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He turned and headed back downstairs and was just at the bottom step when he heard the front door open.
Adele jumped back, startled.
What the heck was going on?
Adele’s face turned a fiery red and she was unusually flustered.
A horrible thought scratched at the back of his mind to be let in.
‘Have you been out all night, Adele?’
She fumbled with the Sunday paper tucked under her arm. ‘I think that falls into the category of none of your business, don’t you?’
None of his…? The woman was priceless!
‘You’re still my wife!’
She refolded the newspaper and gave him a long, hard look. ‘Well, we can always do something about that.’
Nick saw an uncharacteristic flash of red behind his eyes. Seismic activity he was surprised she could still provoke after all this time. He stormed through the house, down the garden path and into his workshop, slamming the door behind him.
None of his business!
He should have stayed to have it out with her, but his feet had been moving before his brain had engaged. He didn’t feel much like going back into the house now, anyway.
Ethel, the shop mannequin he’d rescued from a skip, was still holding a pose in the corner of his workshop. At least she was predictable. Once upon a time, he’d have sworn Adele was too, but her refusal to compromise about his job had shattered that illusion. Like the dummy, he’d discovered she could be hard and cold in a way that had taken him totally by surprise.
‘What do you think my chances are, Ethel? I need a woman’s perspective.’
Ethel stared out of the window, her bright blue eyelids unblinking.
Nick sighed and fiddled with the soldering iron sitting on the bench.
‘Yeah. Thanks for nothing, babe.’
Adele was working on her laptop when Nick came to find her. She was still all jittery after their confrontation in the hall. She’d almost faltered—almost. But in the end she’d managed to pull herself together and Nick would never know how close she’d come to soothing his anger away with a kiss.
She tried to pretend she wasn’t aware of him standing in the doorway of the little box room they used as a study.
‘I’m busy, Nick,’ she said eventually, without looking round.
‘We’ve got to talk some time.’
She shrugged and tried to concentrate on the words on the screen. None of them seemed to be recognisable as English any more. She read a sentence for the third time then gave up.
‘OK. We’ll talk.’ She swivelled round in her chair and folded her arms. ‘Fire away.’
Nick shook his head. ‘Not like this. Let’s get onto neutral territory. How about I take you out to lunch?’
Once upon a time, she’d loved spending long, lazy Sunday lunches with Nick. They’d sit outside in the pub garden in summer and huddle up to the fire inside in winter. She didn’t want to be reminded of happier days, but he was right. They had to talk at some point and she might as well get it out of the way.
‘OK, but you’re paying.’
‘Of course.’
Nick flashed his dimples and Adele had the feeling she was agreeing to a whole heap of trouble.
‘What’s this all about, then, Nick?’
They’d sat through most of the main course talking about nothing. Whether that was a good thing or not, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that the small talk was getting to her and she had to know one way or the other. Her heart broke into a trot at the thought of the ‘D’ word that might come out of his mouth. Bizarrely, it was the last word she wanted to hear, despite the fact it had been the one at the forefront of her mind since last summer.
Nick played with a roast potato on his plate.
‘It’s Mum’s sixty-fifth birthday this year.’
Adele nodded. ‘I know.’ Then she frowned.
What was he up to? She leaned forward and tried to catch his gaze. He seemed to be absorbed in shepherding all his peas into a little pile with his knife.
‘How is Maggie?’
She’d been a bit of a coward on that front after Nick had left. Everyone knew she was useless at keeping up with correspondence and she’d hidden behind that as an excuse to keep contact with Nick’s family to a minimum. Yes, she’d dashed off the odd email and sent a Christmas card, but she’d avoided the messages on the answering machine, pretending to herself she was too busy with her work. In the last few months, everything had gone a little quiet.
The truth was, she was just plain scared. Scared, now she and Nick were no longer a couple, that maybe his mother and sisters would go cold on her. Just as her own parents had. She’d only been part of the family by default, after all. It had been easier to avoid anything deep than risk finding out her fears had some foundation.
He poked the pile of peas with his knife and sent them scattering. ‘You know Mum…’
Adele tried not to let the shame show on her face. She’d been a coward, plain and simple.
