Page 64 of The Ex

He returns upstairs, finds his phone by his camping mattress. At the sight of what remains of his things, the misery of his last night in his childhood home hits him harder even than before, so hard he gasps. He should not have stayed here tonight. He should have asked Miranda if he could stay at hers. She would have said yes; they could have stayed up drinking beer and having a few laughs, maybe even talked about his dream of an activity centre. He knows, or feels he knows, that she would get it, or at least encourage him, brainstorm ideas with him, maybe even help him set it up one day. Or set up as a landscape and design company. As business partners.

He brings up the text thread with Naomi. Her last message, sent at 9.55 p.m., reads:Off to bed. See you tomorrow, Mr Moore. Love, soon to be Mrs Moore xxx

He types:Hey, Nomes. I know it’s nearly 5 in the morn, but hopefully you won’t get this until you switch your phone on, but I’ve just checked the safe and the cash has gone. I’ve been so spaced out, just wondered if you can remember me taking it out? Starting to panic. Sure I must’ve put it somewhere but can’t remember. Let me know if you remember anything. Can’t wait to see you later, love, Mr Moore xxx

He reads it carefully. A bit wordy, but it doesn’t sound in any way accusatory. He sends it. It’s not the perfect message for her to wake up to on her wedding day, but he can’t go through the ceremony not knowing where the cash has gone, and he can’t greet her at the Guildhall with an ugly question about money.

He closes his eyes, but sleep is nowhere now, and after another half hour of tossing and turning, he gives up, puts on his T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms and heads out. Run. It is all he can think to do.

It is still dark, grey cloud thick and low on the land. Slowly the sky lifts: a pallid white-blue. He runs. Cannington Viaduct looms, its arches legs of giants. Almost beneath, he tips back his head and looks up. Remembers himself there at the top, looking down. A year and a half ago and yesterday all at once, the twist in his gut somehow still fresh, a memory of a feeling brought to life. He looked down, stared at his own boot raised and hovering in nothingness, felt the pull to lean into that nothingness and let himself plunge.

His phone buzzes. He pulls it from his pocket. Naomi.

Two laughing emojis.

His heart speeds up.

What are you like?is the next message. He stops in his tracks and waits in the lane, directly underneath the arches now.

Don’t you remember I said I’d get it?

A sigh that seems to come from his feet leaves him. ‘Oh thank God,’ he whispers. He is about to reply, but Naomi is still messaging.

I’ve got it here at the house dw. Really sorry haven’t banked it yet, have just been so busy but will do it as soon as we get back OK? I’ve hidden it somewhere safe.

He doesn’t remember, not at all. He replies, almost panting now with relief.I knew it must be somewhere safe! Thanks for letting me know. See you at three!He hesitates, chooses what look like celebratory party-type icons, although one of them looks distinctly like a jellyfish. He sends, adds a second message:I love you, Naomi Harper xxx

Waits, feels the skin sticky on his face. For reasons he cannot name, he is relieved when she replies.

Love you too, babe xxx

CHAPTER 51

It is a warm, bright, dry day, the sea glittering yellow, the sky cloudless. As he walks past the amusement arcade, the bars and restaurants, the ice-cream parlour, Sam is full of anticipation.It is only when he is standing outside the iconic turret of the Guildhall and staring up the steep rise of Broad Street in his best – his only – suit, his new shirt and socks, that he begins to wish he’d told the guys about today. They could at least have had a pint together up at the Nag’s Head and wished him well. He wishes too that he’d asked Miranda to be his witness, can’t think now why he didn’t, or why he has the impression Naomi doesn’t like her when she’s never said a word against her.

Or Darren, yes, Darren. Surely Naomi would have no objection to Darren?

How quickly, he thinks, really, how quickly the last few months have gone.

In normal times, the guys would have found out. There would have been several after-work beers he would have missed on account of the rekindling of his old romance, questions he would have tried to dodge but on which he would have had to come clean eventually. Teasing he would have had to endure.

