Page 84 of The Last Train Home
‘You’ve not had a job in a year. I know you’ve tried,’ she puts her hands up, heading me off at the pass, ‘and I know you’ve had interviews. And I know that getting a financial job in the middle of a financial crisis was always going to be tough. But a year, Tom. I’ve been carrying you for a year.’
If the shoe was on the other foot, I’d have done it for her, no question. That’s what love is. But this isn’t love. It hasn’t been for a long time. I wonder if it ever was. I don’t say any of this. I don’t want to fight. I want this over.
I sit up in my chair, look alert. ‘I’ll move into the spare room,’ I say. ‘And then I’ll pack and …’ Shit, I haven’t thought this through at all. Where am I going to go?
‘There’s no need,’ she says. ‘I’m leaving you.’
My head snaps up. ‘Leaving me?’
‘Yes. I’ve been seeing someone else.’
The air in the room has just turned cold; all my failures have risen, taken seats around the dining table and are staring me in the face.
‘You’ve … been cheating on me?’
‘Yes,’ she admits.
That’s brave – a lawyer admitting she’s been having an affair.
‘Who?’
‘Someone from work. I’ve … we’ve fallen in love. I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t stop it.’
I know how hard it can be to control feelings for someone you can’t have. I’ve been doing it for years. I’ll bet Samantha never even tried to stop.
‘How long?’ I ask.
‘A year.’
‘Ayear?’ I try to think back to last year. I was losing my job, my career, my self-respect, my whole self. And she just started shagging someone else. This is a joke, surely.
‘I thought you and I … I thought we would get better,’ she continues, ‘but this last year things have been the worst they’ve ever been between us. A job isn’t going to fix this. And, Tom, I’m sorry but I don’t want to fix this. I want to move on.’
I need to refocus. ‘What about Teddy?’ I ask.
‘You’ve been his primary caregiver’ –primary caregiver? –‘and he needs to be here, in his home, in order to get him into the school we want.’
‘He needs to be here for stability,’ I counter, more calmly than I feel, ‘not for a school place.’ And then I realise she’s walking out on Teddy too. This is unreal.
I don’t know what to say.
‘We don’t have to talk about things like school now,’ she says. ‘You’ve taken this so much better than I thought you were going to. So for now, let’s say Teddy and you live here for the foreseeable future. You and I will maintain a dialogue’ –a dialogue?– ‘about Teddy’s care, and I’ll continueto pay the household bills. But, Tom, this isn’t a permanent solution. This is temporary; the fiscal side is temporary, while you sort yourself out. And then we’ll sit down in the next couple of weeks and let the dust settle, talk about legal separation and then …’
‘And then?’
‘All the things that will naturally follow after that.’
‘I want Teddy,’ I say, getting my point in now. ‘That’s all I want. I want Teddy, here with me, or wherever we end up living eventually. I won’t fight you for anything else, but Iwillfight you for custody over Teddy. I want joint custody, minimum. None of this weekends-only shit. You can see him whenever you want, but Teddy lives with me.’
Samantha blinks rapidly at my torrent of demands and then gives me a small smile. ‘I didn’t think it was possible for you to earn back my respect,’ she says. ‘That might just have done it. I’m too busy to be Teddy’s primary caregiver, Tom. It might have escaped your notice, but I work very hard, and looking after a small child doesn’t fit too well with that. Even I can see that. I don’t want to commit to anything now, but I don’t think it’s in Teddy’s best interests to be dragged from his home, and his father, to move in with me and Ronald in central London, and then be dumped on a nanny every day after school.’
Ronald?Is that the name of the bastard she’s been seeing? How old is this guy, if he’s called Ronald? But I can’t voice any of this, so instead I mumble, ‘Central London?’
‘Ronald has a penthouse on the South Bank.’
Of course he does. I don’t reply. As long as I’ve got Teddy, I don’t care what happens next.
She finishes her wine. Puts the glass on the table. ‘I’m going to go and pack a few things now, and I’ll come backtomorrow to talk to Teddy after school, explain that nothing’s changing for him, but that Mummy is going to be around a little less than usual. If anything, if I take him out some weekends he might actually seemoreof me.’
