Page 69 of The Fall-Out

‘If the house burnt down, would the firemen rescue Blue Bear?’

Stupidly, the thought of my son’s beloved teddy being lost to the flames brought me closer to tears than I’d been all evening. ‘Sweetheart, the house didn’t burn down. If there’d been an actual fire – which there wasn’t – the fire fighters would have come and put it out long before that could happen.’

‘But what about Blue Bear?’

‘He’d have been found soggy but unharmed upstairs in your bed,’ I said firmly.

I had no idea whether this was true – or whether telling my children reassuring half-truths was the right thing to do in the circumstances or the worst parenting cop-out ever. Rationally, of course, I knew that in the event of a fire Blue Bear and Meredith’s beloved orange camel would have been consigned to the flames without anyone thinking twice about it, along with my wedding dress and all our other treasured possessions.

‘Would you like to stay over, Mum?’ I heard Patch saying gently. ‘You’re more than welcome, if you’d prefer not to go home on your own. You’ve had a shock.’

‘I should wash up that lasagne dish,’ Bridget fretted. ‘It’ll need a good long soak with a scoop of biological washing powder and then a scrub. That’s the thing with Pyrex, burnt bits get caught in all the nooks and crannies.’

‘Come on, Meredith and Toby,’ I encouraged. ‘Let’s get the two of you to bed. It’s late now. Everything’s going to be all right, and I’ll stay with you until you both fall asleep, okay?’

Leaving Patch to comfort his mother, I took the children’s hands and led them upstairs. There was still a whiff of smoke in the air, but it wasn’t as bad as the kitchen. I opened the window in their room and tucked them up, planting kisses on their foreheads and reassuring them that everything would be all right now, Mummy and Daddy were here.

My mind kept returning to the possessions we might have lost, but hadn’t. Every time it did, I tried to force it away – to tell myself that those things, however important they felt, were just stuff that could either be replaced, or would remain in our lives in the form of memories.

Then I realised – they weren’t insignificant. They represented not just the past, but our future together as a family. One day, Meredith (or Toby, obviously – there was no way I wanted to be that kind of parent) would ask to try on my wedding dress, and I’d watch them parade around in it and tell them they looked beautiful. Toby’s teddy would be there for him as long as he needed it, and when eventually he didn’t, I’d know it meant that Blue Bear had played his part in my son becoming secure and independent. The Christmas decorations would be brought down from the loft year after year – the cheap, moulting tinsel Patch and I had bought the first year we lived together; the set of three glittering glass spheres the Girlfriends’ Club had given us for a wedding present; the cotton wool snowmen the children had made at a craft session, which were already dusty and greying – and as the children grew older they’d come to recognise their favourite ones, confident that they’d be there to hang on the tree every time.

It wasn’t just stuff – it was the physical fabric of what made us a family.

And it could all have been lost – not by a fire that had never actually happened, but by me. By me deciding that the foundations on which Patch’s and my marriage was built were too insubstantial to withstand further construction – that because the way things had started had been flawed, the future automatically would be, too.

‘Jesus, Naomi,’ I muttered. ‘What a bloody fool.’

Toby was sleeping now, his thumb resting near his mouth in case he needed it during the night. Meredith was dropping off, her eyelashes fluttering involuntarily over her cheeks, their smoothness marred by drifts of dried tears.

As silently as I could, I stood up and tiptoed across the floor, giving them one last look before turning the light off and pulling the door closed behind me. The lights were still on downstairs, but I couldn’t hear voices – Patch must have organised a taxi to take Bridget home.

I found him in the kitchen, slumped over the table, a glass of whisky in front of him.

When he heard my footsteps, he raised his head. ‘Kids down?’

I nodded. ‘Is there any left in that bottle?’

‘Plenty. You want ice?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Quite the night, hey?’

‘It was awful.’ I sat down opposite him and sipped my drink. I never normally drank whisky and this reminded me why – it was vile. The peaty taste that was meant to make it special just made it taste medicinal and burnt to me. But then, I supposed, lots of things were going to taste burnt for a while.

‘I mean, it wasn’t awful really,’ Patch said. ‘It was just a false alarm – literally.’

‘You did well, though. Quite the Boy Scout, with your wooden spoon.’

He laughed. ‘Be prepared, right? Except I wasn’t – I had to get it out of the drawer. Maybe I should carry it with me all the time.’

‘Like your pocket knife.’

‘A pocket spoon. Good shout.’

We smiled at each other – a tentative agreement that the almost-row we’d had earlier could be forgotten, set aside, deemed unimportant in the light of what had happened afterwards.

I couldn’t change the past, anyway. I could only apologise to Zara and explain to Rowan, Kate and Abbie that I genuinely hadn’t known about the overlap between our relationships with Patch. Explain that had I known, I’d have acted differently. Hope they understood that a matter of weeks when things were complicated wasn’t enough to undermine a marriage that had lasted years.

---