One Small Act of Kindness

  He looked at her strangely. ‘Why are you so bothered?’

  ‘Because I thought Libby might have rung to say how things were going with Tara. I suggested some places she could go for dinner tonight with her.’

  Gethin’s expression flickered.

  ‘Was it Libby?’ Alice asked.

  He looked annoyed. ‘Yes, actually, it was.’

  ‘And she didn’t want to speak to me?’

  He frowned and unpaused the television. ‘If you must know, she wanted you to go in tomorrow to help out, and I said we were doing something.’

  ‘What?’ Alice twisted round on the sofa to look at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she can’t just snap her fingers and expect you to jump.’

  Alice was surprised by the flat line of his mouth, the unsmiling stare he was directing at the screen. ‘Gethin, I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick about Libby. This is a big weekend for her. She needs Tara to be wowed by the hotel, and there’s only her, Luke and Margaret there tonight. Of course I want to go in and help her if she needs me!’

  ‘Luke?’

  She tried to control her face. ‘Yes, he’s on standby for any building issues, I think.’

  Gethin’s gazed locked with hers for a few uncomfortable seconds. Then he turned back to the television, flicking the volume up a notch. ‘And what if I need you?’

  ‘But you don’t need me,’ said Alice, trying not to sound frustrated. ‘Didn’t you say about ten minutes ago that you wanted to stay in and get some jobs done around the house tomorrow? It’s only for this weekend.’

  ‘There are different kinds of need.’

  ‘Oh, Gethin, please don’t turn this into some kind of competition between you and my job.’

  With that, the nagging doubt crystallised into a certainty in Alice’s mind. There’s no way I can move back in with him, she thought. If we’re arguing about work already, then surely we must have argued the whole time about the hours I worked at the White Horse . . .

  Without warning, Gethin muted the television and turned round, his face contorted with hurt. ‘Be honest. Is it that you don’t love me anymore?’

  ‘What? No!’ The answer ricocheted out of her.

  ‘Are you sure? Because you’re not really acting like you do.’

  His eyes were sad, but there was an unsettling anger behind them that woke a coiling anxiety inside Alice. It slithered in the pit of her stomach. ‘Can you even imagine what it feels like to meet someone you’ve waited your whole life to be with, then after just a few weeks apart, they’re looking at you like they don’t even know you?’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry if that sounds hard, but you’re breaking my heart.’ Gethin winced, as if he was making an effort to control his emotions. ‘I’ve been trying and trying to help you remember, but now it’s starting to feel like you don’t want to.’

  How had he gone from sulky to distressed so quickly? Alice panicked. What was she missing? What had she said? ‘Please don’t say that.’

  Gethin seemed visibly upset. ‘You know I’m not going to mess you about like those other men. You don’t have to treat me badly to prove anything. I’m not like that. You told me I made you understand what love felt like. I can’t believe that’s just gone.’

  It was her. Not him. Her. Alice flinched: she knew she hadn’t been an angel in the past; she didn’t want to be that person again. Lonely, too eager to trust, rebounding from one disappointment to the next. Gethin had stopped her from doing that. Not just in his words, but it was all over his face: he loved her, and she’d loved him.

  ‘I’m not saying I rescued you. We rescued each other,’ he continued. ‘I was in a bad place when we met, the worst I’d ever been. I was having panic attacks, I was on anti-depressants . . . You changed that. I don’t know where I’d be now if we hadn’t met. Seriously.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper.

  Gethin reached for her stiff hands and Alice let him take them: it seemed much easier than working out what to say. ‘I hate having to tell you stuff like this, because it’s not who I am now, and I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of nut job, but I need you to see how being together’s changed us both. You know why? Because we’re perfect for each other. Life without you would be . . . Well, I wouldn’t want to go back to how things were. I couldn’t.’

  ‘Definitely don’t say that,’ she said, trying to introduce a lighter note in her voice, but Gethin carried on gazing at her, as if he didn’t want to put something terrible into words. Yet still wanted her to remember.

