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‘I’m still none the wiser.’
‘The idea is that people who own pet fish, aquariums and the like, stick a photo of themselves in the frame, then drop it in the water and it kind of buzzes around the tank reminding the fish of what their owner looks like when they’re not there; thus, comforting the fish that they’ve not been forgotten about.’
Laura cocked her head to one side and gave her husband a strange look. ‘I don’t know much about fish, but I don’t think they’re that bright. In fact, I would think that being chased around a fish tank by the disembodied head of an absentee owner is likely to add more to their stress levels than anything else. Who’s going to be stupid enough to buy something like this?’
‘Good question. One in ten UK households now have pet fish, probably because they’re relatively easy to look after and make no mess.’
‘And they all worry about their pets suffering separation anxiety when they’re out?’
‘Not yet, they don’t.’
‘Oh.’
‘The idea is to create anxiety and then sell this to them to satisfy that anxiety.’
‘Don’t you ever feel, Nathan, that what you do is completely pointless?’
Nathan laughed. ‘Most of the time.’
Laura stood up and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Right, I’m off. I’ll phone later to speak to everyone. Look after my girls.’
Nathan longed to grab her, pull her onto his knee and lock his mouth onto hers as they’d done years ago, but instead, with a whoosh of black hair and Paul Smith, she vanished, leaving behind a faint delicate scent of apple blossom, which would haunt his office for the rest of the day.
*
Later that evening, whilst Daisy and Chloe were playing in the living room, Nathan glanced up from washing the last of the dinner plates and noticed Millie fiddling with her empty plastic glass.
‘Do you want some more orange juice, sweetie?’
‘No.’
‘Have you had enough to eat?’
‘Yes.’
It felt as if his eldest daughter was growing up fast, and although he considered her to be wise beyond her years, which he deduced happened to older siblings, she hadn’t yet become a teenager. Her monosyllabic answers were out of character, signifying something was worrying her.
Given their current disastrous domestic arrangements, this didn’t come as a huge surprise. When Chloe and Daisy were upset they manifested this in displays of bad behaviour and petulance and had been testing his patience a lot lately. However, Millie had grown beyond that stage and now had fewer options left open to express any distress. Nathan wiped his hands, closed the kitchen door and sat down opposite her at the table.
‘What’s wrong, Millie?’
‘Nothing.’
Nathan started with the easy option. ‘Is school all right?’
‘Fine.’
‘Something’s bothering you.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re not fine. I know all this with Mum being away is hard, but I can’t change it, not just now anyway; it’s complicated.’
‘You and Mum haven’t been getting on for ages, Dad, I get that.’
He frowned. ‘What is it, then?’
‘I don’t want to move to London.’
He sat back, startled by her answer. ‘Who said you’re moving to London? The reason we are living in this mess is because …’
Now he had a problem. They’d agreed that, despite what either of them might think or feel, they were to present a united front to the kids. No laying guilt trips on them, no using them as tools to hurt the other. They were to pretend that their current arrangements were perfectly normal, but Millie knew that it had been her mother’s decision to move away. ‘I just need some space,’ Laura had said countless times in those last few weeks.
Nathan took a deep breath. ‘Millie, the reason Mummy is working in London is because she can make so much more money there. One day she’ll come back home and in the meantime we all stay in Edinburgh and carry on like before.’
Millie bit her lip and tears formed in the corners of her eyes. ‘I know, but what if Mummy doesn’t want to ever come back here? Then she’ll take us all to London and leave you here all alone.’
That puzzled him. What had Laura been saying. ‘Why do you think that?’
The tears started to pour down Millie’s face and he shuffled his chair around beside her and held her. Between snuffles and snorts she said, ‘Mummy’s got a boyfriend.’
That rendered him speechless.
It took a few minutes to calm his daughter down and gather his own thoughts. He got Millie some water and sat beside her. ‘So how do you know Mummy’s got a boyfriend?’ he asked sceptically. Laura had only been in London for two months and he found it hard to believe she’d been able to break their wedding vows, for what they were worth, so quickly or indiscreetly – and, more to the point, to reduce their eldest daughter to such a state.
Millie smiled weakly at her dad. ‘There were two pairs of men’s boxer shorts in the washing basket in her flat.’
He tried to think of an innocent explanation for that, and, although he couldn’t immediately come up with one, he decided to give Laura the benefit of the doubt. ‘That doesn’t mean anything, Millie. She might just have bought them for me as a present and decided to wash them before giving them to me.’
Millie stared at him, bestowing a look of pity upon her father for being so stupid. ‘Dad, I checked her phone as well one morning and she had loads of dirty texts from a guy called Simon Kedward – some were way beyond stuff you see online, and others were all lovey-dovey yucky stuff. There were some pictures of them together as well. They’d all been taken in London last week. He’s got blond hair and in one of the pictures he’s got his hands over Mum’s boobs. So, I know he’s not just a “friend” like she said.’
Nathan reeled from her confession and the shock that she’d confronted her mum. ‘What did Mummy say when she knew you’d been looking at her phone?’
Millie narrowed her eyes and wrinkled up her nose and stared at him as if he’d gone way beyond stupid this time. ‘I didn’t tell her I’d looked at her phone.’
Maybe Nathan was stupid. ‘So how … why did she say he’s just a friend if … I don’t understand, Millie.’
Millie smiled and shook her head at his bafflement. ‘Because he came and gave us all a lift to the airport in his car.’
Laura hadn’t mentioned anything about a Simon or the fact that she’d technically been unfaithful.
‘What does this Simon guy do for a living?’
‘I don’t know but he makes “oodles of cash”.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He said so.’
‘He’s got a bit of money, then.’
Millie smiled and wiped her eyes. ‘Yeah, oodles of it.’
‘Mm, this Oodles guy – that’s what I’m going to call him – do you think that’s why Mum likes him?’
‘Dad, you’re asking me about grown-up relationships – not exactly my specialist subject.’
‘What is your specialist subject?’
Millie bit her lip, thinking. ‘Mm, probably Little Mix or The Voice.’
He hugged Millie and she squirmed uncomfortably. ‘Don’t mention any of this to your mum until I can speak to her, okay? As for you moving to London, I think the fact she’s got a boyfriend probably makes it less likely as having you lot around doesn’t exactly give her a lot of freedom.’
‘His last text to Mum said: I can’t wait to meet your girls, perhaps one day we could all be a family, wouldn’t that be something? So, I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Dad.’
Millie picked up her iPad and left the room. Nathan frowned. She seemed to have left in a lighter mood. He couldn’t be sure if she’d been genuinely reassured by his words or by the fact that she’d unburdened her secret. Maybe a combination of both.
He got a large glass from the cupboard and poured himself some wine. He needed to think. He had about half an hour before everyone needed to be in their pyjamas and ready for bed. He’d been genuinely shocked by Millie’s revelation, but it at least explained the newly dyed hair, clothes and perfume, plus Laura had changed in another way that he couldn’t initially put his finger on; she seemed to walk taller, with more of a spring in her step … Then it dawned on him: she was happy.
That depressed him, but the fact some other man wanted to form a family with his wife and kids disturbed him the most. Millie might have picked it up wrong, of course – it seemed unlikely that another man would be so ready to take on another woman’s children quite so quickly. He couldn’t imagine doing that, but then he didn’t know anything about what had gone on. Perhaps Laura had laid down an ultimatum: love me, love my girls. He wouldn’t put it past her.
Nathan knew somewhere deep down that one day Laura would meet someone else. In fact he reckoned it had been part of her plan in moving to London. It was always easier to jump if someone was waiting to catch you. He just hadn’t expected her to jump so soon.
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