Page 37 of The Lie
Both brothers fell silent.
‘Make sure you phone me with updates. I love our chats,’ Rex said affectionately. ‘I feel like I’m a million miles away and I miss you.’
‘Bugger, bugger, bugger,’ Michael muttered, as he sat in his armchair in the sitting room, struggling with the Velcro fastenings on his trainers, his breath coming in awkward gasps. He looked up at Leo and gave a resigned smile.
‘You’re doing well, Dad,’ Leo encouraged.
His father snorted. ‘For a cripple.’
‘Yeah, for a cripple, obviously,’ Leo ventured. This was new, the banter he and his father were establishing. His mother, setting a vase containing some tall purple irises on the coffee table, gave him a warning frown. But his dad just laughed.
‘At least someone round here’s being honest.’
‘I don’t think it’s helpful.’ His mother’s voice was reproachful.
‘Not helpful, perhaps,’ Michael retorted, ‘but refreshingly accurate.’
A moment later, Leo noticed his father staring at him intently, one eye on the door through which his mother had just disappeared to make coffee. He could hear the chuntering of the kettle in the kitchen, the rattle of crockery, the click of a cupboard door.
‘You know your mother’s got a boyfriend?’ His father’s voice was low and conspiratorial.
Leo’s mouth fell open. He gave his father a sceptical look – he was not himself these days. ‘You sure you’ve got that right, Dad?’ he asked.
‘What’s more,’ Michael ignored his son’s condescension, ‘she spent the night with him last week … Tuesday, was it? Wednesday?’ A look of frustration crossed his face. ‘People joke about not remembering the name of the prime minister …’ Then he added, ‘She didn’t get back till nearly noon the next day.’
Now it was Leo’s turn to glance towards the door. ‘Did Mum actually tell you this? Maybe you’re …’ he didn’t want to imply that his dad was an idiot ‘… confused about something she said.’Mum with another man is ridiculous, he told himself. Although, as he’d said to Rex, she did seem to be laughing more, these days, which he’d put down to her getting on better with his father.
Michael gave him an edgy half-smile. ‘Ask her yourself,’ he said, nodding towards the door as Romy walked in, carrying a tray laden with coffee, frothy milk and homemade lemon shortbread that one of Michael’s visitors had brought.
Leo had no intention of asking her. He was embarrassed for his father. But Romy must have sensed the atmosphere because she turned a questioning look on Leo.
‘What have you two been whispering about?’
‘Your friendly neighbour,’ Michael said promptly. ‘The one you spent the night with last week. Leo doesn’t seem to know anything about him.’
‘Mum …’ began Leo, intent on laughing it off. Then he saw the blush. Her head was bent over the coffee tray, but it was impossible to miss. ‘Mum?’
When Romy looked up, her expression was a mixture of defiance and irritation. She glared at his father. ‘Thanks,’ she muttered sarcastically.
Michael just shrugged. ‘I assumed he knew.’
She handed Leo a cup of coffee but didn’t look at him.
Leo frowned. ‘Mum?’ he repeated, for the third time, wondering what game these two were playing and wishing they wouldn’t.
He saw her sigh as she sat down with her own cup of coffee in the chair opposite his father.
‘I didn’t tell you because there’s nothing to tell.’
Leo took a relieved breath. ‘That’s what I told Dad.’
Then she went on quickly, ‘His name is Robert Fincham – everyone calls him Finch. He’s a neighbour in Sussex, retired from the army. And, yes, your father’s right. I have been seeing him, but it’s a very new thing. I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure there was something in it.’
Leo was silent as he tried to digest this extraordinary piece of news. ‘So is there? Something in it?’ he asked eventually. His mother was blinking nervously, while his father’s expression had reverted to a cynicism with which Leo was uncomfortably familiar.
‘I don’t know,’ Romy said unhelpfully.
Silence fell, the three of them lost in their own thoughts. Leo didn’t know why he was so shocked. He remembered when his father announced he wanted him and Rex to meet Anezka. That had been bad enough, both of them cringing at the implication their dad was probably having sex with someone other than their mother – having sex at all, in fact, even with their mother,especiallywith their mother. But this was somehow way, way worse.Mum with another man?It made him positively squirm and blew right out of the water Rex’sfond theory that their parents might get back together. Although he realized now that he, too, had been holding on to the idea that they might, ever since he’d been told they were separating.
