The Distance Between Us Read online

  ‘I’m sorry, Tasha…’ He looked so upset. She couldn’t bear the hurt she had caused him.

  ‘Please…’ she begged.

  He was silent. He stared into his pint of beer, seemingly lost in his thoughts.

  After several minutes he sighed and slowly nodded his head.

  She held her breath, hardly daring to hope.

  ‘OK,’ he said quietly.

  Relief coursed through her. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, reaching out to take his hand. A tear trickled down her cheek. ‘Thank you, Charlie. I’ll sleep in the spare room. I-I’ll think of something to tell the children.’

  He nodded, withdrawing his hand from hers.

  They went back to his hotel and collected his belongings before getting a taxi home. Tasha felt so grateful to him for giving her a chance to fix things. She just couldn’t contemplate the alternative. What would she have done if he had said no? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Charlie was very quiet in the taxi. Neither of them knew what to say. When Nina had gone Tasha turned to face him. ‘Would you like some curry? I made some for the children and there’s plenty left.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He nodded. The atmosphere was thick with tension. ‘I’m going to check on them,’ he said.

  ‘Hopefully they are all asleep,’ she called after him as he went up the stairs. She didn’t know how to act; she couldn’t pretend nothing had happened yet she was desperate to restore some sense of normality.

  ‘I might do some unpacking…’

  Tasha nodded and left him to it while she sorted out two plates of food. She called up to him when it was ready. They sat in their usual seats on the sofa and watched TV. Even though they had done exactly the same thing a thousand times before, tonight it felt completely different. It was like starting from square one. Tasha knew she had to regain his trust but she had no idea how to. She was willing to do whatever it took, to take it as slowly as Charlie needed.

  When the programme they were watching finished she made up the spare bed for herself. ‘Night,’ she said as she took her charger, water glass and book from her bedside table.

  Charlie was just getting into bed. ‘Night,’ he replied. She wanted nothing more than to climb under the duvet and snuggle up to him but she knew that that was out of the question.

  ‘Thank you for coming home,’ she said, closing the door behind her. She rested her forehead against the door for a moment before making her way down the landing to the spare room.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  ‘Can we have a made-up story tonight?’ Bella pleaded as she got out of the bath and into the towel Charlie was holding out for her. He’d left extremely early that morning but had made it home in time for bath time, much to the children’s delight.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Charlie said, wrapping her up in it like a parcel. Max was already rubbing himself dry vigorously with his Lion King towel while Flora sat on the loo in her dressing gown.

  ‘How come you don’t have to sleep at the office any more?’ Flora asked.

  Tasha listened to their conversation as she sorted through a pile of laundry at the top of the stairs. She wondered once again whether Flora was more astute than they gave her credit for.

  ‘It’s calmed down a bit for now,’ Charlie said. ‘Thank goodness.’

  ‘That’s lucky! Just in time for Dorset!’ Bella said.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s this weekend!’ Max squeaked, racing past Tasha into his bedroom to perform several celebratory jumps on his bed.

  ‘Dad, can I show you my poetry book I’ve been writing?’ Bella asked, taking him by the hand.

  ‘Put your pyjamas on, please,’ Tasha said as she brought a pile of washing into Max’s room and started to put it away in his chest of drawers. ‘Then it’s time to do your teeth.’

  As she took some more neatly folded clothes into Bella’s room Bella was showing Charlie the first two poems she had made up for her home-made anthology. ‘Wow, darling, these are brilliant!’ Charlie said.

  ‘I want to make up stories like you when I’m older,’ she informed him.

  Soon they had all piled onto Max’s bed for their story. As Tasha continued pottering about she listened to Charlie speak. She reminded herself just how lucky they all were to have him and vowed never to do anything to jeopardise the family’s happiness again. She knew their marriage needed work but they both had to be willing to work at it together. The first step was having him back home; their relationship could be dealt with at a later stage.

  That evening Tasha cooked him his favourite meal, steak and chips with Béarnaise sauce. She was determined to make every effort, even lighting a candle and laying the table.

  ‘Did I overcook it?’ she asked as he prodded his meat unenthusiastically.

  ‘No, it’s fine. I’m just not particularly hungry.’ He pushed his plate to one side and looked at her, rolling the stem of the wine glass between his thumb and forefinger back and forth, watching the red liquid swill around the fragile balloon of glass. He raised his gaze to meet hers. ‘You know a nice meal isn’t going to fix things? It’s not as simple as that. You can’t just pretend everything is OK, Tasha.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m not pretending it is. I am just trying to make an effort, to show you how sorry I am.’

  ‘Sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it.’ She could hear the anger in his voice. ‘The fact I have to sit here knowing that bastard is right across the road from me… that I might see him at any moment. That I can’t even confront him in case the children overhear…’

  She nodded, her appetite now completely lost.

  ‘I know I can’t undo what I’ve done but at least going forward I can try to improve things, we both can.’

  ‘Why did you do it?’ he asked. He was looking directly at her, searching for some kind of explanation.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Well, you’d better come up with some kind of reason. If I’m going to find a way to move past this I need to understand exactly what happened.’

  ‘I was upset…’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘It’s hard to pin it on anything in particular. I guess it was more a build-up of frustrations, resentment, boredom, loneliness – loads of emotions that I was doing a terrible job at dealing with. We haven’t exactly been in a good place recently…’

  ‘And that… smarmy bastard was the cure, was he?’

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘He was just… there. That’s all.’

