Starting Over (32 page)

‘But you are,’ she said, quietly.

Black anger clouded his face. ‘
I.
Didn’t. Know
!’

‘You should have. You had unprotected sex. You should have checked out any consequences.’

‘Tess, it isn’t always just the man’s fault –’ He reached out, took her arms.

She slapped at his hands, yanked her arms away. ‘Get away from me! I don’t want you near me – you’ve turned into Olly Gray!’

‘You all right, Ratty?’

‘Don’t ask.’

‘You look like ...’

‘Don’t
ask
!’

The garage became unnaturally silent. He fumbled through his work somehow, between phone calls on his mobile from the privacy of a forecourt car. To the Child Support Agency, calm and non-committal and all-in-a-day’s work, who sent him to their website to read about DNA testing. ‘But if there’s a possibility that Jason Gavanagh is your child you should be prepared –’

He snapped, ‘There’s every possibility, but I deal in certainties!’ And clicked off.

Madeline had to be tracked down, wasn’t on her old number. He had to ring five people, each either reluctant or avid, before discovering her at her parents’ house. After a guilty pause, she confessed, ‘I wouldn’t have put them on to you, but I’ve had to leave my job, I’m in a jam. Mum can’t look after Jason while I work any more because she’s ill, we’ve had to go on benefit, it’s horrible, managing like this! They stop some of my money if I don’t name the father.’

‘Couldn’t you have approached me first? Privately, perhaps?’

She was flustered, awkward. Hardly the bubbly Madeline he remembered, always in a rush to get to the next party and buy the next dress. ‘You get these immense
forms
and you have to answer all these questions! The father is obliged in law ...’

‘And you’re sure it’s me?’

‘I think it’s likely, don’t you?’

‘Are you sure it’s me?’

‘We did ...’

‘Have you any idea how this is affecting
me
? Did you give that any thought at all?
Are you sure he’s mine
?’

‘Deal with the CSA.’ She hung up.

He hardly had any idea of what he did, after that. Pete dealt with three men who stopped to admire the red
Pontiac
on the forecourt, kept the work flowing and made sure Ratty was left alone. God bless Pete.

A hundred times he almost rang her.

A thousand times.

To beg forgiveness, understanding? To check she was OK? Just to hear her, overlay the morning’s memory of her scorn? But she’d asked for space. She always needed space, acres, when something ugly happened.

But God, she’d been so angry. He cringed at the memory of the fury and contempt in her eyes. The letter had caught him so unawares, so cruelly destroyed their joy in Tess’s pregnancy that he’d made a complete hash of the argument that followed, feverishly casting about for things to say, anything to drag them away from the abyss he’d suddenly glimpsed at their feet.

In blurting out that he wouldn’t see the child he was alleged to have fathered, he’d had some half-arsed idea of demonstrating his commitment to Tess, to their baby. Instead she’d leapt to the conclusion that he was a heartless bastard, wriggling out of his paternal responsibilities at the first instant.

...
You’ve turned into Olly Gray
...
You’ve turned into Olly Gray.

He wandered to the open doors to gaze out, longing to see her as ever, strolling with Angel and the kids or striding off on a wild walk to make herself feel better.

He could go home. It was a few hundred yards away. The urge was almost irresistible to run down Little Lane to Pennybun. To drag her into his arms and plead with her to see her unfairness in blaming him, it happened all the time, the drink, the carelessness. He’d just been unlucky, surely she could see that?

But she’d asked for space.

All day he was stupid and clumsy with apprehension. Skinned every knuckle on his right hand, dropped his spanners and gauges, which immediately rolled into the least accessible corners.

Time crawled by without his mobile ringing, without Tess trailing up the road to rest her sad face on his shoulder and wrap her needy arms around him, telling him they’d work it out together. To agree that their love was too great to spoil.

It should’ve occurred to him earlier but it didn’t – until he walked up the path and saw the space where the Freelander had been.

The kitchen door swung as it always did, everything was where it always was, the range, the green tiles and Tess’s paintings. But he only had to stand still and listen for reality to break around him like a freak wave, turning his legs to string as he stumbled up the stairs.

He lost control long enough to yell, pointlessly, ‘You better not have gone!’

Apart from that he was stonily calm, opening the oak wardrobe, the chest of drawers. Inspecting the workroom, the bathroom.

No clothes that smelled of Tess, no dresses, no jeans, no sexy underwear. No lotions, no shampoo, no make-up. No paint, no paper, no pencils, no box files of correspondence, no books containing her work.

No Tess.

Except for the note in her handwriting stuck to the dressing-table mirror:
I need to get away.

Through the small landing window he stared out at the drive. Could almost see her stumping up and down with boxes, clothes, suitcases, portfolios, drawing board, stacking the back of the Freelander until her rear vision was obscured and she’d have to drive on her door mirrors. Her computer would have been a problem; the big-screen monitor needed strapping to the front passenger seat with a seat belt. That’s how it had been when he’d first met her, when he’d towed the Freelander into the garage and it was stacked out with her possessions.

But then, Tess was used to packing. Never got completely
un
packed, when he thought about it; there were still boxes left in Honeybun for her to get around to.

‘I should’ve expected this,’ he spat aloud, uselessly because she wasn’t there to hear. And suddenly a great rage swelled around, above, inside his head; temple-buzzing, vision-shaking fury. He flung himself into the workroom, crashing the door back against the wall. ‘I might’ve
known you’d leave!
Why
couldn’t you stay and work things out?
Why
?
’ He picked up yesterday’s coffee mug, all she’d left.

Through the window. Yes, through the ... there! That was better! Stoking the violence boiling inside with that sharp splintering of glass. Much better. He needed more.

