The Book of Love Page 16

  Erin clapped her hands together once. ‘Bed-ee-byes, young lady. Your dad will tuck you in.’

  Dom led Rachel by the hand to her bedroom and helped undress her to her knickers and vest. Rachel lay down in bed and Dom pulled the duvet up to her chin.

  ‘I’m too hot,’ she complained, kicking it off.

  He kneeled by the bed, wiped her brow and kissed her forehead. He leaned across to a shelf and pulled her favourite doll down. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘Ruby will keep you company.’

  ‘I don’t play with dolls anymore, Daddy,’ she announced.

  ‘No, no.’ He placed Ruby back on the shelf. ‘Of course you don’t.’

  ‘Will you lie beside me until I go to sleep?’

  ‘Sure, I will, budge over.’ Dom lay the length of the bottom bunk, hovering on the edge, one arm thrown over her.

  When Erin came to find him, he placed a finger across his lips and she stood on the landing watching them both for a few seconds, before heading back to the living room. Minutes later, with the sound of Rachel’s deep breathing, slowly he eased himself off the bed. He kissed his fingers and rested them on her cheek and did the same to Jude.

  In the living room, Erin was sitting forward on the sofa, elbows resting on her thighs, her head in her hands. He picked up his glass, stayed standing.

  ‘They’re both asleep. Where were we?’ He grinned, searched his repertoire for the smile she loved most.

  ‘Somewhere between you being arrogant or confident and me possibly stomping on your heart.’

  ‘Do you remember the scene in Titanic where Celine Dion does her thing?’

  The change of subject made her play with her chin again. ‘What about it?’

  ‘That bit where they’re on top of the bow and Leonardo DiCaprio tells Rose to trust him.’

  ‘Jack tells Rose to trust him,’ she corrected.

  ‘That bit – where Rose tells herself that she really should head back to the first-class cabin where whatshisface of the big jewellery is waiting.’

  ‘Cal,’ Erin smiled. ‘Where Cal is waiting.’

  ‘But every nerve-ending in her body is telling her to trust Jack, that life with him could be truly amazing.’

  Dom stared over the rim of the glass. ‘We could have amazing, Erin. We had amazing once and we could have it again. Imagine that, another lifetime of amazing.’ He drained the glass, out of words, spent.

  ‘What if …’ Erin’s voice was no more than a whisper. ‘What if I could trust you again …?’

  ‘You can.’ Dom placed the glass on the table and got down on his knees and, without touching her, said. ‘I swear I would never let you down or hurt you again.’

  She hesitated, blinked her eyes shut, to avoid looking at him. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered.

  He reached out, placed a hand on her face and rested it there. ‘You can.’

  ‘I have no feelings whatsoever for you and I’ll never love you again.’ Her eyes remained shut as she repeated the words rote.

  His hand stayed. ‘I still don’t believe you.’

  Tears slid from the edge of her eyelids. ‘Your hand smells of bleach.’ She smiled, a closed-lip smile.

  And Dom took the biggest risk he had since the night he’d left his child and she’d died – he kissed away Erin’s tears. Slowly, one by one.

  ‘I’m not saying that I—’ she said.

  Dom shushed her. ‘Please. Please, don’t say anything at all.’ He stood up and pulled her into a standing hug. ‘Just let me hold you.’

  Overwhelmed, he felt his whole body react to her. He willed his cock not to scare her away. He willed her not to end the embrace, not to suddenly decide that stomping on his heart might be a better option. He held his breath and allowed himself to believe she’d heard him, that she believed him.

  ‘I should go,’ she spoke to his chest.

  He held her face to his shirt, willing her to miss his scent as soon as she moved.

  Inside, he cried, as she pushed him gently away and they stood, inches from one another.

  ‘I’m not sure I can ever go back.’ Her head moved side to side.

  ‘Not sure is good. I’ll take that, and we’d be going forward not back.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know what to do, whether to let you walk out of here or beg you to stay. Do you love me, Erin?’ He heard his own voice break like that of a thirteen-year-old choirboy.

  ‘I love you. I hate that I do. I’ve tried very hard not to and even succeeded for a while.’

