The Marriage Mender

by Linda Green

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of While My Eyes Were Closed and One Moment comes a powerful, emotional novel about how far we can trust those closest to us. 'Linda Green is bloody brilliant!' Amanda Prowse You can run from the past but you can't always stop it catching up with you . . . Alison is a marriage mender. Her job is to help couples who fear they have reached the end of the road. So when her husband's ex Lydia arrives on the doorstep demanding to see her son, Alison thinks she can handle it. But what Alison doesn't realise is that Lydia is the one person who has the ability to destroy their happy family. And sometimes the cracks run too deep to ever be repaired . . . WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE MARRIAGE MENDER 'The best book I've read in a very long time' ***** 'I couldn't put it down!' ***** 'A fantastic emotional rollercoaster' ***** 'Read it now!' *****

Release date: August 28, 2014

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 464

Sample

‘Mr and Mrs Bentley?’

The woman’s voice was regulation soft and soothing. I looked up. She had a sympathetic face too. And comforting strands of grey running through her long brown hair.

‘Yes,’ I said, standing up.

‘I’m Polly. Please do come through.’ She gestured towards the open door.

I glanced across at Chris. To a neutral observer his face gave nothing away. But I knew him better than that. Could see the fear in his eyes. Smell it on him, even.

‘It’ll be OK,’ I whispered as I walked past him.

He nodded. Almost imperceptibly.

We went through into a large, airy room with sash windows and beige curtains which were frayed at the edges. Two Ikea-type chairs were positioned facing the windows, an occasional table in between with a strategically placed box of tissues, a jug of water and two glasses.

Polly shut the door behind us and offered her hand and a thin smile. Not thin in a bad way. Just suitably thin for someone who has never met you before and is about to splice you open and perform open-heart surgery.

‘Pleased to meet you both,’ she said as we shook hands in turn. ‘Do take a seat and we can get started.’

I sat down on the chair furthest away. Chris took the other one. He crossed and uncrossed his legs, fiddled with the strap on his watch. The one I’d given him for his fortieth birthday.

Polly launched into the formalities. She spoke calmly and clearly, explaining that this was an initial assessment and we’d then be matched with a counsellor to suit our needs. It was textbook stuff. But I refrained from telling her so.

‘Now, let me just have a quick look through these forms,’ she said, nodding intermittently as she did so.

‘So, you’re a photographer,’ she said to Chris. ‘What sort of pictures do you take?’

‘Good ones, hopefully,’ he replied, managing a hint of a smile. ‘Landscapes when I can, family portraits and other stuff to pay the mortgage.’

‘And you have one son from a previous relationship. How old is he?’

Chris looked down at his feet. I saw him swallow hard. No words were forthcoming.

‘Sixteen,’ I said. ‘Josh is sixteen.’

Polly nodded. ‘And does he live with you?’

We both hesitated this time. I didn’t even dare to look across at Chris.

‘Yes,’ I said eventually. ‘Although not at the moment.’

Polly nodded again and wrote something down. Perhaps sensing that it wouldn’t be wise to probe any further at this stage.

‘And you’ve got a daughter together. How old is she?’

‘Nine,’ I replied. ‘Her name’s Matilda.’

Polly smiled and nodded. I wanted to say that she was named after the Roald Dahl character. That Chris always called her ‘Tilda’ but I never did. I didn’t say anything, though. In case Chris thought I was getting at him.

Polly turned to my form. It was only a matter of time before she found out now. I waited, watching her face for the sign. To be fair, she didn’t even flinch.

‘Ah, Alison, I see you’re a counsellor yourself. What sort of areas do you cover?’

I hesitated. Aware how utterly ridiculous it was going to sound. I thought of what Matilda always said when people asked what her mother did. She called me a ‘marriage mender’. Said I kept people’s mummies and daddies together when they were arguing a lot. My stomach tightened as I wondered what on earth she would think if she could see her marriage-mender mummy right now.

‘Relationships,’ I said to Polly, trying to keep my voice as low and even as possible. ‘I’m a relationship counsellor.’

The silence hung heavily in the air. Chris put his head in his hands.

I smiled weakly. ‘It is rather ridiculous, isn’t it?’

‘Not at all,’ said Polly. ‘I’m divorced. I’d say that’s more ridiculous.’ She smiled at me.

I smiled back, grateful for her efforts to put me at ease.

‘As I’m sure you’re aware,’ she continued, ‘I do need to have some understanding of the situation and why you’re here, in order to place you with an appropriate counsellor. For example, I need to know if there are any sexual problems in your relationship?’

