LITMIR.BIZ

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you have something else and we’ll save the stew for tomorrow?’

      ‘But we’re at Mum’s tomorrow.’ She swallowed hard. ‘What doesn’t matter, Adam?’

      ‘What?’

      Her heart palpitations made for an unpleasant mix with her churning stomach. ‘You started to say something and then you said it doesn’t matter. Tell me.’

      Adam looked suddenly tired, or had Lucy simply not noticed how the worry lines criss-crossing his brow had deepened over the last few months? His cheeks were ruddy from being out in the cold but that didn’t explain his watery eyes.

      ‘I said this morning that I’d risk Mum’s cooking.’

      ‘No you didn’t!’ she said, not meaning to snap but unable to contain herself.

      She could recall the conversation in question quite clearly. They had been lying in bed, Lucy pressing Adam’s hand firmly on her belly as they waited in vain for him to feel her baby’s kicks. She would swear that she hadn’t lost track.

      More calmly, she added, ‘You didn’t say anything about eating at your mum’s. We talked about what might be lurking in the freezer, that’s why I wanted to use up the braising steak.’

      Adam raised his arm but couldn’t quite reach her, or he didn’t want to. ‘You’re right we did, and then I said how I might need to eat some humble pie, figuratively and literally.’

      ‘No, that’s not possible.’

      ‘So I didn’t say it?’

      ‘I’m not doubting you, but I don’t see how I could have forgotten something like that.’

      Passing a hand across his face, Adam said, ‘But Lucy, you are doubting me.’ He released a sigh with a hiss. ‘Fine! I’m the one having conversations with myself. I’m the one who leaves the gas rings on.’

      Adam made a move to go into the kitchen but Lucy stood her ground. ‘No, I’m not saying that.’

      ‘Yes, that’s exactly what you’re saying,’ he said, pushing past her. ‘I know you like to be little miss perfect and this stuff is driving you crazy, but have you ever stopped to think about what effect it’s having on me? You’re not the only …’

      Adam had walked past the gleaming kitchen cupboards and the bubbling stew to stop a few feet away from the dining table. The sun was going down and the spotlights Lucy had selectively switched on in the kitchen had left the dining area in shadow, but not the complete darkness she had hoped for.

      ‘Adam,’ she began.

      ‘What have you done to the flowers?’ he asked, his voice full of the hurt Lucy had wanted to spare him.

      She had thinned out the casualties and revived the remaining flowers as best she could using tricks she had searched for online, including snipping stems, adding sugar to the water and even something called the hat-pin trick. She had managed to prop up some of the weaker stems using the evergreen foliage but the end result was a haphazard arrangement of twigs and brown-edged blooms.

      ‘The water ran out and I hadn’t noticed.’

      Adam sank down on to a chair and pulled at a rose with mottled edges. ‘You let them die.’

      Lucy came behind him and folded her arms around his chest, resting her chin on his shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean to. No one’s ever given me such a massive bunch of flowers before and I didn’t realize how much water they’d need. I’ve saved what I could.’

      Adam covered his face in his hands and whether it was deliberate or not, he pulled away from her as he bent forward. Lucy went with him, making her posture unnatural and uncomfortable, but she refused to let go.

      Adam exhaled. ‘I don’t seem to be able to get anything right.’

      Lucy squeezed her eyes shut. They were words she had flailed herself with so often and it seemed wrong, hearing them uttered by her forbearing husband. ‘Don’t say that.’

      ‘I can’t help thinking it’s because I’m not looking after you. I wanted to wow you with the flowers but they were too much. I can see that now.’

      Despite an overwhelming sense of guilt, Lucy felt a bite of anger too. If she were in a better frame of mind, if she wasn’t pregnant, if she wasn’t making so many stupid mistakes, she would tell Adam it was only a bunch of flowers. It wasn’t as if she had let a living creature die.

      But Lucy wasn’t in a better frame of mind so she said nothing. Yes, they were only flowers, but they were also a symptom of something far more unsettling.

      ‘And it’s not just you I’ve failed,’ Adam continued, sighing deeply. ‘I’ve messed things up with Mum too.’

      ‘But you said it went OK.’ She held back from framing the remark as a question. She couldn’t assume that was what Adam had actually said. She had been too busy worrying about the dead bouquet to pay much heed to what he had told her. ‘You are speaking again, aren’t you?’

      Adam straightened up and, taking Lucy’s hand, guided her on to his knee. He kissed her neck before pressing his cheek against her chest. ‘Yes, Mum never stopped,’ he said. ‘I was the one behaving unreasonably, as you so rightly pointed out. I went there determined to make it up to her but she didn’t give me the chance. She’s refusing to go to New York now. I did try to get her to change her mind back but she says it’s her decision. Not that it matters. It’ll still be my fault.’

      ‘If it’s Viv’s decision, you can’t be held responsible.’

      ‘You don’t know my brother.’

      And that was the thing; Lucy knew very little of Adam’s half-brother, other than it pained Adam to talk about him. Scott had been twelve when Viv’s second marriage collapsed and it had been his choice to live with his dad. Fifteen-year-old Adam had been left with their mum and, already estranged from his own father, the fractures in the family had deteriorated. Long before Lucy had arrived on the scene, Scott had moved to the States and Adam had cut him out of his life completely. Viv’s relationship with Scott was only marginally better, although it was hard to tell because she rarely mentioned his name in front of Adam.

      ‘I did try to make her change her mind.’

      ‘I believe you,’ Lucy said, rocking him gently in her arms.

      ‘It seems like she spends her whole life saying sorry, but she can’t go back and change a single thing, so why try?’

      When Adam fell silent, Lucy chose not to ask the many questions filling her mind. She wanted Adam to open up voluntarily about whatever childhood traumas made his relationship with his mum so fraught and the one with his brother untenable. She was desperate to hear his fears. Anything was better than considering her own.

      ‘How was your day?’ he asked. ‘Did you do anything else except decimate my bouquet?’

      Lucy let the comment pass. ‘I went for a walk around Marine Lake with Hannah.’

      ‘You met her?’ asked Adam, pulling away from Lucy so he could see her face.

      ‘I said I would.’

      ‘No, you didn’t. I was under the impression that you thought seeing Hannah would be too much stimulus for you at the moment. That was what you said.’

      ‘Adam …’ Lucy began but suddenly her mouth was as parched as the shrivelled flowers she had thrown away.

      ‘When we were lying in bed and you were ignoring what I told you about eating at Mum’s, were you having a nice conversation with yourself about meeting Hannah, by any chance?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘So you didn’t tell me?’

      ‘Not then, but we’d talked about it.’

      ‘But

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