  She loved him.

  ‘And I love you mightily.’

  Erin burst into tears and still he didn’t move until she took a step towards him and arms stubbornly by her side, she leaned her face on his chest again. Then he wrapped his own arms around her and inhaled her, raised her spotted chin and kissed her gently on the mouth.

  Slowly, he told himself. Do not screw this up.

  He raised one hand and together, fingers laced, with no music but the sounds of the evening birdsong through the window, they slow danced in the tiny room like they had done many years ago in a New Forest hotel. Very quietly, he hummed the music to ‘At Last’.

  After a few minutes, she looked up and said, ‘What about Isaac?’

  ‘Isaac’s the guy in the first-class cabin,’ Dom replied. ‘He’ll be fine.’

  13th July 2007

  Erin,

  Tonight, I touched your face, felt the tingle of your skin on my fingers.

  Tonight, I kissed you, just gently, felt your lips on mine again, so strange, yet so familiar.

  Tonight, you left to go back to what was our home, and I stayed in a place that will never be home.

  I know I have to earn your trust, and not mess with the fact that you say you love me. I know I have more to do.

  But I will wait for you forever, my Erin,

  Dom xx

  25. Erin

  NOW – 12th June 2017

  From The Book of Love:

  ‘Dom, I love you because you’re my friend

  before anything.’

  ‘You need your roots doing.’

  Hannah is as charming as ever. ‘Thanks for that,’ I tell her.

  ‘That’s what friends are for,’ she says. I don’t reply, because I want to quote all the times I kept my mouth shut with her over the years, like the fact that I never told her how I honestly felt about her and Walt.

  She links her arm through mine as we walk down the High Street. ‘You look tired,’ she adds.

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘Sorry, but you do. You not sleeping?’

  ‘Not brilliantly.’

  ‘Maybe see the doctor?’

  I glare at her. ‘I think I’ve seen enough doctors for a while, don’t you?’

  She looks as if she’s about to respond, in a ‘that-doesn’t-matter-you-need-to-see-another-one’ manner and then thinks better of it. ‘So, what sort of a wedding present do you want to get them?’ she asks instead, as we enter the department store, both of us immediately spritzed by some girl spraying perfume which makes me sneeze.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I rub my nose with the back of my hand. And I don’t know. My nineteen-year-old, too-young-to-be-married son lives in a small studio with his girlfriend, scrap that, wife. The place has little room for anything other than themselves.

  ‘I called him,’ Hannah says.

  ‘Did he answer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I offered them both my congratulations, asked all about it. Of course, he’s completely unrepentant.’

  I laugh, walk around someone who’s just stopped moving in front of me. ‘When have you ever known my son to be anything else?’

  ‘I fear ’tis the genes.’

  ‘Mine or Dom’s?’

  ‘All of them. Poor chap’s doomed.’

  Up the escalator, turn right, past the crockery and I’m soon handling a set of very expensive bed linen, show it to her and she shakes her head.

  ‘Wasted,’
she says, no doubt remembering the state of Jude’s bedroom when he lived at home.

  ‘You’re right, this is useless, maybe we could send them away to a nice hotel for a few days?’ I drop the linen, drop the idea of a physical present, convinced that a hotel break is the best idea – a sort of mini honeymoon. ‘Let’s just go for lunch.’ I turn and head downstairs again. ‘But I have to pick up some dry-cleaning first.’ My phone sings ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah’ from inside my bag.

  ‘Hi, darling, how are you?’ I say to my other child. Hearing Rachel’s voice grounds me. We chat about her day and eventually she asks how I am about Monday night’s revelation. I tell her in my live-in-the-moment-recently-acquired tone that there’s nothing I can do to change the facts.

  Hannah, who can just about hear both sides of the conversation, rolls her eyes, probably because she’s not fooled.

  After I’ve hung up, we walk together towards the dry-cleaners and Hannah waits outside. There’s a queue. I stand directly under the air conditioning unit and raise my face to the cooling air. When it’s my turn, the young girl behind the counter hands me the cellophane-wrapped items while looking at me oddly.

  ‘You Mrs Carter?’ she asks without waiting for a reply. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ she says searching under the counter.