Chris smiled slightly and shook his head. He was thinking of that eighties sitcom – Dear John, was it? – the one where the counsellor kept asking if he had any sexual problems.

‘No,’ I said.

On one level that was a lie. Not having sex for more months than I cared to remember was quite obviously a sexual problem. But it was a symptom of the problem, not the cause. Which meant I could get away with it.

‘Fine. And how would you describe the issues which have led you to seek counselling?’ asked Polly.

She looked at Chris as she said it but he simply continued fiddling with his watch strap. I shifted in my seat, aware he wasn’t doing himself any favours. That if it had been me in Polly’s chair, I wouldn’t exactly be warming to him. I understood he wasn’t being deliberately obstructive. That he was simply unable to engage fully in the process when he was so riddled with hurt.

‘We’ve had some family issues,’ I said. ‘There’s been a lot of change. We’ve been under a great deal of strain.’

Again, I avoided mentioning her name. I didn’t want Polly to think badly of Chris. And she would do if I mentioned another woman. You couldn’t help it, even if you were trained not to show it.

‘I see,’ said Polly. ‘And how has the strain affected you both? Has it interfered with communication?’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘We haven’t really been talking properly.’

‘Would you say that’s fair, Chris?’ Polly asked.

Chris looked up. I worried for a second that he was going to stand up and simply walk out of the room. He looked at me. The first time he’d looked at me properly since we’d arrived.

He ran his fingers through his dark curls. Sighed deeply. ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘I would.’

‘Good,’ said Polly. ‘And is either of you able to identify how long ago these problems started? When your relationship started to deteriorate?’

It was my turn to look at my feet. To swallow hard. I heard Chris’s voice cut through the silence.

‘Saturday, September the 29th, last year,’ he said.

Polly raised her eyebrows slightly and turned to look at me.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was.’

‘When is Josh going to get up? He’s already missed loads of his birthday. His presents will be going cold.’

Matilda was sitting talking to us at the kitchen table from her Muppet station halfway up the stairs. She had been barred from going upstairs because I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist bursting into Josh’s room. And it was still only 10 a.m. on Saturday morning, which, to a teenager, was the early hours.

‘Well,’ I smiled, ‘when it’s your sixteenth birthday, you can get up at whatever time you like. But I have a feeling you’ll be having a lie-in too.’

‘I won’t. Lie-ins are for losers.’

She made an ‘L’ sign and pulled a face as she said it. It was the downside of having an eight-year-old and a teenager; they tended to pick up all the things you’d rather they didn’t learn until they were at secondary school.

‘Why don’t you do something instead of sitting there waiting for him, then?’ I said. ‘That way the time will go faster.’

‘Yeah,’ said Matilda, sounding genuinely surprised that her mother might be capable of a good idea. ‘I think I will.’

She ran downstairs, rummaged in her toy box in the hallway and went back to her position on the stairs with two sock puppets on her hands, which she proceeded to use in the style of laughing hyenas.

‘You have to hand it to her,’ said Chris, smiling as he looked up from his mug of coffee. ‘She is truly skilled in the art of waking someone without being able to be accused of having woken them on purpose.’

‘Josh isn’t going to be happy,’ I said.

‘Oh, he’ll be fine. He’s slept through worse than that. Besides, he’s not going to be grumpy for long on his birthday, is he?’

He was right, of course. He tended to be right when it came to Josh. Probably something to do with bringing him up pretty much single-handedly for the first seven years of his life.

‘I still can’t get my head around him being sixteen,’ I said. ‘It seems like only yesterday I was reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to him.’

‘I hope not. I hate to break it to you but he can read by himself now.’

I pulled a face at him. ‘You know what I mean. It just kind of creeps up on you. The fact that your child has grown up …’

I paused for a second. Even now, after all these years, I still worried sometimes about calling him ‘my’ child. I knew Chris would laugh if I told him. But it was there, all the same.

‘I don’t know about grown up. I’m not sure lads really grow up until they leave home. I know I didn’t.’

‘So does that mean you’ll be kicking him out if he’s still here when he’s twenty-one?’

‘What do you mean, twenty-one?’ asked Chris. ‘I’ll be changing the locks on his eighteenth birthday.’

I smiled and kissed him on the top of his head as I stood up. We both knew he didn’t mean it.

‘Anyway,’ said Chris, slipping his arms around my waist, ‘it won’t really make much difference to the level of noise in this house. Somehow I can’t imagine Tilda getting quieter as she gets older.’