She knew Nick’s mother better than she knew her own. Which wasn’t difficult, seeing as the last time she’d seen her parents in the flesh was a good three years ago. But that was nothing unusual. It had been that way since they’d packed her off to boarding-school so her mother could flit around the world with her father as he moved from exotic location to exotic location with his job.
Maggie Hughes was the sort of woman she’d fantasised about having as a parent in her teenage years. Her house was always full of children and grandchildren, who complained constantly that she had her nose in their business just a little too much, but it never seemed to stop them coming. She had a big heart and had made sure Adele always felt part of the family, always felt wanted. She was a little too indulgent with her only son, perhaps, but nobody was perfect.
‘Give her my love when you speak to her, won’t you?’
Nick coughed. ‘Well, I was kind of thinking you could tell her yourself—in person.’
‘And when would that be, exactly? You haven’t forgotten with all your Hollywood high-flying that she moved in with Auntie Beverley last year, have you? Scotland is a long way to go for a cup of tea and a chat.’
‘She’s having a big birthday bash. Charlotte is organising it and, of course, my other sisters have been roped in too.’
Adele could imagine it. Nick had three older sisters. They were a formidable force en masse. Their only weakness was a huge soft spot for their baby brother. She’d heard plenty of stories about the scrapes Nick had got himself into as a cheeky young lad, and for every misdemeanour there was a matching tale of how one or all of the sisters had bailed him out, duffed up the bully, or cleaned up the resulting mess.
‘What’s this party got to do with me?’
Nick looked at her from under the wayward tuft of hair. ‘Mum wants you to come. In fact, she’s insisting.’
‘Why?’ Maggie was always so sensible. ‘Surely she knows that having both of us together at the party would just make things awkward. Why would she want to risk her big night like that?’
‘Er—that’s the thing, you see. I haven’t really told her about…us.’
Adele felt the band of tension across her forehead tighten a few notches. ‘Us?’
‘About our…you know…problems.’
The plate on the table swam before her eyes. The sinking feeling that he’d done it again—walked away from a difficult situation, leaving someone else to deal with the fallout—crept up on her and sat on her shoulder whispering nasty little words in her ear.
Surely, not even Nick could be that daft? She looked at him. That lopsided cocky smile said it all. He always pulled that one out of the bag when he knew he’d done something that was going to make her blood boil.
It was all Adele could do not to pick up his plate and pour the contents, gravy and all, over his head. She should have had a medal for managing to stand up and walk stiffly from the restaurant without spontaneously combusting.
She gulped in a lungful of winter air and hoped it would cool her down before he caught her up. She did not want to make a huge scene in the car park of The Partridge.
This was typical Nick! Why had she even let him open his mouth in the first place? She had known no good could come of it, yet she’d trotted down the road with him like the class-A doormat that she was.
She caught a flash of a brown leather jacket at the corner of her eye and knew Nick had managed to pay the bill and give chase.
Well, tough. She wasn’t ready to talk to him right now. Thankfully, they’d decided to walk down the road to the nearest pub for lunch. It would only take her ten minutes to get home.
She listened to the staccato rhythm of her boots on the pavement as she stalked off in the direction of the house. Make that eight minutes, if she kept up this pace.
Nick could see Adele strutting from the car park and followed. He really wanted to sprint, but a little voice inside his head whispered that it would be better to let his wife cool off a bit. He compromised by jogging.
Boy, she could walk fast when she took off like this. It was a minute or so before he gained enough ground to get within talking distance.
‘Adele!’
She didn’t even turn round, just held up a hand in his direction. The face obviously wasn’t listening.
‘Come on, Adele. Please?’
She had to stop at that moment to cross a road and he caught her up.
He started to open his mouth.
‘Don’t! Just don’t,’ she warned.
He shut it again.
‘You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Nick. I can’t believe you’d turn up here after nine months of no contact and invite me to a birthday party.’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘This is a new level of insensitivity, even for you.’
