK, we'll get him back.' She enfolded her daughter in her arms as Lizzie's slender body vibrated with wrenching sobs.

‘But he won't come back, not now,' Lizzie cried. ‘Not after Dad hit him like that. How could he? Trey's mum died yesterday. He's already been through so much.'

‘What?' Halle held her daughter at arm's length.

Shock layered on shock. She had no clue what Luke and she had just walked in on between her daughter and Trey, but it had looked very intense.

‘His mum died, yesterday,' her daughter repeated between heaving breaths. ‘She's been sick for a long time. Trey used to look after her.'

‘I didn't know that.' It seemed there were a lot of things she didn't know.

‘Stop kicking me, kid!' Luke's shout drew her back to the present.

She jotted the problem of Trey, and Lizzie, and Trey's dead mother down on Future Halle's to-do list, because Present Halle had a much bigger problem. How could she
have been stupid enough to trust Luke? She'd let him in here. Let him into her home. And he'd turned into the bloody Terminator.

She grabbed a saucepan and smashed it down on the countertop. The sound crashed around the room, calling time on Luke and Aldo's wrestling match.

‘Aldo, stop kicking Luke. Luke, put my son down,' she demanded in her best obey-me-at-your-peril voice.

Their two heads rose together and, for a split second, as Luke hugged Aldo round the waist, lifting her son off the ground to prevent Aldo kicking his shins, the illusion she'd kept at bay during the long flight home, of Luke and Aldo becoming father and son, became real.

And then shattered as she registered the tears smearing her son's cheeks and the sharp frown on Luke's face.

Luke dropped Aldo and Halle grabbed her son's shoulder before he could launch another attack on Luke's shins. ‘Don't, Aldo, that's enough.'

‘I hate him,' her son sobbed, crumpling against her. ‘He hit Trey.'

‘I know. He won't do it again.'

Luke looked shell-shocked, what he'd done finally beginning to dawn on him. She glared at him over her child's head. Not caring.

How could he have reacted like that? In anger and aggression without a thought to the consequences? How could he have put her children and Trey through this? She'd trusted him. How could she have been stupid enough to think for even a second that he would ever put her needs, her children's needs above his own?

‘Lizzie.' She turned to her daughter, who stood forlornly in the corner, sniffing back tears. ‘Could you take your
brother upstairs? I'll be up in a moment to talk to you both, but I need to talk to your father first.'

She prayed that Lizzie wouldn't throw a wobbly, but she braced for it anyway. To her astonishment, Lizzie simply sucked up the last of her tears and threw a consoling arm round her brother's shoulders, before giving her a nod. The expression on her face was one of sympathy and solidarity and total faith. ‘Don't worry, Aldo. Mum will sort this out.'

Sending her dad a furious glare, she led her brother out of the room, saying, ‘You were really brave, you know. Trey would be proud of you.'

‘Who the hell is that guy, and what was he doing with my daughter?' Luke went on the offensive as soon as Aldo and Lizzie had left the room.

Halle's temper soared, the sense of betrayal consumed by her fury.

‘That guy is Trey, our au pair. And what he was doing with
our
daughter was obvious. The question is what the hell did you think
you
were doing assaulting him like that?'

‘What was
I
doing assaulting him?' He thumped his chest, like the Neanderthal he was. ‘He was assaulting my daughter. She's just a kid.'

‘She's eighteen years old. I was pregnant with her at that age.'

‘It's not the same thing. She's innocent. She's a bloody virgin.'

What planet is he living on?

‘The guy's in your employ and he's … what?' Luke continued, his own fury gathering pace. ‘Five years older than her?'

‘First of all, Lizzie is not a bloody virgin. She lost her virginity when she was sixteen to a toerag called Liam.
And if ever anyone deserved a good kicking, he was the one. Not Trey.'

She tried to dismiss the sharp pang of guilt at the look of abject horror on Luke's face. She'd known he was labouring under some delusions about his daughter's true nature. Maybe she should have said something back in Tennessee. But really it had never even occurred to her to clue him in on Lizzie's sex life. And she'd been right not to, she reasoned. What her daughter chose to confide in her father was her own affair.

‘But even if she was a virgin,' she said, ‘she's more than old enough to make her own choices. And if she chooses to kiss Trey in her own home, she's entitled to do that.'

‘You call that a kiss?' he sputtered, most of the wind sucked out of his sails. ‘It looked like a lot more than that to me. He had his tongue down her throat.'