  The silence lengthened and a chill ran over Alice’s skin. It felt as if he were putting his entire life into her hands, and the responsibility was paralysing.

  She sat immobile with panic until an easier, more familiar smile warmed his eyes. ‘But enough of that. Talking about sad stuff on a Friday night! That’s not what you moved back for, is it?’

  Alice started to form the words ‘I haven’t moved back’ but found she couldn’t. Not while he was looking at her like that. And when she didn’t speak, Gethin’s expression changed slightly, as if he’d won a small but important victory, but wasn’t going to make a big deal of it.

  ‘Can I get you another drink?’ he asked, seeing her empty glass. ‘Might as well, while the telly’s on pause? I’ll check the pizza.’

  ‘Um, yes, please,’ said Alice. ‘I’ll just . . . go to the loo. Don’t start without me.’

  He grinned, and when she got to her feet, her legs trembled slightly.

  Upstairs, Alice shut herself in the bathroom and dialled the Swan on her mobile. Hearing Libby’s familiar voice sent a welcome ripple of reassurance through her.

  ‘Libby, it’s me, Alice.’

  ‘Oh.’ Libby sounded surprised to hear her. ‘I’m so sorry about calling earlier! Gethin made me feel as if I’d interrupted you . . . you know. In bed! Sorry!’

  Alice blanched at the thought. ‘God, no! We were just watching Homeland. I’m sorry about tomorrow. I can come in the—’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s not that we’re busy – it was more your advice I was after,’ Libby sighed. ‘And before you say it, I’m not going to tear you away from your romantic date night now.’

  The more Libby talked, the more Alice could detect a strain in her voice.

  ‘What’s happened? Is it Tara? She seemed happy enough when I left.’

  ‘I don’t know what you said to her, but it worked. She’s just having a bath. I’m taking her to that new burger place in town for supper.’ Libby sounded flat, and weary. ‘I’ve just . . . I had another row with Margaret today, Luke’s left, and I need to talk to Jason. He won’t answer his phone.’

  ‘Then text him. Life’s short – you could be hit by a car and lose your memory tomorrow. Get things sorted out.’ Alice strained her ears – was that Gethin coming upstairs?

  ‘But should I, if he refuses to communicate?’

  ‘Libby, he’s proud. He knows he’s screwed up and dropped you in it. Just tell him you need to talk. And then clear the air with Margaret.’ Alice was speaking too fast, gabbling to say all she needed to before Gethin heard her. ‘She’s really unhappy too. And proud. You can see where Jason gets it from.’

  ‘Are you all right? You sound . . . stressed.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Gethin was calling her from downstairs. ‘Alice? Alice, are you nearly done? Pizza’s ready!’

  ‘Really? You don’t sound fine.’

  Alice caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror. She didn’t look like herself. She looked jumpy, and pale.

  What the hell am I doing making secret calls to my friend, worrying about what Gethin might think? she wondered. Who exactly am I? Who was I?

  What am I going to do?

  ‘Alice?’ L
ibby’s voice came at the same time as Gethin called up the stairs.

  The sense of time pressing down on her made Alice weak inside. She wanted to come up with a strong, confident answer to her own question, but her mind was loose with a confusion that hadn’t been there when she’d left the Swan that afternoon.

  ‘I’ve got to go. But I’ll see you on Monday,’ she managed, and hung up.

  Back in the hotel office, Libby stared at the phone and wondered if she had interrupted Gethin and Alice in bed: Alice sounded very odd.

  She was right, though. Life was too short to wait for Jason to make the first move; it could take months, and Libby didn’t feel like playing games anymore. After what Luke had told her that afternoon about their childhood, Jason’s hang-ups about failure made a sad kind of sense. No wonder he couldn’t deal with disappointing people, she thought, if he’d been unwittingly shouldering Margaret’s ambitions for cast-iron respectability his whole life. It was just as cruel a burden to put on a child as Margaret’s equally unfair fears for Luke’s moral compass.

  Before Libby could change her mind, she texted, I want to see you – we need to sort this out. Let’s meet on Sunday lunchtime, and pressed ‘send’.