At that moment the sock puppets embarked on some kind of roaring competition. A few seconds later, I could hear Josh calling out to keep the noise down. That was all it took. She glanced down at us for a nano-second but didn’t even wait for an approving nod before rushing to his bedroom.

‘Happy birthday, lazybones,’ I heard her call out to him. ‘You’ve missed half your birthday and you’ve got presents downstairs. One of them’s a big one and it’s not from me, so it might be something good.’

Chris smiled and shook his head. ‘Let’s hope he thinks so.’

‘He’ll love it,’ I said. ‘So quit worrying.’

Josh emerged from his bedroom, with Matilda prodding him from behind towards the banisters, as if she were herding him to market. He was wearing a purple T-shirt and black boxers. He’d once said that if anyone broke into the house in the night he wanted them to know he was an emo. Personally I thought the black walls in his room (which he’d painted himself) would have given it away, but clearly he didn’t want to take any chances.

‘Morning!’ called Chris. ‘Welcome to the house of fun.’

The Madness reference may have been lost on Matilda, but Josh managed a bleary-eyed grin.

‘Happy birthday, love,’ I said. ‘What can I get you for breakfast?’

‘Nothing for now, thanks. I’m going to grab a shower first.’

‘No, you can’t,’ insisted Matilda. ‘If you don’t open your presents right away I’ll open them myself and put any stuff I don’t want on eBay.’

Josh rolled his eyes. ‘God, you make the people on The Apprentice look soft, you do.’

He padded downstairs in his bare feet, Matilda still prodding him from behind, and took a seat at the kitchen table. He ran his hand across his hair – you couldn’t really say ‘through’ because it was cropped short to avoid it going curly like his father’s. He had the same pale skin as Chris too. Though fortunately that fitted the emo thing better than the curls.

‘Woo,’ he said, eyeing up the presents on the table.

‘Open the big one first,’ Matilda said, looking as if she might wet herself if she had to wait any longer.

Josh looked at Chris and back at the large rectangular parcel on the table. Chris had put it in a box to disguise it. He’d also wisely not told Matilda what it was, despite her constant pestering. Keeping secrets was not her forte.

Josh picked it up and tore at the wrapping paper, his enthusiasm getting the better of his cool demeanour for a moment. There was an audible intake of breath as he opened the box.

‘It’s a guitar!’ screamed Matilda. ‘They’ve got you a guitar. Will I get one when I’m sixteen?’

Chris laughed and shook his head. ‘You might not want a guitar when you’re sixteen.’

‘I will,’ she said. ‘I’ll want the same as Josh. Do they do them in shiny colours as well as black? I think I’d like a silver one.’

Josh looked from Chris to me in turn and back again, apparently still unable to form words. I noticed the sheen on the surface of his eyes.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he mumbled as he turned to give Chris and me a hug in turn.

‘Say “thank you for my guitar”,’ said Matilda. ‘That way you might get something good next year too.’

‘It’s not any old guitar,’ said Josh. ‘It’s a Fender Squier.’

‘Sorry we couldn’t run to the real deal,’ said Chris.

‘Don’t be daft. It’s well sick,’ said Josh. ‘Wait till I show Tom.’

‘Well, if the two of you do form a band, just make sure you don’t call it something stupid,’ said Chris.

‘Says the man who was the lead guitarist in Pig Swill,’ said Josh with a smirk.

‘I still think it was a good name,’ said Chris. ‘Just a shame about our music.’

‘You could call your band No Direction,’ said Matilda. ‘Then people might get it confused with One Direction and buy your CDs by mistake.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ said Josh. ‘Remind me not to make you my agent.’

‘Now, if you open the smaller present,’ said Chris, ‘you’ll find something to go with it.’

Josh picked up the box and ripped off the paper, a smile spreading across his face as he saw the amp inside.

‘On the strict understanding that you’ll use headphones with it after eight o’clock at night,’ Chris said.

‘I don’t mind being woken up,’ said Matilda. ‘I like noise.’

‘Do you?’ said Chris with a smile. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

Matilda launched into an off-key rendition of something by Jessie J, sung at the top of her voice.

‘Open hers next,’ I whispered to Josh. ‘It might keep her quiet.’

Josh picked up Matilda’s present, which she had wrapped herself in tinfoil because the wrapping paper we had in wasn’t shiny enough. I sometimes swore she must have been a magpie in a previous life.

‘I know, it’s a roast turkey,’ said Josh.