‘And she had her hand down his pants,' she shot back and saw Luke flinch.

‘Don't remind me.' He groaned, collapsing onto the sofa. ‘I'm never going to get that picture out of my head.' He clutched his head in his hands as if he were trying to erase the image.

She spotted the abrasion across his knuckles, where they had connected with Trey's jaw, and her temper ignited all over again.

‘And I'm never going to get the picture out of my head of you punching him in the face. And neither is our daughter. Or my son. The boy you told me not five minutes ago you would do everything in your power not to hurt. Well, guess what, Luke? You failed on that one at the first hurdle.'

She realised she was literally vibrating with anger now. But beneath the temper was the huge well of hurt. She'd
trusted him. Just as she'd trusted him once before. And he'd failed her, again.

She should have seen this coming. She should never have been foolish enough to think for even a moment that Luke and she could have a future. This was her own fault, for allowing herself to be led astray again by feelings that were twenty years out of date.

‘I need you to leave, now,' she said, a part of her heart ripping open when he stared at her through his fingers. All her foolish hopes of considering a future with him were exposed as the stupid pipe dreams they actually were.

His dark scowl had disappeared to be replaced by … what? Regret? Sorrow? She didn't know, and she couldn't let herself care. Luke had always been a lost cause. How many times was she going to be forced to face that fact before she finally believed it?

‘Don't do this, Hal, not again.' Luke stood, his legs shaky, the finality on her face tearing him to pieces.

‘Don't do what?' she said, the neutral tone scaring him even more. He could handle her temper, but nothing? He couldn't handle nothing.

‘Don't shut me out. We can fix this. We can fix this if we do it together.'

‘You must be bloody joking.'

‘I shouldn't have hit him. I realise that. It was a stupid, irrational knee-jerk reaction, but it was a major shock to my system. I hadn't expected to walk in here and find my daughter necking with some guy I don't know on the couch.'

‘I know that. It was a shock for me, too. But you didn't see me trying to hit anyone.'

‘Yeah, but it wasn't as much of a shock for you because
you're a much bigger part of Lizzie's life than you've ever let me be.'

He had tried not to say it, tried not to go there. But suddenly the unfairness of it all made him want to yell. So he'd overreacted. Gone off the deep end. He'd just had one hell of a rude awakening, discovering his little girl wasn't his little girl any more.

But was that really all his fault?

‘That's not true,' she said. ‘I let you see her.'

‘For six measly weeks of the year.' The fury grew to disguise the panic, the self-disgust. He flexed stinging knuckles and gave his resentment free rein. ‘Do you know what that's like? To put her back on a train and know you're not going to see her again for months? And when you do, she'll have changed again and you'll have lost another huge chunk of her childhood?'

‘But you never asked for more!' Halle gaped at him.

‘Of course I asked for more. I asked your goddamn solicitor about reviewing the visitation rights a hundred times. And when he stonewalled me, I tried to contact you. But my emails bounced back. Your mobile always went to voicemail.' He paced to the door. ‘The only thing I didn't do was ask Lizzie, because the one thing I couldn't bring myself to do was make her a go-between. So I had to pretend I was OK with the little time you'd give me. Even though I could feel her drifting further and further out of reach as she got older.'

‘I didn't know' was all she said.

‘Why would you? You wouldn't talk to me, remember.'

‘I told you I was sorry about that. What more can I do?'

‘Let me stay now.' He pounced on the opening. ‘Let's try to make this right together. Don't close me out again. Or what chance do we have for our future?'

‘What future? What are you talking about?'

He stared at her. So this was it. The moment when one of them would have to break cover. He could run away now, lick his wounds, as he'd done sixteen years ago, or he could hold his ground and fight—and admit that his feelings had changed and that he wasn't that sad little bastard any more who had never felt worthy of her.

‘I want to be with you, Halle. This trip has convinced me that I want to at least try. Don't chuck that chance away because I did something stupid and rash. Something I already regret.'

She bit her lip, her eyes going glassy with shock … and something … For one bright shining moment, he thought she might admit she felt the same way. That the past twelve days hadn't just been about forgiving their past and repairing their relationship as Lizzie's parents, that it had the potential to be so much more.