  She stared at the phone for five minutes, but nothing came back. She tidied the office. Nothing. Eventually, four hours later, after she’d taken Tara Brady out for dinner, turned down her room, put out Mitzi the terrier’s goodnight Bonio and gone to bed herself, Jason finally replied, OK. Meet halfway, Sunday lunch. Will book somewhere.

  Libby was about to text, Why not the hotel? when she realised she didn’t care. She just wanted to see him.

  It had been over three weeks since Jason had marched out of the Swan without a backward glance. As Libby drove to the gastropub where he’d booked lunch, halfway between Longhampton and London, she tormented herself with what he’d been up to in London while she’d been working all hours to get the hotel ready. Nights out? Drinking benders with Steven? Flirtations with women who didn’t give him a hard time about VAT receipts?

  But when he walked into the bar of the Wheatsheaf, Libby’s heart turned over, first with relief to see him, despite everything, then with concern at how he looked.

  Jason seemed to have aged ten years in mere weeks. His cord jacket looked a size too big for him; his lank hair had lost its healthy thatchiness; his eyes were sadder than Lord Bob’s. And droopier, and more bloodshot. Libby had to fight an impulse to gather him up in her arms.

  ‘You should have come to the Swan,’ she said, unable to hide her concern when he returned from the bar with their drinks. ‘I’d have made you a decent breakfast. Isn’t Steven feeding you?’

  ‘Not sleeping much.’ He rubbed a hand over his chin. Jason was always meticulous about shaving; the sight of his stubble jarred with Libby. ‘Or eating.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Back to bachelor ways.’ She meant it lightly, but it came out wrong and he winced.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, and the refusal to rise to any argument nipped her more than a snappy retort would have done. Jason looked so wretched that there was no point even asking if he was sorry; it was written all over him. She’d been expecting some defiance, a bit of the old ‘everyone else is wrong’ attitude, but there wasn’t any. Quite the reverse.

  ‘Why didn’t you want to meet at the hotel?’ Libby could hear the jolly positivity enter her voice; she sounded like her mum, covering up the spikes in one of her dad’s moods. ‘It’s looking great. You know the journalist came this weekend? I think she liked it. Fingers crossed, anyway.’

  ‘I know. I’ve seen the finished website.’ Jason managed a smile. ‘You’ve done a great job. Seem to be managing fine without me.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t done it on my own. I can’t believe how generous people have been, rallying round us.’ Libby meant it; sometimes, in her knackered state, Gina’s spontaneous ideas and Lorcan’s patient overtime made her feel dangerously weepy. ‘It’s amazing how everyone’s got behind the hotel. We should have asked for help months ago.’

  ‘And Mum? Has she been scrubbing the floors and polishing the silverware?’

  Libby drew in a long breath, then let it out. At least if Jason didn’t know about Margaret’s plans, they hadn’t been having cosy mother–son chats behind her back. ‘Not really, no. She had an estate agent round on Friday. She’s talking about selling up.’

  ‘You’re joking.’ Jason paused, his shandy halfway to his mouth. ‘But it’s her life, that hotel. Her and Dad’s life’s work.’

  ‘Not anymore, apparently. I’ve ruined it. It’s only the fact that you’re not there that’s stopping her from putting it on the market.’ Libby braced herself; she had to say the tough things. ‘It’s not helping me or Margaret, the fact that neither of us know what you’re doing.’

  He put down his glass and looked defensive. ‘Oh, don’t start . . .’

  ‘I have to start, Jason. I’ve got people depending on me. We’ve got guests booking in, suppliers to pay, shifts to arrange. I need to know what you’re doing. I don’t even know if you’re working. Are you?’

  ‘I’m talking to people. You know, putting feelers out. It’s complicated.’ He was being deliberately vague and it irritated Libby. There wasn’t time for snobbery about the ‘right’ firm, or a job he felt befitted him.

  ‘Just tell me what’s going on. I appreciate the money you’ve been sending, but I worry, Jason. I worry that you’re getting back into that . . .’ Her voice trailed off and she gazed at him, choked by words she didn’t want to hear coming out of her mouth.

