‘I’m sorry.’ Lately this seemed like all I had to say.
‘I know. Don’t be. I have a freakishly-in-touch-with-his-feelings husband, remember? Plus a couple of friends going through the same thing. I’m just happy you’re showing up now, for both of us.’
‘Just in time for Mum to insert herself back into our family like a hand grenade.’
Nicky cringed. ‘I was wondering whether I should invite the in-laws along when she shows up. Rub it in her face a bit.’
‘Potentially. Although, the flip side to that is she won’t have to feel bad for not being there, seeing as you have a whole new, nauseatingly lovely mother. Plus, that’s still you needing to prove something to her. I thought we’d decided not to care what she thinks.’
‘Do you remember Flemming?’ Nicky asked after we’d mercifully reached the end of the cow field and climbed over the stile.
‘Of course.’
Flemming had been ten when she’d lived with us for a few months. She had a vicious mother who she’d not seen for years for her own safety. On Mother’s Day, Flemming spent hours making a card for the ‘best mum in the world’.
‘Our mum didn’t stab anyone,’ Nicky went on.
‘Well, if she had, then it might explain her leaving the country so quickly with no contact details.’
‘Either way, if Flemming couldn’t stop caring, how can we?’
After a whirlwind day, Brayden dropped the kids off an hour early, with the excuse that they were tired and Isla was starting to get teary.
One look at Brayden, once Finn and Isla had rushed past me to start building the new Lego sets he’d bought them, and it was clear who’d been too tired to keep going.
‘Fun day?’ I asked, trying not to sound smug. I’d tried to explain to Brayden that these big days out weren’t sustainable, especially once the baby was born, but why would he take the advice of the woman who’d raised them single-handedly for years?
‘Fantastic.’
His pinched face and slumped shoulders begged to differ.
‘You know they’d be equally happy playing Lego at your house?’
‘Yeah, well, I think they deserve some treats after years of the park and that nasty chicken place,’ he said, with the hint of a sneer that I decided to presume was aimed at Café Fried Chicken, not me.
‘You chose the venue, and you were the one who could only spare two hours away from your business,’ I replied, focussing on smiling sweetly rather than poking him in his patronising eye.
‘Nevertheless,’ he said, flicking that off as an elephant does a fly, ‘Silva and I have spent six years cultivating an adventurous lifestyle, and she’s determined children won’t change that.’
‘You were living with me six years ago,’ I said, louder than I’d intended.
‘You know what I mean.’ He looked at me, quickly deduced that, no, I did not, and did a classic Brayden backtrack. ‘Sorry. I meant five. Obviously. It’s been a long day. I mean…’
I shrugged. Somehow, the recent events in my life made it so much easier to not let Brayden get to me. ‘Apology accepted. I’m very much over you adventuring with Silva while I was painting the nursery single-handed with a toddler ramming cars into my ankles and a bucket on standby for the regular barfing up of my anti-sickness tablets.’
And in that moment, standing in the doorway to my delightful new hallway, my muscles aching from the eight-mile hike, I realised that it was finally true.
‘But you didn’t go off adventuring with another woman for nothing. Remember how hard you found it? The endless cycle of nappies, sleepless nights, baby crying, mum crying, house a mess, no time to do anything even if you managed to summon the energy. I’ve been working with new parents for longer than you’ve been cultivating adventure, Brayden. There’s no way a new baby isn’t going to change things. In my experience, it’s far more helpful to be realistic about that now.’
‘It doesn’t have to be like that,’ he said, face turning grey. ‘Silva’s not you.’
‘No. She’s not trained or experienced in caring for babies. I’m not saying she can’t do a fantastic job. I’m sure together you’ll be great. But she’s got no idea what it’s really like. You do.’
I looked at Brayden, inwardly wrestling with what he wanted versus what he knew to be true, and, for the first time, I felt genuinely sorry for the man I had once sworn to love and cherish ’til death did us part. He’d missed out on huge chunks of his children’s lives, chasing intangible Insta dreams over the responsibility of fatherhood. He’d no idea what it was to be an honourable human being. The kind who did things like making space in his life and his home to care for his troubled sister andher baby. Or who stayed up all night finishing his college project so he didn’t have to put his daughter into a strange nursery because, after begging a woman he hardly knew for a place to stay, he’d committed to working every spare minute to pay her back for it.
I hadn’t wanted, or particularly liked, my ex-husband for a long time. But now I chose to forgive him. He couldn’t help being him. It had been my mistake marrying him in the first place, and he certainly wasn’t worth any more of my wrath or frustration. I could only hope that he found a way to do things differently this time around.
I was sitting in the garden that evening when Toby came and found me, Hazel strapped in a sling on his chest.