But his hope died when she said, ‘I have to put my children first. You must see that. Maybe if …'

‘This can't wait. Either you want to make this work or you don't.' This was it. Her chance to admit she felt the same. She had to give him something here. Otherwise, he would spend the rest of his life on the outside. Being never quite good enough. Always being tested and found wanting. He'd spent his whole miserable childhood feeling like that and it had nearly destroyed him. Either she thought this thing they had was worth fighting for or she didn't.

‘Don't make me choose between my children and you,' she said.

Weariness engulfed him, and a futile feeling of despair. The last of the fight, the fury draining away.

It wasn't any good. No matter what he said. If she couldn't
see it had never been a choice, then what chance had they ever had?

He walked to the door, picked up the holdall he'd dropped as soon as they'd come in.

‘When you speak to Aldo and the au pair, tell them both I'm sorry.' He turned the door handle, exhaustion overwhelming him. ‘I'll contact Lizzie in a couple of days, once she's calmed down, and grovel my arse off with her.'

He stared at her, not bitter or resentful any more, just desperately sad that it had always been too late to repair the damage he'd done. And their time in Tennessee had done nothing but create an illusion of false hope that had always been bound to shatter.

S
uck it up, your children come first, and if he can't see that, then he really doesn't want you—not who you are now anyway.

Halle repeated the words to herself, over and over again, but even so the two flights it took to get to Aldo's bedroom felt like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

Lizzie and Aldo sat huddled on the bed together with their arms around each other. It was a sight Halle had never expected to see again, and it helped to calm her racing heartbeat, and fill a little of the huge pit of despair opening up in her stomach.

Luke had blindsided her, but why hadn't he said anything sooner? Why had he waited until the worst possible moment to reveal his feelings? The simple answer was because they weren't real.

Tennessee had been an illusion, brought on by a year-long dry spell, being in such close proximity to Luke's magnificent cock and the euphoria of being able to unpack the last of the baggage from her past.

She had to go forward now and forget about what they
might have been. That her children seemed to have found each other again while she'd been gone was one huge upside.

One she could use now to help clean up the mess Luke had caused downstairs.

‘Has Dad gone?' Lizzie asked.

‘Yes.'

‘What was he even doing here?' She sounded more astonished than accusing, but still Halle felt the shaft of guilt. She had known it wasn't a good idea to spring this on Lizzie.

Why hadn't she used her head, instead of listening to her foolish heart?

‘Why did Lizzie's dad hit Trey?' Aldo asked.

Halle held up her hands. ‘OK, guys, listen, I've got a lot of explaining to do. But first things first. Lizzie, why don't you go and have a shower, then try calling Trey on his mobile? So we can make sure he's not badly hurt.'

As shocking as Luke's punch had seemed, Trey hadn't looked badly hurt to her, but she needed to get Lizzie out of the room while she talked to Aldo. And vice versa. She had a lot of talking to do, not just about this morning, but about a host of other things.

She'd never been entirely honest with either of her children. Had peppered her parenting with a parade of small and sometimes huge lies, which had always felt justified, but now felt like the worse kind of cop-out. If she had learned one thing from her time with Luke, it was that keeping secrets—for whatever reason—never worked, and could often cause more hurt than they healed.

She needed to come clean with them both. To answer whatever questions they had for her now honestly. But she couldn't do it to them both at the same time because … well, it was going to be hard enough without being outnumbered. After all, she wasn't Super Mum.

Lizzie got off the bed, looking unsure again. ‘I don't know if Trey'll want to speak to me now. Not after what Dad did.'

‘What your father did wasn't your fault, sweetheart.'

‘Actually, it probably was, a little bit.'

Halle sat next to Aldo, let him cling to her. ‘How so?' she asked, surprised again by her daughter's new-found maturity. It wasn't like Lizzie to take the blame for anything.

‘Dad doesn't know about Liam. I never told him. I think he still thinks I'm—' she shrugged, the movement stiff and uncomfortable ‘—like, thirteen when it comes to boys. That's probably why he freaked out when he saw Trey and me kissing.'

The explanation was so practical and forthright, it stunned Halle. Had Lizzie already forgiven her father for that punch?

‘You were kissing Trey?' Aldo's face screwed up as if he'd just been force-fed a can of lugworms. ‘Yuck!'

Both she and Lizzie laughed, Aldo's horrified reaction breaking the tension.

‘That's so gross,' he added to reiterate the point.

‘No, it's not. Trey's a really good kisser, actually,' Lizzie said, obviously enjoying her brother's discomfort.