  ‘Oh?’

  She hands me a small envelope. ‘It was in Mr Carter’s jacket, I think.’

  ‘Oh …’ I look down at the cleaning. All mine but for one linen jacket of Dom’s.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say and am rewarded with a lovely, braced smile.

  Moving aside for the woman standing behind me, I nod again, wave the envelope, and mutter another thank you before leaving. The clothes are heavy, so I’m forced to sit on a bench in the pedestrianised area off the high street. I push them onto Hannah’s lap and rip open the envelope. Two tickets for an Etta James tribute concert, for a date while I was in the States. I burst into tears as I remember Dom when we were going to Cornwall last year talking about a surprise he’d planned.

  Can’t tell you. It’s a thing, not a place.

  Hannah roots in her bag for a tissue. ‘You’re alright, Erin.’ Her calm voice assures me.

  ‘We missed it. I was in America and—’

  I’ve never been good with surprises.

  ‘You’re upset about Jude too and you know what? He’s going to be fine,’ Hannah offers.

  I feel her squeeze my hand, tight enough to make me wince.

  ‘Maybe now’s not the time but I’m going to take a chance.’ She hesitates before catching my eye, focusing hard. ‘You should see Lydia. It’s time to let go of—’

  My jaw tightens, and I interrupt her. ‘I’m never going back to work for her.’

  ‘Okay, but—’

  ‘Dom and I have been figuring out what happens next.’

  ‘Erin, look, this is crazy, you can’t be—’

  ‘No, you look, Hannah, what you need to realise, hell, what you and Dom both need to realise is that I’ve let go already.’

  Hannah knots what’s left of the tissues and shakes her head gently.

  I end the conversation with, ‘You say “Lydia” and I say “Lydia who?” Okay?’

  At home, Dom and I are listening to a playlist of our favourite music from my phone; everything from Etta James to American rock, followed by Ed Sheeran. I’m curled into his frame on the sofa. ‘You never told me you bought tickets for an Etta James tribute concert.’

  ‘Ahh,’ he says without flinching. ‘How—’

  ‘The tickets were in your jacket, and I picked up the dry-cleaning today.’

  ‘It was meant to be a surprise.’

  I make a tiny grunt-like sound. ‘You should have said something.’

  ‘You wanted to go to the States. Those tickets wouldn’t have stopped you.’

  I link my hand with his, careful to touch each finger one by one, slowly. ‘I would love to have gone to that concert with you.’

  He puts his finger on my lips and shushes me, ‘Listen.’

  Ed is reaching the end of his serenade and just as he pleads to his lover to take him in her loving arms, Dom squeezes me, kisses my hair.

  ‘Just wasn’t meant to be, my love,’ he whispers.

  26. Dominic

  THEN – February 2008

  ‘Remind me again how you did this?’

  ‘Did what?’ Dom asked Nigel.

  ‘You know what I mean.’ Nigel wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve. ‘You’re all back together and moving in here? May I remind you that only eight months ago, you spent a night in the cells for decking her lover?’

  Dom leaned both his hands on the top of the sideboard they were moving and stared at his friend. ‘Hitting the guy was the best thing I ever did and the worst thing I ever did. I hate violence of any sort.’ He shrugged. ‘But when I heard Erin tell him he’d goaded me, I knew, I knew all wasn’t well in the land of Isaac and Erin. After that, I waited and on the thirteenth of July, I kissed my wife again for the first time in almost two years.’

  ‘Yeah and then you gave her a house for Christmas, that’ll do it every time. Smooth bastard.’

  Their laughter was interrupted by the sounds of the children arriving up the path.

  Dom looked out the window. They were here. He stopped and stared, determined to commit the moment to memory. Jude, already four inches taller than his sister, was dragging a suitcase. She ran behind him, shouting ‘Whoever gets there first, gets the bigger room!’ Jude dropped the case and ran ahead of her and took the stairs two at a time.

  ‘Dadd-yyy,’ Rachel screamed. ‘He pushed me and now he’s going to get it!’