But the world is only just coming up for air, and there are rumours of another lockdown as soon as next month. The situation is being closely monitored. The tourist season has been busy, but the pubs and eateries have been plagued by staff absences, having to close when business could have been booming. It has been a strange time, a time where to stay in and see no one has become normal. And now, to invite everyone and be in a large celebratory group has become abnormal. A little frightening even. Until this moment, perhaps, he has felt fine about so little social life, lost as they have all been in the surreal and sustained monotone madness, himself lost in the whirlwind of Naomi coming back into his life, then, of course, lost in a grief that has at times felt utterly overwhelming, days when he has struggled to put one foot in front of the other.

Now, waiting for his beloved son and the woman who in one hour will be his wife, it feels so strange – strange and wrong not to have told the guys about something so monumental, to not even have mentioned it that night at the pub, the night he left Joyce alone, the night he lost her for ever. Maybe if someone had asked him that night, he would have said yes, actually… In fact, he did tell Darren there was someone, though not who. They have all been so used to having little in the way of news, have sustained conversations over days and weeks really only about the latest television drama, the latest podcast, the government figures, who’s got COVID. Perhaps at a certain point, sure that no one was doing anything interesting, they all stopped asking questions that had to do with real life.

ACausley Cabstaxi pulls up at the kerb. A second later, the back door swings open. Naomi steps out and his breath catches in wonder. She is wearing a pale pink dress with puffy elbow-length sleeves, the skirt falling generous and loose to her slim calves, burgundy high heels with a T shape at the front. Her black hair, possibly to match this theme, has been curled at her forehead, a pale silk scarf tied in a wrap around her head. Like something from the history books, a woman from World War II. She is wearing burgundy lipstick, and the smoky make-up around her eyes makes them appear larger than ever. She looks, he thinks, as if she has stepped out of a postcard.

Their eyes meet, and in hers he reads the enormity of what they are about to do, and that she too is thinking the same thing. The moment is fleeting; she bends and helps little Tommy out onto the pavement. Behind, an SUV stops and beeps. Sam raises his hand: wait. Sorry. Won’t be a moment. From the other side of the cab, someone he thinks at first is a boy gets out. But it is Jo, dressed in the same cream linen trouser suit she wore to the funeral, her hair even shorter than he remembers. She gesticulates at the impatient driver of the SUV, tells him to calm down, to keep his wig on, before grinning and joining her sister and Tommy on the pavement.

Naomi walks slowly so that Tommy can keep pace with her. His face set in determination, he clings on to her finger. He is wearing a pale-yellow suit, a white shirt and a tiny floral bow tie. In his chubby little free hand he has a basket filled with what look like rose petals. His clothes are a small wonder; this miniature guy, still a baby, inside the formal attire of a man.

Sam blinks to clear his eyes of emotions he is struggling to keep under wraps. Naomi pulls him to her and kisses his cheek, then rubs at it with her thumb, laughing that she’s put lipstick on him. She smells of perfume, of soap, of shampoo – exactly how she smelt the night Joyce died, and for some reason this makes him feel strange while at the same time making him want to sink his face into her soft, long neck. Gathering himself, he pulls away and greets Jo with a peck on the cheek before lifting Tommy onto his hip.

‘Long time no see,’ he says to Jo, who nods, her expression a little cagey. She does not hold his gaze. She asks if they can wait while she smokes, rolls a thin cigarette, which she sucks at deeply, causing it to burn away in no more than a couple of minutes.

Inside the Guildhall, the registrar, a woman of around forty, serious glasses and long brown hair threaded with white, greets them and explains how things will go. Sam confirms that yes, they will need one witness please, if that’s all right, pays the fee in cash. After some form-filling and signing, they are shown through to a formal room with red carpet and blue chairs, where after a few seconds he hears the first notes of the Bon Iver album he and Naomi used to listen to all the time. When he turns to her, she is smiling up at him.

‘You thought of everything,’ he says.

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