Now, hang on a minute! How many times had he called and tried to apologise in the days after he’d left? How many times had she slammed the receiver down before he’d been able to get more than a syllable out? If they hadn’t communicated for nine months, it was more to do with Adele than it was with him. At least he’d tried.
In the end he’d done what she’d obviously wanted and let her be. And now she was blaming him for it?
‘Well, maybe you’ve got all the answers, Adele, but I certainly haven’t.’
She stepped back from the kerb and looked at him. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean, I’m not sure myself what is going on between us. What is this? Are we separated, or was it just a really long cooling-off period after a fight? If I can’t figure it out, how am I supposed to define it for anyone else? You wouldn’t talk to me. I have no idea what’s going on in your neat and ordered little head.’
Adele shook her head and crossed the road. He had to wait for a couple of cars to turn the corner before he could catch her up again. No more hanging around waiting for her to fill him in. He’d waited nine months and he was going to get his answers right now.
‘What did you tell people, then, Adele? What was your take on it?’
And then he shut up. He knew exactly what Adele would have told her friends. Mona would have had every last grisly detail and would be in no doubt that Nick was the black-hearted villain of the piece, while Adele came off snowy white and smelling of roses. The woman was so blinkered sometimes.
He marched along behind her in silence. He should have listened to his gut instinct. Adele was in no mood for even reasonable explanations. Anything he said would just make it worse while she was in this state.
While he waited for her to unlock the front door, the sparks flying off her were almost tangible.
‘I’m going upstairs,’ she said, and marched off, leaving the door open.
He stepped inside and closed it. Despite the twelve hours of sleep he’d had the night before, he was starting to flag again. He went into the living room and switched the television on. Maybe he could doze in front of it for a bit.
Adele would calm down soon enough. She always did. Her anger was quick to flare up, but it usually burnt itself out pretty quickly too. He flicked the television on and dropped into his favourite armchair. Just fifteen minutes watching the footie and he’d make her a cup of tea as a peace offering and see if they couldn’t discuss things without world war three starting.
A little later, just as he was considering hauling himself out of his chair and switching the kettle on, he heard Adele coming down the stairs. Or, to be more precise, he heard a whole lot of bumping and crashing, then thump, thump, thump—as if there were two of her jumping down each step.
He arrived in the hall just in time to see Adele wrestling his bag down the last three stairs.
‘Adele? What on earth are you doing?’
Adele stopped what she was doing, partly to answer, partly to catch her breath. Her arms were aching. How did a bunch of rumpled shirts weigh so much?
‘I thought that was pretty obvious, wasn’t it? I’m throwing you out.’
The look on his face was classic. If she weren’t ready to kill him, she’d want to laugh. Finally, Nick Hughes had come across a woman who refused to melt at his feet and he was totally floored.
‘You can’t throw me out. I live here too.’
‘Not any more. You can find some other poor sucker to rope into your hare-brained schemes. I’m finished with the whole lot of it.’
Her stomach dipped as she realised the implication of her own words. Was this really what four years of marriage had come to? She looked at Nick and the sickness sank right into her toes. That had wiped the dimples off his face. She should be feeling pleased he was finally getting the message, but suddenly she felt her eyes moisten.
‘I’m sorry, Adele. Really I am. I should have told Mum…something.’ He shook his head. ‘But she loves you like a daughter and I didn’t want to upset her. She’s not very…’
He swallowed the rest of the sentence. She felt her heart squeeze as he struggled to find the words.
‘She’s been…I mean, going to be really sad for us. I didn’t want to tell her until I knew for certain there wasn’t any hope.’
No hope.
Her lip quivered and she pressed her mouth into a thin line to disguise it. Nick gave her a rueful smile. Now, this was the smile that really did some damage. It was heart-wrenchingly lopsided and utterly genuine.
The fault lines started to widen. Hadn’t he said he didn’t know how to define their relationship? Did that mean he hadn’t made his mind up, that maybe he didn’t want a divorce after all?
And, even if he did, why should she punish Maggie for her son’s abandonment of his wife? Although there might not be a light at the end of the tunnel for her and Nick, she didn’t want to cause bad feeling in the family.
