Page 47 of Don't Let Him In

She grins and Nick laughs. “Well, that sounds like an excellent compromise.”

Nina passes the bowl of tortilla chips and tub of hummus to Arlo, and carries the opened bottle of wine and four glasses to the table.

Ash catches a sideways glance from Arlo and nods back, just a fraction, enough to acknowledge her brother’s gesture. She knows what it means. It means,What the fuck. Ash has tried to tell Arlo, but when Arlo is not at home, Arlo is 100 percent committed to not being at home, almost as if he enters a portal into another reality every time he goes back to Bournemouth.

Ash tries not to bring her awkwardness to the proceedings, which arealready awkward enough as it is, but as she watches Nick chatting with her brother, she sees it. She sees Arlo sit straighter, bring his body closer to the table, share jokes with Nick, look stupidly happy every time Nick laughs at something he’s said. She watches her brother’s face—he has such a sweet face, a perfect blend of both of his parents: Paddy’s boyishness, Nina’s bone structure—and she loves her brother and she misses him and she has been wanting him to come home so badly, it has been so long, and now he is finally here, but Nick Radcliffe is stealing away their quiet night of catching up, of being just them, talking about Dad, remembering each other. He’s sucking it all away from her and pulling Arlo toward him, and Nina’s face is also aglow, and those three oblong parcels sit there at the other end of the table looking like grisly reminders of what is happening here—the further upending of things that have already been upended and haven’t yet been put away. And now there is this man with two names, a wife, no wife, children, no children, doggy bags but no dog, pacifier clips but no baby, a restaurant but no restaurant, and a black hole where his backstory should be—and nobody seems to care but her.

“So,” she says to her mother, hearing in her own ears how bitter she sounds, even in that one syllable. “Mum, did you want to ask Nick about those things we were talking about the other day? The, you know, the life-coach stuff.”

“Oh!” Nick turns his head, whip fast, a genial smile on his face. “Are you interested in some life coaching? You know, I used to do a bit of that.”

Nina throws Ash a pinch-eyed look, as if to say,See, I told you he’d have a benign explanation, before turning to Nick. “You did?” she asks.

“Yup,” he replies. “For a few years. I thought I was done with restaurants. I’d burned myself out. Needed a change of direction and so I retrained in the early noughties. It turned out it wasn’t a good fit for me, turned out I’m much better off in hospitality, even if it does feel like it’s going to kill me some days. But it’s where my heart is. My soul. I’m good for nothing else. Truly.”

He laughs self-deprecatingly and then turns back to Ash. “I’d be happy to offer you a couple of sessions, though. Just to go through the, you know, the basics. If you’re interested?”

Ash recoils for a second, barely able to believe what she’s hearing, but within another split second she realizes that this could be a brilliant opportunity for her to dig some more, ask him questions, work on him. And actually, Jesus Christ, if anyone she knows is in need of a life coach, it’s her.

FORTY-ONE

Al gets home at about eight o’clock that night. He smells of wine and looks shell-shocked and vacant.

“What the fuck, Al?” Martha asks.

“I’m sorry. I really am. I just—”

Al’s eyes fill with tears and Martha feels her stomach lurch.

“What?” she says. “What is it?”

“I got a call, when you were having lunch with Grace,” he says. “From the people who live next door to my mother.”

“Your mother? What do you mean, your mother?”

She sees Al flinch. “Yes,” he says. “I’m sorry. I was… when I met you, I wasn’t entirely honest. I told you she was dead and that my father was alive, and actually they were both… expedient lies.” He sighs. “It just seemed easier than telling you the truth somehow.”

Al tells her that he is estranged from his mother, that his mother had somehow blamed Al for the passing of her husband, the horrible GP who used to abuse Al when he was a child. She’d cut Al out of his inheritance, leaving everything to her cousins’ children, and had changed the locks to his childhood home when Al was twenty-one. Al hasn’t seen her for over thirty years, but she is now eighty-five and living alone in a small house in the Midlands somewhere.

“Her neighbors found her wandering around in their back gardenin her nightdress. Her front door had shut behind her and they didn’t know what to do, so they called me. I mean, I’m not sure what they expected me to do about it. A hundred and twenty bloody miles away. But anyway… there it is. My mother appears to have dementia and nobody else wants to have anything to do with her because she’s so generally unpleasant and now it looks like my life is going to be me just endlessly going up and down the M4, whilst also having to find a way to pay for her care.”

“But you said she was wealthy. Can’t she pay for her own?” Martha tries not to let her selfish fears for the status quo taint the tone of her voice, tries to sound as though she is genuinely concerned about Al’s mother and not even slightly concerned about the fact that her husband, who has only just rid himself of one situation that took him away from home all the time, has now almost immediately found himself in another. And what about the beach property? And the shop? And Nala? What about Christmas? What about their lovely, lovely life?

“Well, yes and no. She has assets, but now I’m going to have to somehow get power of attorney, which will be hard since she’s about to be given a diagnosis of dementia. But without that I won’t have the authority to free up any cash, and so in the short term”—he sighs long and hard—“I’m going to have to find the money to cover immediate expenses.”

“Oh God,” says Martha, her hand held loosely over her mouth, “what a nightmare.” But even as she’s feigning concern over Al’s situation, she’s wondering about other things. She’s wondering about the smell of wine on Al’s breath. She’s wondering why he didn’t message her or call her, and why he didn’t say anything to Milly before he left the shop. She’s wondering about his decision to lie to her about his mother being dead all these years. And more than anything, she’s wondering about the fact that the tracker on his car has been inactive all day. She’s googled it and the only way that the tracker could stop working would be if it was physically destroyed. She searches Al’s face for some evidenceof his knowledge of her act of disloyalty, some darkness, some sense that he is biding his time and waiting to tell her that he knows that she’s been spying on him, that she has broken his trust in the most heinous way. But it’s not there. All that’s there is tiredness and world-weariness, worry and fear—and love. She sees it in every angle of his body, every line in his face, the way he looks at her so softly. He loves her so much. So what, she wonders, is actually going on here? This man is somehow lying to her, but in no easily discernible way. And certainly, given what he’s just told her about his elderly mother, she is in no position to dig or delve. Not now. “So, what are you going to do? I mean, what’s happening about Christmas?”

“The woman next door says she’ll have her for Christmas Day, but I said I’d go up on Boxing Day, if things look like they’re going downhill. I mean, she’s still compos mentis. Knows who I am. Can cook for herself. Take care of herself. It’s just the wandering that’s the problem right now. And the woman next door says she’ll make sure the door is always locked when my mum’s at home and will keep an eye on her. And ha!” he says. “I was even thinking of maybe putting a little tracker on her, you know. Like they put on dog collars. So I can always know where she is.”

Ice runs through Martha and she studies his face again, but still, there’s nothing there. Just a soft, tired smile. No edge.

She returns his smile and touches his wrist and says, “Well, if this is going to be an ongoing thing now, which it sounds like it might be, honestly, Al, please just let me help. I can do this with you. Don’t cut me out, will you?”

He breathes out gently and takes a step toward her. He wraps his arms around her and he says, “You are the most wonderful woman in the world and I don’t know what I did to deserve you. But right now, all I want from you is a cuddle on the sofa. And possibly a glass of wine.”

She wants to ask him about the glass of wine he’s already had this evening, but she doesn’t.

FORTY-TWOFOUR YEARS EARLIER

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