Aldo placed his hands over his ears. ‘Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!'

Lizzie began making kissy noises, inciting a louder and more vociferous chorus of yucks.

‘All right, both of you, stop it,' Halle cut in, assuming her role as peacemaker, oddly moved by the exchange. Neither of her children could be that badly traumatised by this morning's events if they could still start a sibling spat over nothing.

‘Fine, I'm leaving,' Lizzie announced, but the look she sent Halle was one of uncertainty. ‘If I can't get in touch with Trey, what are we going to do?'

‘Don't worry, we'll figure something out,' Halle said, surprised but also gratified to have her daughter look to
her for reassurance. What exactly she was going to say to Trey, and Lizzie, about that clinch on the couch when they did locate Trey would have to be another problem for Future Halle to solve.

Lizzie nodded and left the room, apparently satisfied with Halle's answer.

‘Does Lizzie's dad hate me now, too?' Aldo's question threw Halle's emotions straight back into turmoil as soon as the door had closed behind her daughter.

She slung her arm round her son's shoulders, wishing—as she had so often before—that she could simply take all his insecurities away. ‘Of course not, honey. He doesn't even know you.' The surge of anger at Luke for his insane behaviour went some way to quelling the ever-present guilt.

‘But I kicked him.'

‘Yes, I know, but he punched Trey and you were just defending your friend. Now, I'm not saying violence is ever the answer, but …'

Aldo slanted her his get-real-Mum look, forcing her to abandon her standard ‘non-violence' message.

‘But, in this case, Luke knows he shouldn't have hit Trey.' Sometimes, honesty was more important than platitudes when it came to peace and reconciliation. ‘And he asked me to tell you how sorry he is for doing that.'

‘He did?' Aldo's eyes popped wide, but beneath his surprise she could see genuine pleasure. ‘Then he doesn't hate me?'

‘No, he definitely doesn't hate you.'

Aldo smiled, the same boyish, untroubled smile she'd seen on his face only recently when he was hanging out with Trey.

OK, now I'm confused. Has Aldo forgiven Luke already, too?

‘I think Luke's more worried that you might hate him,'
she added. And he had good reason to be as far as she could see.

‘Why would I hate him?'

‘Um, because he punched Trey.'

‘Trey's tough. I bet he could take Lizzie's dad in a fight if he wanted to.'

‘Well … I'm not sure that's …' She paused, totally nonplussed now. Where was her non-violence speech when she needed it the most? And how could Aldo be so blasé now, after being so distressed downstairs?

‘But Trey didn't punch Lizzie's dad back,' Aldo continued, sounding disappointed. ‘So it probably didn't even hurt Trey that much.'

‘Right,' she said, still struggling to follow Aldo's ten-year-old logic while coping with the growing realisation that it probably wasn't that far removed from Luke's logic. Or Trey's logic, either. Because when she had waylaid her fleeing au pair at the door, his bloody lip already puffing up like bread dough in the proving drawer, and apologised for Luke's punch, all he'd said was ‘I'm so sorry, Ms Best', as if he were the guilty party.

Bloody men! Are they born emotionally obtuse, or is it just the inevitable result of having too much testosterone poisoning their bloodstream?

Because it was beginning to look as if she had been much more traumatised by Luke's punch than either her son or the young man Luke had attacked.

‘OK, well …' She hesitated, remembering Aldo's original question. ‘The thing is, nobody hates you, Aldo. Even Lizzie when you and she argue.'

‘I know,' he said with complete conviction. ‘Me and her are friends now,' he continued, confirming what she'd noticed when she'd walked into the room. Something had
definitely changed in their relationship. Something for the better. ‘She took me to the movies while Trey's mum was sick. And she didn't moan once.'

‘That's wonderful,' she said as more of the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Lizzie must have stepped in to take care of Aldo while Trey's mum had been dying.

Why hadn't she ever considered putting them together more instead of trying to keep them apart? It chimed with what Luke had said, about trusting their daughter more. Maybe if she had trusted Lizzie and started treating her like a young woman instead of a snotty teenager, given her more responsibility instead of less, she and Aldo's relationship wouldn't have been so fractious these past few years.

‘Lizzie doesn't hate me, but I know someone who does.' Aldo's matter-of-fact comment cut neatly into Halle's guilt trip.

‘Who?'

‘My dad.' His whisky-coloured eyes, so like her own, suddenly seemed much older than ten years. ‘That's why he never wanted to see me, isn't it?'