  By the time Dom followed, Rachel was already in tears. ‘Hey, come on.’ He pulled her towards him, rubbed her glossy hair with the back of his hand. ‘Rachel, I told you before, we’ll toss a coin for the bigger room. That’s the fairest way.’

  Dom watched as his son stuck his tongue out at his sister. ‘Cry baby,’ Jude sneered.

  ‘Jude …’ Dom warned him. Downstairs he heard Erin and Lydia in the kitchen. She’d obviously decided to let him sort this one out.

  ‘Right.’ he put his hands in his pocket and pulled out a pound coin. ‘You both agree that this is the fairest way to do it?’

  Both heads nodded.

  ‘So, call, heads or tails.’

  ‘Heads,’ Jude said.

  ‘Tails,’ Rachel called.

  Dom flipped the coin in the air and watched it land, the Queen’s image obvious from a height.

  He smiled at Rachel as she sighed and headed down the landing to what would be her smaller room. ‘Don’t be smug about it, Jude,’ he told his son as he went to follow her. ‘You won, but don’t be smug.’

  In the rear bedroom that sat next to his and Erin’s room, Rachel was sitting on the floor, her back to the radiator.

  ‘It’s cold,’ she grumbled. Dom bent down and twisted the controls. ‘It’ll warm up soon,’ he said, taking a seat on the ground beside her.

  ‘You know sometimes what we think we don’t want is exactly what we do.’

  Rachel tilted her head and raised her eyebrows as if to say, don’t bother trying to make me feel better.

  ‘This bedroom has the biggest window in the house and the best view of the garden.’ He leaned towards her, lowering his voice. ‘It’s also much quieter than the one at the front. You get all the street noise at the front.’

  He kissed her cheek and saw the beginnings of her lips curving. ‘Not to mention this has a built-in cupboard for a certain little person’s clothes and shoes.’

  ‘Okay,’ she smiled.

  ‘See, what you thought you wanted …’

  ‘Can we get a dog?’ she asked, ‘Mum would never let us have one in the flat.’

  He laughed. ‘That’s not something we’re doing now, Rachel Carter.’

  ‘Please?’ she asked. ‘Just say you’ll think about it.’

  ‘I’ll think about it, but Mummy ne
eds to think about it too.’

  ‘Okay. Is that your bedroom next to mine? Yours and Mummy’s?’

  Dom pulled her to him, felt the heat begin to flow through the radiator behind their backs and leaned into it. Knowing how confusing the last few months had been for both of the children, he spoke softly, ‘I know it’s all a bit strange, love but—’

  ‘I don’t care what bedroom I have, Daddy. I just don’t want you to go again.’ Rachel squeezed her eyelids shut to stop herself crying.

  ‘That room next door is mine and Mummy’s bedroom and I’m not going anywhere,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

  ‘I like being closer to Mummy at night.’

  ‘I know, darling. Now you can be closer to both of us.’

  Dom sensed, rather than saw, Jude hovering behind the door, imagined him, one hand in one pocket, leaning on the door surround. Unsure if Jude could see him or not, he winked at the gap where the door was open. And as he heard him move away, he spoke to Maisie in his head, asked her to help him to be up to the job that Erin had managed mostly alone for the last few years.

  At nine o’clock he unloaded the last box from the van he’d hired. It had been tiring – thirteen loads back and forth from the flat to the house but he and Nigel had done most of the heavy lifting while Erin, Lydia and Hannah had unpacked the boxes as soon as they landed in the hallway. Everyone else had finally left, sensing the family needed to be alone and surprisingly the house already had some order to it. Dom shivered as he carried the last box up the path, placed it on the frosted ground in front of him so his frozen fingers could get a better grip. As he bent down to pick it up again, his mobile buzzed in his pocket. Fitz. He saw his father-in-law’s name and hit the answer button.

  ‘Fitz,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘You all in yet?’

  Dom looked at the crate by his feet. ‘Almost, just about to bring the last box in.’

  ‘You alone?’

  Dom’s brow creased. ‘Yes. What’s up?’

  ‘Hurt her again, Dom, and I swear …’

  Dom swallowed. This was a conversation he’d known was coming, one he had to admit he’d been afraid to begin many times. ‘Fitz, I—’