‘No, it’s not,’ said Matilda. ‘I wouldn’t get you something to eat. That would be dead boring.’

Josh unravelled the pile of goods beneath. A T-shirt, a hoody and a pair of sneakers that had seen better days, all of them black.

‘I got them from Oxfam in Hebden Bridge,’ she announced merrily. ‘Daddy said I could get more things for my pennies there and it helps the starving children.’

‘Thank you,’ said Josh, bending to give her a hug. ‘They’re awesome. I mean really not your usual rubbish at all.’

Matilda appeared chuffed at the compliment. ‘The other one is from Grandma. And she’s coming round tomorrow, so you’re supposed to save it until then unless you really, really can’t wait,’ she explained.

‘I’ll contain myself,’ said Josh.

Matilda appeared disappointed, shrugged and returned to the sock puppets on the stairs, satisfied that she wasn’t going to miss anything.

Josh picked up the guitar somewhat gingerly.

‘Go and try it out if you like,’ said Chris. ‘Take the amp with you.’

‘You mean I have permission to make more noise than her?’ he asked.

‘I doubt you’ll manage it, but you can have a go,’ replied Chris.

Josh said thank you twice more before he got up to go upstairs.

‘How about I bring you up a cup of tea and some toast in a bit?’ I said.

He nodded and smiled before leaving the room.

I turned to look at Chris. ‘I think we can safely say that was a hit?’

‘You can’t go wrong with a guitar as a sixteenth-birthday present.’

‘Did you get one, then?’

‘No. I had to wait until I was eighteen. Saved up all my money from my part-time job when I was at college.’

‘Your folks never gave you one?’

‘I don’t think they could afford it, to be honest. And you know what Dad was like, not one for frivolous things like music.’

‘So where is it, your first guitar?’

Chris looked down at his feet. ‘Sold it,’ he said. ‘If I remember rightly, it kept Josh in nappies for a good six months.’

‘In that case,’ I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, ‘I think it only fair that Josh lets you have a turn on his.’

By the time I took the tea and toast up, Josh and Chris were getting stuck into something sounding vaguely like ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’. Josh had the guitar slung across him in true rock-star fashion. And Chris was standing on Josh’s bed, presumably demonstrating the finer points of air guitar.

I smiled at them both. ‘If Kurt Cobain calls round, shall I send him straight up?’ I asked.

Josh smiled and exchanged one of those looks with Chris before turning to me. ‘Kurt Cobain topped himself before I was even born.’

‘I knew that,’ I said. ‘I so knew that.’

Josh and Chris did the look again. They were more like brothers sometimes, they really were.

‘Says the woman who counts Duran Duran’s Rio as one of the best albums of all time,’ smirked Chris.

He and Josh cracked up laughing.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That’s the last cup of tea you’re getting this morning.’

‘Love you anyway,’ Chris called after me as I left the room. ‘Despite the dodgy music taste.’

I smiled and went back downstairs. And smiled again as they turned the volume of the amp up a notch or two.

* * *

It was lunchtime when Josh finally emerged, showered and dressed, downstairs.

‘Well, what’s the verdict, then?’ I asked.

‘Awesome,’ said Josh. ‘It’s got a great tone to it.’

‘Well, it did when I played it, anyway,’ said Chris.

Matilda, who’d been ploughing through her mental maths homework with a look of utter disdain on her face immediately put down her pen and buzzed around Josh.

‘Can I have a go on your guitar, please? Just a little go.’

‘Maybe tomorrow.’

‘Why not now?’

Josh looked up, somewhat sheepishly. ‘Actually, I was going to ask if it’s OK for me to go round to Tom’s for a bit?’

‘For a bit or a lot?’ I asked.

‘Well, probably the rest of the day. Only he’s desperate to see the guitar and his mum said she’ll do us a pizza and we just want to hang out and listen to music and stuff.’

I glanced at Chris. His face had fallen slightly. But I knew he wouldn’t say no.

‘Yeah. Sure,’ he said. ‘But family lunch here tomorrow, remember? Grandma’s coming, and it would be nice if you weren’t stuck in your room all day.’

‘No probs,’ Josh said.

‘And if Tom’s mum asks you to turn the amp down, you turn it down, OK?’ I added.

Josh nodded.

Chris rolled his eyes and did the sign of the cross in front of him. ‘Watch out,’ he said. ‘The noise police, otherwise known as mums, are on the march.’

‘You’re worse than he is,’ I said.

‘Reliving my youth.’ Chris smiled, putting his arms around me. ‘Guitars do that to men in their forties.’

