The Moment She Left (2 page)

She pressed to replay and listened with her head down, realising that if she did what was being requested she’d miss the train, but it didn’t matter, she could always get a later one, or go in the morning if things worked out that way. She didn’t want to miss the meal with her parents, but this was somewhere she had to go, and with no one around to try and stop her she wasn’t going to fight it.

Twenty minutes later, after changing on to the Central Line at Tottenham Court Road and taking it through to Notting Hill Gate, she was walking through a part of London that she’d only come to know in the last couple of months. Until then she’d always considered South Kensington or Knightsbridge, or a few other areas around the West End, to be gobsmackingly amazing. Then she’d come to Holland Park and her mind had been totally blown.

As she turned from the main road, with her phone switched off to conserve what was left of the battery, the leafy residential streets became quiet, were practically deserted. After a couple of turns taking her deeper into the heart of the area, she entered a narrow, sun-baked alleyway that acted as a service divider between the backs of grand stucco villas on one side and elegant town houses on the other. Here there were only automated garages providing secure and spacious
accommodation for rich people’s luxury vehicles. The door Jessica approached, about halfway along on the right, had a digital keypad beside it, but even before she could press in the code the door started to rise.

By the time it was fully open and she could see who, and what, was inside, she was clasping her hands to her face.

‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ she murmured, unable to believe her eyes. A flicker of fear flashed through her like summer lightning. This wasn’t what she’d expected. Was it going a step too far? Even if it was, how could she not take it?

Andee Lawrence was staring through her reflection in the window, across the busy promenade below and over to the foamy waves lapping the seashore. The sun was dazzling, dancing in bright, sharp sparks across the blue-black waters of the bay, glittering on the grassy headlands that jutted far out to sea, burning the exposed flesh of its many worshippers below.

It was the beginning of summer: tourists were already piling into Kesterly-on-Sea, filling up caravan parks, campsites, hotels, B & Bs and holiday lets. Over on the beach they were taking hasty advantage of this rare sunny spell, setting up deckchairs and windbreaks, claiming their spot on the crowded sands while kids built sandcastles with moats, or splashed about in the muddy waves, kicked balls, tossed Frisbees and queued to ride the weary-looking donkeys.

From today this was going to be her view, the scene she would look out at each time she gazed or glanced from this window. It would change with the seasons, of course, but this small, seafront apartment with its
neat Juliet balconies, open-plan kitchen-diner and allocated parking space, was her new home.

Her new home
.

‘So this is it then?’ a voice said snappily behind her.

Flinching at her husband’s tone, she forced herself to turn around.

Their eyes met, and it was all she could do to stop herself going to him to try to soothe away some of the hurt.

It wouldn’t help. It would only complicate matters further, since pity, guilt, regret were the last things he wanted, or needed.

He wasn’t a weak man, he wouldn’t fall apart without her, although looking at him now, he was so tense, so pale, that it was as though his frustration might break right through his sun-weathered skin.

Perhaps she was wrong about how able he was to cope.

‘You look beautiful,’ he told her, unexpectedly, though the words came out roughly, resentfully.

She might not feel it, or even think much about it, but she was beautiful, in a forty-something, understated way. She had arresting aqua-green eyes, high cheekbones, and a wide, generous smile that was beguiling and infectious. Her hair, dark and full, was clasped in a bundle of curls at the nape of her neck; her slender body was partly disguised by baggy cotton capris and an old T-shirt top.

She rocked slightly on her bare feet, having kicked off her shoes at the door, a habit she’d been in all her life, thanks to her mother.

Martin, her husband, had done the same. His leather flip-flops and her thong sandals were bundled together at the end of the hall, overlapping one another, casually entwined, comfortable with each other, the way they, she and Martin, used to be. No doubt their shoes were expecting to leave together.

How strange she’d sound if she told him to take her shoes with him, if she said that they probably wanted to go so they could stay with his.

He’d be more convinced than ever that she was losing her mind, the excuse he was giving himself, and anyone who cared to listen, for her decision to leave him.