‘
Why
?’ Wildly into the bedroom, heaving at her wardrobe until it clattered over. ‘
Why
?’ Dressing-table stool at the mirror still bearing that hateful note, which splintered, hesitated, then hissed to the floor in a curtain of light. ‘
Why
?’ The heavier the furniture, the more satisfying the crash to displace the roaring in his head.

Best was everything which smashed and shattered into irredeemable shards, chinking, cracking, jingling, littering the carpets, scarring the walls. Brittle, dangerous, widespread debris.

‘I smashed up the house.’ He listened to a silence over the phone.

At least Pete, when he finally reacted, reacted positively. ‘Shall I come?’

‘Please, Pete.’

Three minutes, then Pete entered the kitchen, crunching, awed, through the pulverised glassware from the dresser, the mugs from the tree. Dead quiet, dead calm, dead still, Ratty watched Pete crouch into his field of vision, heard him as if he was calling down a lift shaft. ‘Where’s the whisky?’

He squinted from his bottom-step seat. ‘Sideboard.’ Saw Pete crunch his way to the sitting-room door, peer in. The only room to have escaped.

Pete’s voice down that shaft again, sombre, warily coaxing. ‘In here, Rats. You need a drink. C’mon mate, drink.’

He allowed himself to be steered by the elbow like an incompetent to a seat, accepted the whisky bottle by the neck, supposed drearily that there was nothing much left to drink from, swigged twice, gagged, returned the bottle.

‘More.’ Pete pushed it back.

It was completely the wrong thing to do. He drank anyway. ‘She’s left me.’

Pete wiped the bottle with his sleeve, drank, wiped, passed it back, whistled his amazement. ‘No shit? Christ, I’m sorry.’

Ratty’s throat was on fire and it didn’t matter. Good to be senseless, destructive, to choke down the raw spirit without giving himself respite. Let his eyes water, let his voice crack as he forced out, hoarsely, ‘CSA are onto me. Madeline Gavanagh’s had a kid and says its mine.’

Pete sucked in his breath. ‘Is it?’

‘Could be.’ He took back the bottle, swigged, retched, swigged again. ‘Could be. And Tess has put into action The Tess Riddell Coping Mechanism. She’s fucked off somewhere else.’

It was all he could do to breathe between gulps.

Pete’s voice, ‘You’ve had enough, now.’

And his, ‘I haven’t.’

Sometimes Pete spoke and sometimes he was silent and that was good. Good old Pete. Pete was the best.

And in twenty minutes he wasn’t safe to be left, Ratty understood that. His head clamoured at whisky on no food. Not safe to be left in a house full of broken glass, shattered crockery, splintered furniture, only sensible to let Pete help him through the garden, up the village to Rotten Row, clutching the whisky bottle, staggering but willing enough, dragged along by Pete’s fist wound into the fabric of his jacket. Up and down the kerb, zigzag stumble into their sitting room where Angel shifted from foot to foot, hands to her face in horror.

‘She’s left me,’ he explained amiably, swaying, probably intimidating, close. ‘Run away. Didjer know?’

‘No, Rats. I didn’t know. Get him up to the spare room, Pete, I’ll make him coffee.’

‘I don’t need
coffee
. I’ve got
this
!’ He shook the whisky bottle in front of her anxious face. ‘Drink with me, Angel. Drink to my runaway, drink to my children. Let’s drink ourselves sober like we used to when we were young and stupid. And Pete and me can share you, you’re safer.’

‘You’re an obnoxious drunk,’ she scolded gently.

The sofa caught him behind the knee and he buckled gracefully down into its embrace. ‘Aw, don’t be like that, Angel. We’ll drink to weak women and unlucky men!’

From the darkness swirling at the peripheries of his vision, from the whisky bottle sliding through his fingers, from Angel’s worried face swimming too colourfully above him, he was passing out. ‘Sorry,’ he said, letting himself go.

But he did hear Angel, gargling through the spinning darkness, ‘What the hell are we going to do with him?’

And Pete, ‘Dunno. But he couldn’t stay there. It looks as if there’s been an explosion.’

Very ill, terribly ill he felt, but sober. Completely. Seeing things so clearly it hurt.

He lurched into the kitchen. ‘Sorry about last night.’

‘Don’t be.’ Angel left her vegetables and sat him on a kitchen chair, anxious but looking pleased that he was at least walking and talking. Pete eased his way in, leaving Toby and Jenna on the floor engrossed in cartoons, pushing the door shut behind him.

Explanations, it was reasonable that they’d expect them. He raked his fingers through his hair, which felt uncombed and clumpy. ‘The CSA say this kid, Jason Gavanagh, is my child. I got this big form, yesterday, asking whether I accept paternity. You remember Madeline Gavanagh?’

Nods.

‘And he could be mine. Probably is. There were a couple of times, y’know after a drink.’

More nods.

Angel had made him a slice of toast and he nibbled minutely at the corner. He really ought to eat. Did he eat at all yesterday? Probably not, probably part of the reason why he felt so bad. He managed half a mouthful, chewing food that he didn’t actually want to touch.

‘So Tess has left?’

‘Run away!’

‘Left,’ corrected Angel, gently. ‘Do you think she’ll come back?’

‘Believing that is the only thing keeping me sane. It just seems that the only way she can deal with a problem is to run and hide.’

Angel frowned, rubbed at the edge of the table with her finger to erase a crayon mark. ‘Madeline was
previous to
Tess, wasn’t she? Tess presumably realised you’d had sex before.’

Ratty picked up another morsel of toast. ‘You’re missing the point. The
point
is that I
had
unprotected sex and I
didn’t
bother to enquire whether I’d left behind more than I’d bargained for. As far as Tess is concerned ... well, she said I’ve turned into Olly Gray.’