‘Right. I’d better get going,’ said Josh, displaying the first sign of urgency we’d seen from him that day as he went back to his room to get the amp and the guitar.

Chris kissed me, then nodded at Matilda who was sitting at the table swinging her legs and staring mournfully at Josh’s empty chair.

‘Listen, love,’ I said, putting an arm around her shoulders. ‘You have to remember it’s Josh’s birthday and it’s only fair that he should get to hang out with his best friend, if that’s what he wants to do.’

‘But I want to do stuff with him.’

‘I know, but teenagers like to do their own thing. You probably will, one day.’

Matilda pulled a face. ‘I won’t. I’ll want to be with all of you on my birthday.’

I smiled, deciding not to argue or point out that Josh probably wouldn’t be around by then, anyway. ‘Well, we’re going to have a nice birthday meal together when Grandma’s here tomorrow. And in the meantime, it’s jacket potatoes for lunch.’

Matilda looked at me intently. ‘Josh is having pizza,’ she said.

I looked at her and shook my head. Sir Alan Sugar really had missed a trick not doing a primary-school version of The Apprentice.

‘Well, we’ll have pizza for tea, then,’ I said.

A smile flickered on to Matilda’s face.

‘And after lunch,’ said Chris, scooping her up from the chair and hoisting her up on to his shoulders, ‘I am going to thrash you at Mouse Trap.’

‘Yay!’ shouted Matilda as they galloped around the kitchen table.

‘Hall, please, if you’re horse racing.’ I smiled. ‘I’ve got hot potatoes about to come out of the Aga.’

‘You heard your mother,’ said Chris, galloping into the hall, Matilda clinging on to his neck and grinning.

Josh came back downstairs, loaded up and looking somewhat like a roadie. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘You’re gonna miss Mouse Trap,’ Matilda shouted out from Chris’s back.

‘I’ll get over it.’

Matilda poked her tongue out at him.

‘If you need me to give you another lesson, just call,’ Chris said to Josh.

‘No chance. You are so playing Mouse Trap all afternoon,’ Josh called out before pulling the door shut behind him.

* * *

Of course, the thing with Mouse Trap is it takes so long to set up that by the time you’re ready, you’ve lost the will to live – let alone play a board game.

We’d been at it for about half an hour when there was a knock on the door. Usually, Matilda would leap up and dash for it before Chris and I even moved. But she was at the particularly delicate stage of replacing the mouse trap, and when I said it would probably be the window cleaner coming back for his money, she decided she was staying put. I got up from my cushion on the floor, being careful not to jog the board, and stopped to pick up a ten-pound note from the pot in the hall, at the same time making a mental note to check before I went back to the game that I had enough icing sugar in the cupboard to finish decorating Josh’s cake for tomorrow.

I opened the door, ten-pound note in hand. A dark-haired woman stared back at me, her smoke-coloured eyes rimmed with kohl. She was wearing skinny jeans and a black top and holding a large present wrapped in black and silver paper. I noticed her hands were shaking. I knew who she was straight away, even though it had been years since I’d looked at her photo, which had been taken years previously. You don’t forget cheekbones like that. And besides, I was reminded of them every time I looked at Josh.

I watched her look me up and down. The corners of her mouth turned up slightly, whether in an attempt at friendliness or simply satisfaction that she was still the brightest star in the sky, it was hard to say.

‘Hi, is Josh in?’ she asked.

‘Er, no, he’s not.’

‘Oh, is there a time I can call back to see him? Only I’d like to give him this myself.’

I was taken aback by her gall. She still hadn’t even introduced herself. I might not have had any idea who she was. She didn’t know who I was, for that matter, although she could probably guess. I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t send her packing without consulting Chris first. And I couldn’t accept the present without checking with him either. She was back. And whichever way you looked at it, Chris needed to know.

‘Chris!’ I called from the hallway. I tried to do it in a casual tone so as not to bring Matilda running out with him. But at the same time I couldn’t help thinking I should have tried to warn him in some way. No one should be flung from an innocent game of Mouse Trap unwittingly into the jaws of their ex. It wasn’t right.

She flinched as I said his name. The corners of her mouth returned to neutral, her eyes narrowed slightly. I thought for a second that she might simply dump the present and make a run for it. Fight or flight. She stood her ground, though, until he appeared behind me in the hallway. His footsteps faltered as he caught sight of her. He stopped dead behind me. I felt his breath fast and shallow on the back of my neck before he spoke.

‘Lydia.’