‘You’re losing it, Andee, you’re not thinking straight,’ he kept telling her. ‘We need to sit down and discuss this, sort out what’s really going on.’

He knew exactly what was going on and she truly didn’t want to spell it out again. Once had been hard enough, repeating it wouldn’t make it easier.

‘I’m sorry, sorrier than you’ll ever know,’ she’d said when she’d finally plucked up the courage to tell him, ‘but I don’t want to be married to you any more.’

His shock, when he’d first heard it, had frozen him for a moment before he’d stumbled into uneasy laughter. She was joking, of course.

She wasn’t and he could see it.

‘Why?’ he’d asked, genuinely bemused. His ruggedly handsome face had seemed so much younger all of a sudden, reminding her of how he looked in photographs his mother had of him as a child. He was lost, vulnerable, needing someone to show him the way. ‘I thought we – you – were happy,’ he said.

He could certainly be forgiven for thinking that, since she’d taken care to hide how she was really feeling, not wanting to hurt him, or their children, or the rest of their family. How she really felt was that she still loved him, and probably always would, but she was no longer
in love
with him.

She realised now that she hadn’t been even when she’d agreed to marry him, three years ago, which was an awful irony – was that the right word, maybe mistake would be better – when they’d been together for over two decades by then and had felt no need to be married before. Actually it wasn’t a
full
two decades, because he’d left her for a while. After seventeen and a half years of living under the same roof and bringing up their children together he’d suddenly announced one day that he’d had enough. He didn’t want to be a house husband and stay-at-home dad any longer while she went about playing detective – that was how he’d put it – at all hours of the day and night. Apparently she was to ignore the fact that he’d managed to build a very successful Internet security business during the hours the kids were at school, and evenings when she was there to take care of them. For whatever reason he’d suddenly decided he needed to break loose of the home and travel the world, alone.

She harboured no resentment towards him for the desertion now; however, at the time, with her police career on an upward trajectory, and two young teenagers to cope with, she’d been devastated, furious, even murderous. She’d hated him, had sworn she’d never take him back, while all the time she’d longed for him to come.

He had, eventually, putting his aberration, as he’d called it, down to a midlife crisis that he was finally, happily, over. Wasn’t that great? Actually, in a way it was, because life had moved on quite a bit during his two-year absence and punishing him was no longer a priority for her. They’d grown in ways neither of them would have been able to if they’d stayed together – he’d sold his Internet business and made a fortune, while she’d left the Metropolitan police to take up a promotion to Detective Sergeant with the Dean Valley force. What really mattered, she’d decided then, was the history they shared, the love that was still there, albeit altered, and most of all the children, Luke and Alayna, who were desperate for their parents to get back together.

‘I never stopped loving you,’ he’d told her on his return. ‘You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, that I’ve ever even slept with, apart from Brigitte, and all that did was make me realise just how wrong my life was without you.’

Brigitte. He’d found someone else during the time they were apart, but she could hardly hold that against him when, eventually, she had too.

Maybe, if his beloved father hadn’t just died (which in truth was what had brought him back from his travels), she’d have found a way to suggest that they just be friends. However, they’d all been deeply affected by Dougie’s death, and at times like that it was normal, even necessary, for families to pull together. So, she’d asked him if he’d be prepared to stay in Kesterly-on-Sea, where she and the children had settled while he was away exploring the world.

He’d had it all worked out. He was definitely staying. His mother, like hers, lived in Kesterly, his father’s property business was headquartered in the town and it was his intention, and his father’s wish, that he should take it over. While she, if she was serious about giving up the police force, could do whatever she pleased. Work with him, study for a new career, she might even want to be a stay-at-home mum for a while.

The options were endless when money wasn’t a problem, and the heady sums he’d made from the sale of his business, plus what he’d just inherited, had meant that the world truly was their oyster.