Blood slammed into her heart.

Unable to bear the blank acceptance in Aldo's gaze, the answer came to her. Why not tell him Claudio was dead? Then he'd never have to know the truth. Claudio didn't hate him. It was worse than that. Claudio didn't even care he existed. How could you tell a ten-year-old that and not expect them to be devastated? Especially a ten-year-old like Aldo, whose confidence had taken so many knocks in recent years.

The urge to tell her son anything that would make the pain of rejection go away was as strong as it had ever been. He was just a child—the wadded-up piles of dirty socks stuck at the end of his bed, the comics strewn all over the floor, the hamster rattling its cage as it sprinted to nowhere
on its wheel, the piles of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards neatly stacked on his desk, probably in order of greatest hit points or something, the smell of bubblegum that lingered in the room were all testament to that.

But as she opened her mouth, swearing to herself this would be her final white lie, Aldo said, ‘Is it because I did all that bad stuff at school? Is that why he doesn't like me? Could you tell him I'm much better now? And I don't do that stuff much any more?'

And the lie died on her tongue.

‘Oh, Aldo.' She dragged him into her arms and hugged him hard. The guilt all but destroying her at the eagerness, the hope in his tone.

How could she have gotten things so wrong? By not telling him the truth, by almost lying to him again, she'd made him believe her mistakes and Claudio's character flaws were somehow his fault.

He struggled out of her arms, his expression earnest and confused. ‘It's all right, Mum, don't cry. What are you sad about?'

She scrubbed the errant tears away. ‘I'm not sad. I'm emotional. Because I've just realised how amazing my son is.'

‘Really?' He wrinkled his nose in astonishment, making her realise that while she may have told him that a hundred times, she'd never made him believe it.

‘Yes, really. Do you want me to tell you about your dad?'

He nodded, the eagerness still there. She hated that she would have to crush his hope, but there were much worse things than not having a relationship with your father. And one of them was having a father as selfish and self-absorbed as Claudio in your life, or one who was a violent alcoholic, like Brian Best.

The thought brought with it thoughts of Luke, a man who
had been terrified of becoming a father and yet had risen to the challenge despite his fear. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind.

Don't start getting overemotional about Luke again, or you'll start blubbing like your namesake, Halle Berry, on Oscar night and never get this done.

‘Your dad, your biological father,' she corrected, because Claudio had never deserved to be anyone's dad, ‘is called Claudio Benedetti. He's Italian. And we weren't going out for very long when I discovered I was going to have you.'

‘Did he know about me?'

She gulped past the huge lump blocking her throat. ‘Yes, he knew I was pregnant. And he did meet you once, when you were a tiny baby.'

She sucked in another breath and soldiered on. She'd had ten years to get ready for this. Why the hell wasn't she much better prepared? Winging it had become her forte on the show, but never in her private life.

Then she remembered what Luke had said. The nerves didn't show on screen.

Come on, Halle, you can do this.

‘But he decided he didn't want to be a father. Even though he was one. That was his decision, because he's a selfish immature man, and it's his loss, because you are such a terrific kid. And he'll never know how terrific.'

She braced for more questions, ones that might be impossible to answer. But Aldo sat for a moment without speaking, clearly contemplating everything she'd said, then he shrugged. ‘OK.'

‘OK?' She'd been terrified of having this conversation for ten years. Could it really be that painless? ‘Are you sure?'

‘Well, my dad sounds like a dickhead. But Trey said he
never met his dad and he was glad, because he thinks his dad was probably a dickhead.'

Perfectly put, Trey. Why didn't I think of that?

‘Trey's right,' she agreed. Apparently, she had even more to thank Aldo's au pair for than she'd realised. Whatever had been going on between Lizzie and him on the couch, she hoped Lizzie had managed to contact him. ‘“Dickhead” sums up Claudio perfectly,' she added.

‘You said “dickhead”.' Aldo sniggered, both scandalised and excited.

‘I know, but sometimes you just have to call a dickhead, a dickhead.'

He giggled some more, clearly delighted with his mother's newly acquired Tourette's. The uninhibited chuckle reminded Halle of when he was a baby and Lizzie would blow on his tummy to hear that distinctive belly laugh.

Maybe her children hadn't changed nearly as much as she'd thought.

‘I love you to bits.' She tousled his hair and planted a smacking kiss on his cheek. ‘You do know that, right?'