  How had it come to this? From cosy weekends-in-bed in luxury hotels in Paris to strained conversations in an anonymous pub, in less than a year? Even a month or so ago, they’d been toasting their new start in Ferrari’s, still able to finish each other’s sentences and read each other’s minds, but now Libby had no idea what Jason was thinking. The blank greyness of his dejection made him unreadable, a stranger.

  The idea of a future without her golden, loveable Jason was suddenly real to Libby and it took her breath away. Her life, his life, rolling away in different directions. Existing, aging, seeing things without each other. Meeting other people. Their little clutch of happy years vanishing into the past.

  They stared at each other, winded by the coldness of their thoughts, until finally Jason spoke.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Lib. I screwed up.’ He looked lost, as if he still couldn’t believe it had happened. ‘The only thing I had to do, make some money for us . . . I screwed up.’

  ‘Everyone screws up once or twice. It’s human.’ She reached for his hands.

  Jason shook his head. ‘But I did stupid things. Like the renovation money.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘There was never as much as you thought, right from the start. By the time we paid solicitor’s fees, and the removal costs, bills here and there . . . It just kept going down and down; every time I checked the account there was five grand less. But I’d talked you into the hotel idea, and it seemed like that was the only thing keeping you going, believing that we had that safety net – I couldn’t tell you. I was going to do a couple of quick deals so I could top it up before you noticed, maybe double it.’ He flattened his hand against his forehead. ‘But I put it off and put it off, and then I got nervous, and I ballsed up a few trades. And once you’re out of the rhythm . . .’

  Jason paused. ‘And Dad, you know. I kept thinking, I should tell Dad, but then remembering he wasn’t there . . . And that . . . I don’t know. I should have told you. But I couldn’t. You’d been so good about it all. I couldn’t let you down again.’

  ‘Oh, Jase.’ Libby felt her heart contract. Of course he was grieving too; that was so much more important than money. Why hadn’t she noticed? Why had she let her panic about his job blind her to what Jason must have been pushing down inside?

  ‘Why didn’t you just t
ell me? You know I wouldn’t have spent so much money on showers.’ Libby rubbed her eyes; she was worn out after the last few weeks’ late nights and early starts. It hadn’t made any difference in the end; the hotel had still, somehow been revived, with twice as much character for half their original budget. ‘I’m not blaming you for the whole thing. I should have paid more attention.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked bitterly. ‘That was my job. Looking after our finances.’

  ‘No, come on. We never divided the jobs up anywhere else. We made the bed together, didn’t we? We both took out the bins. It wasn’t just your job to be responsible for money – I should have asked.’

  ‘Stop being nice,’ said Jason. ‘It’s not making me feel any better.’

  ‘I’m not trying to make you feel better. I’m trying to stop you feeling so sorry for yourself – we don’t have time for that now.’

  He turned his glass round on the beermat. ‘I keep looking at Steven’s house and thinking, We had this. And now we don’t . . . That life. I ruined it.’

  ‘So what? I mean, it was lovely, the house and the treats and the money, but . . .’ Libby tried to make him look up at her. ‘I’m not a labels person, Jason. It was only ever something to talk about. I miss the holidays, maybe – that exploring we did together. And maybe I miss the decent gin. And the taxis. But I don’t miss the handbags.’

  A quick, humourless smile, more an acknowledgement of her effort than an indication he believed her. ‘Cheers. But I mean our marriage. I spoiled it.’

  Jason was being maudlin now, and it reminded Libby of Margaret. Ironically enough. It was harder for Jason, falling from so high up, she told herself. He’d never had to pick himself up before; this was new, this shock of failure.

  ‘It could have spoiled our marriage,’ she persisted, ‘if we’d thrown in the towel and let it, but we didn’t, did we? We chose to do something different. Together.’ She stretched out her hand across the table, desperately wanting some of the bumptious Jason back. She’d never known him self-pitying like this, so unsure of himself. ‘How does anyone know how strong their marriage is if they never test it? We’re testing it now. It’s not broken until one of us gives up.’