She smiled at him. Not at her full wattage, I was sure, more of a seductive glow.

‘Look, I know I should have called or something.’

Chris was in front of me now. On the edge of the doorstep, his face doing a good impression of a question mark. Many question marks, to be honest.

‘What …? Why …? I don’t understand.’

‘I wanted to give him his present,’ she said.

‘Well, you can’t. He’s not here.’

‘I know. She’s already said.’ Lydia nodded in my direction but didn’t bother to remove her gaze from Chris’s face.

‘You can’t just turn up like this,’ said Chris. ‘What if Josh had been here?’

‘Then I could have given him the present.’

‘And what would you have said?’

‘The truth,’ she said. ‘It’s usually the best thing to start with.’

‘Jesus,’ said Chris, shaking his head.

They paused for a second. It was long enough for my mediation training to get the better of the lurching feeling in my stomach.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I don’t think this is the time or the place for this conversation. We’ve all had a bit of a shock. How about we take the present for Josh and let him decide what he wants to do.’

‘OK,’ she said with a shrug. ‘There’s a note inside the card. Could you give it to him, please? Make sure he reads it. It’s got my contact details on.’

For a second I thought Chris was going to tell her where to stick her present and card. Maybe he would have. But at that moment Matilda came out into the hall.

‘Oohh, that’s a big present,’ she said. ‘Is it for Josh?’

I saw Lydia look at her and straight away back to me. Presumably spotting the maternal resemblance but perhaps seeing Chris’s eyes too. Because for the first time that afternoon she appeared to have been rendered speechless.

‘Yes, it is,’ I said, filling the silence. ‘The lady’s just leaving it for him.’ I took the present from Lydia, my look warning her not to say anything, give any clue as to who she was.

The box was heavy. Whatever it was, I suspected it wasn’t cheap.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

Lydia looked at Chris and then back to me and nodded, turned and walked out of the garden. She stopped just outside the gate and lit a cigarette with shaking hands before carrying on down the lane.

I shut the door, needing to feel safe inside my own home. I wasn’t any more, though. None of us were. That much was clear. I only had myself to blame. Chris had offered to move when we got married, but I’d said no because I hadn’t wanted to uproot Josh. It was a big enough deal acquiring a stepmother without being kicked out of the only home you’d ever known as well. I hadn’t wanted to be one of those stepmothers out of fairy tales. I’d wanted to break the mould. Yet in doing that I’d left myself open to attack.

I turned to smile at Matilda, knowing we had to pretend that everything was fine for her sake.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘I do believe I was in the process of beating you at Mouse Trap.’

‘What do you think it is?’ asked Matilda, ignoring my taunt and nodding towards the present.

‘I don’t know, love,’ I said, putting the box in the tall hallway cupboard in the hope that it would be a case of out of sight, out of mind.

‘Who was that lady? Why haven’t I seen her before?’

I hesitated, unsure whether to let Chris answer. He remained silent.

‘Someone Daddy and Josh knew years ago,’ I said. ‘Now, let’s get on with that game.’

Matilda nodded and ran back into the lounge. I turned to look at Chris. His face was ashen, his eyes burning fiercely.

‘She has no right to see him,’ he said. ‘No right whatsoever.’

‘Listen,’ I whispered, taking hold of his hand and squeezing hard, ‘try not to worry. We’ll work out what to do. We’ll talk later, when Matilda’s gone to bed, OK?’

He nodded and tried his best to smile. I followed him back into the lounge, realising I still had the ten-pound note for the window cleaner in my hand.

* * *

It was gone eight before Matilda finally went to bed. As soon as I came down after reading to her, I went out the back door. I knew exactly where Chris would be. The wooden bench in the back garden faced west, allowing huge vistas of the sunsets over our beautiful part of the Pennines. The sun had set more than an hour ago but Chris was still sitting there, soaking up the faintest trace of colours left in the sky. Staring out into the darkness beyond.

I sat down next to him. Put my hand on his thigh. Wanting to let him know I was there, but not attempting to wrench him out of wherever he was right now. It was bad enough for me, coming face to face with the woman who’d come before me. Who, for all I knew, had sat on this very bench with him, sharing this view. But what it must be like for him to have the mother of his son turn up after all these years. The maelstrom which it must have unleashed inside him, I couldn’t begin to imagine. I sat with him a while longer before I finally spoke.

‘She’s never been in touch? Not until today?’

He shook his head. Closed his eyes for a second. ‘I did what she asked,’ he said. ‘I never came after he. . .