So she’d done what everyone wanted and married him while knowing, even as they were taking their vows, that she was making a mistake. It might be right for their mothers, the children, and presumably for him, it just wasn’t right for her.

It had taken three years for her to decide she must stop living a lie. In spite of how many hearts it would break, she had to be true to herself, even if it was hurting her too.

‘Are you
in love
with him?’ he asked now, but not for the first time.

She looked away. ‘I’ve already told you,’ she answered, ‘he has nothing to do with this.’

It was true; her reason for leaving had nothing to do with Graeme Ogilvie, the man she’d had a brief relationship with during the time she and Martin were apart. She wished now that she’d never mentioned him, and knew she wouldn’t have, had Martin not kept on and on insisting she must have met someone.

Looking at Martin now was hard. His face was pinched, his dark eyes wide and hostile; fighting rejection never made a person attractive at a time when they most needed to be. ‘Is he in love with you?’ he demanded sourly.

With a flash of irritation, she said, ‘How many times do I have to tell you it isn’t about him?’

‘Why don’t you just answer the question? Is he in love with you?’

‘Of course not. I’ve had next to no contact with him since we broke up three years ago . . .’

‘But you’re in touch with him now?’

She didn’t argue, there was no point when he wasn’t listening.

She wanted him to go, to leave her alone with her conscience so she could start deciding how best to handle it, and her children – and the rest of her life.

‘If you leave, Mum, I’ll never,
ever
speak to you again,’ eighteen-year-old Alayna had ranted furiously down the phone when she’d found out about the break-up, thanks to her father calling her at uni to deliver the happy news.

Andee had wanted to wait until Alayna and her older brother were back for the summer before telling them, but it was too late for that now.

‘Mum, you can’t be serious,’ Luke had protested when he’d rung from Exeter, where he was in his third year of Sport and Exercise Science. ‘You need to think about this, because it sounds to me like you’re doing what Dad did all those years ago, having a middle-aged meltdown.’

‘I’m not in crisis,’ she’d told him, although maybe quietly, underneath it all, she was. ‘I just need to be on my own for a while. I’m renting a flat in Kesterly, so I’ll see you every day when you’re home, if you want to, but I know how busy you always are.’

‘Every day could be overdoing it,’ he agreed, ‘but I just don’t get why you have to hurt Dad like this. I know what he did when he left was terrible, but I thought you were over it. I mean you married him, didn’t you?’

‘I did, and I’m completely over what happened. This is something different. Something I have to do for me.’

She’d never told the children about Graeme Ogilvie, it had been too new a relationship at the time for her to share it with them, but as soon as she’d admitted it to Martin he’d clearly decided their children needed to know too.

In truth, she’d only run into Graeme a few times during the three years since she’d broken up with him. On the first two they’d been at the same function in town, and though they’d spoken, naturally, neither of them had referred to their past relationship. They hadn’t mentioned it on the third occasion either, which was just last week when she’d gone to his antique shop, not to see him, but someone who worked there.

That was a whole other story, and perhaps one of the stranger ways in which fate had chosen to play its hand, at least for her and Graeme in throwing them together again. For Blake Leonard, the person she’d gone to see . . . God only knew what fate was trying to do to him.

Fixing her eyes on Martin now, she said, ‘I don’t want you to tell the children any more about Graeme. I only told you I went to his shop because I wanted to be
honest with you, but the reason for my visit had nothing to do with him.’

‘Oh, just shopping for a few antiques, were you? Something you do all the time.’

Ignoring the sarcasm, she said, ‘You’re making this far more difficult than it needs to be.’

‘Please excuse me for minding about you leaving me. Does he know? Have you told him you’ve rented your own place?’

‘Of course not. It’s nothing to do with him and for all I know he’s met somebody else by now, so he wouldn’t even be interested in where I’m living.’ It wouldn’t surprise her at all if Graeme had someone else. He was a good-looking man with a wickedly dry sense of humour, a love of the arts, most things Italian and – this would interest other women far more than it did her – he was pretty well off. A real catch, was how most would describe him.