Page 17 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
‘We’re on, Evie,’ Juzzy says, taking her elbow as if she’s saving her from the conversation.
‘Good to see you,’ Evie says to Oliver as the gate opens. ‘I’ll ask Trudy then call you, yeah?’ He’ll be in the phone book; everyone is.
‘Thank you.’ He smiles. ‘I really appreciate it.’
‘What are friends for?’
His eyes cloud momentarily. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m using you,’ he says softly.
‘You’re not.’ She pats his arm. ‘You’re helping your brother.’
Before she has a chance to say goodbye she’s swept up in the tide of her friends, putting irons in hands, and when she turns back to wave to Oliver she sees him walking away with Steve and a couple of other men.
It’s a shame, in some ways, that she didn’t feel the spark for him, but you can’t force it. As Priss once said, it’s there or it isn’t. Evie just wishes she knew whattherefelt like, because she’s never had it.
But that’s a conundrum for another time.
CHAPTER NINE
Anna thought that when you kicked a husband out of the house, it was his job to stay out. That would be the polite thing to do when your wife has made it clear she doesn’t want you around, along with spending some time to contemplate your life and your decisions and working out if you’ve perhaps made some wrong ones. Like having an affair. Not that Anna has any proof of that, and after she blurted out her suspicion to Ingrid the other day, her mother cautioned her about getting too attached to the idea of something so serious before finding out if it’s true.
‘Those stories we tell ourselves can be very dangerous,’ Ingrid said darkly and Anna wondered how she’d come to that conclusion, considering her mother has always seemed to live very much in stark reality, what with her husband being incapacitated for so many years. However, Anna didn’t ask for more detail and Ingrid didn’t offer it. Some things hover between mothers and daughters, undefined and unaddressed, and they can stay that way forever. Anna has some of those with Ingrid, and Renee will probably have a few with her, and that’s just fine. They don’t need to know everything about each other.
Although Ingrid did ask Anna if she wanted to ‘see someone’. After saying it was a bit early to find a new man, Anna was informed that ‘seeing someone’ meant ‘going to a psychiatrist’. She declined. Throwing Gary out wasn’t anything that needed medical attention. It was the only rational thing to do in the circumstances.
Not that Gary thinks so, which is why he’s sitting across from Anna holding a hot cuppa, drumming his fingertips on the kitchen table, not looking at her, biting his bottom lip.
‘How long is this going to go on?’ he’s asking her, still drumming.
‘What?’
‘You not letting me live at home.’ He looks up and she’s surprised to see dismay in his eyes.
‘This wasn’t your home, Gary,’ she says, trying not to sound snarky. ‘It was your dormitory.’
His nostrils flare and he grips the cup tightly. ‘That’s unfair,’ he says.
The kids are playing outside and she can hear Renee giggling. They haven’t really noticed that their father isn’t living there any more, and Anna is quite aware that it’s because of the very reason she asked him to move out.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Tell me why.’
He stares at her and she stares back as his mouth opens then closes then opens again.
‘I know I wasn’t here much,’ he concedes. ‘But it was only for a little while.’
‘Two years,’ she says, because she was keeping track. Of course, now she realises she was likely keeping track of how long his affair has been going on. Not that she’s going to say that to him because he’ll just deny it. And she has no proof. It’s hard – nay, impossible – to think of anything else that would keep him away from her, from the kids, night after night after night. No one likes their job that much.
‘It wasn’t!’ he says quickly, then frowns. ‘Was it?’
‘From when you took on Brendan,’ she says. ‘You told me having a partner would mean less work, not more. But it didn’t.’ She sighs, more from irritation than anything. Why is he putting her through this conversation? They’re done. Not officially. Notlegally. In her heart, though – that’s where he really doesn’t live any more. Because he can’t. She won’t let him.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know. But he has a young family and –’
‘So do you!’
Gary looks so confused right then – as if he has no idea what she could mean. How is it possible he can’t understand?
‘But it’s my practice,’ he says. ‘I was trying to …’ He lets go of the mug and runs his hand over his head. That’s one thing that has changed about him since they married: his hairstyle. In the olden days he wore it longer; now he has it short all over. Easier, she supposes, to maintain for the busy lawyer on the go.