  Charlie looked as if he might cry. She tried to explain herself, to somehow excuse her behaviour. ‘That Monday, after the awful lunch at Marigold’s and you having been away for the whole weekend, I was feeling annoyed with you for not asking a single question about how it had gone.’

  ‘But I bought you flowers to say thank you.’

  ‘I know. I felt terrible. I can’t excuse myself… but by then it was already too late.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ Charlie looked pained at the thought. ‘Actually, I don’t want to know.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘No. I do. Tell me.’

  Tasha took a deep breath. ‘I bumped into him in the morning and told him about Ella. He said he’d give me that number. I went inside to get it and—’

  ‘Stop.’

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Tasha stared into her glass of wine. She could hear the clock ticking on the wall behind her. She couldn’t bear the look in his eyes.

  ‘Why did he bring the number around? Does he have no fucking morals showing up here like that? He just chatted to me as if nothing had happened. How can anyone be so brazen? And to think I was saying what a nice, helpful guy he was…’ His jaw was clenched in anger as he thumped his fist against the table, causing the cutlery to rattle on his plate.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I must have looked so stupid.’

  ‘You didn’t. Of cour
se you didn’t, Charlie.’

  Charlie looked at her. ‘Was he better than me?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Don’t answer that.’

  ‘He wasn’t.’

  ‘I just can’t believe that I’m back here again. Though I suppose this time at least you haven’t fucked off with my best friend.’ He laughed bitterly.

  ‘No! I would never leave you.’

  ‘You’d never leave me but you’d shag the neighbour in a blink of an eye.’ His voice was cold.

  ‘Never again…’ Tasha didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘It never should have happened in the first place.’

  Charlie suddenly stood up. His chair scraped across the floor. ‘I’ve had enough of this conversation.’

  He took the bottle of wine and his glass, leaving his plate of food barely touched, and left the room. The sitting-room door slammed shut behind him. Tasha fought back tears as she cleared up their dinner. She went up to the spare room. She wanted to stay out of Charlie’s way before he said something he might regret. All of a sudden, the house felt too small for them both.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Charlie came back from the office much later for the rest of the week, trying to wrap up as many loose ends as possible before their holiday, which by now Tasha was dreading. He ate at work, avoiding any similarly painful conversations over dinner. Tasha enlisted the children’s help as she began to pack up the house for Dorset, enjoying the threat of cancelling the holiday, which seemed to put an effective end to the usual arguments.

  By Saturday morning a mountain of luggage was piled by the front door, ready to be loaded into the car. Quite how Charlie managed to get it all into the roof box and the boot she would never know, but, sure enough, by mid-morning they were on the road with three overexcited, grinning children in the back seats. Tasha thanked her lucky stars that they were all together, knowing just how close it had come.

  ‘Can we have The Lion King?’ Max asked. It was his favourite Disney movie and listening to the soundtrack on the way to Dorset had become a Hargreaves family tradition. Soon they were all crooning away to Circle of Life at the top of their lungs. Tasha handed out the picnic she had made at carefully timed intervals throughout the journey in an attempt to keep the children quiet. Thankfully the iPad and its selection of films worked wonders in terms of peacekeeping, as did the functioning air-conditioning unit, having been dealt with at long last by Tasha earlier that week.

  Several hours later Bella cried out that she had spotted the sea, signalling their imminent arrival in Burton Bradstock. As they drove through the village they all strained their necks to take in the familiar surroundings. Before long Charlie was turning down the long and winding road that took them out of the village towards the beach and their rental house. The little blue sign saying Scuttle Cottage hung at a jaunty angle from the ivy-covered gate post.

  ‘We’re here!’ Charlie announced as he pulled into the drive.

  ‘Hooray!’ squealed all three children, champing at the bit to get out and explore.

  The car had barely come to a standstill before the children flung themselves out of it, scrambling up the steps and into the gently sloping garden. The white pebbledashed cottage was a welcome sight.

  ‘Thanks for driving,’ Tasha said. ‘At least the traffic wasn’t too bad!’

  ‘Probably our best run yet,’ Charlie agreed. They seemed to be just about OK as long as they stuck to suitably inane topics of conversation.

  Tasha inhaled deeply as she got out of the car, filling her lungs with salty sea air. It felt so good to be back.

  ‘Mum, Dad! I’ve got the keys!’ Flora shouted, having retrieved them from their usual hiding place under a loose rock in the garden wall. Soon the children were in the house, darting in and out of every room, reporting back their findings to Charlie and Tasha: a new TV, different tiles in the bathroom, a new carpet in the hall.

  They chuckled at the sight of them. It was always their favourite week of the year. If only she could shake the dark cloud hanging over them and allow herself to relax and enjoy it. So much rested on Charlie’s capacity to forgive and move on. She knew that just because he had agreed to come with them, there was no guarantee he would be here to stay and the thought terrified her. Trying her best to put worries about the future and regret of the past out of her mind, she set about unloading the car with Charlie.

  *

  ‘Can we go down to the beach now?’ Max asked as he unpacked the last of his suitcase under Tasha’s supervision.

  ‘As soon as everyone’s ready,’ she replied.

  ‘Can I take my fishing net so we can go rock-pooling?’

  ‘Fishing net, buckets and spades, the whole shebang!’ She laughed.

  ‘I’ve already got my swimming costume on,’ Bella said, appearing at the door with Flora, both dressed in T-shirts and shorts. They were sharing the attic bedroom at the top of the house.

  ‘Me too!’ Flora grinned. Her knobbly knees were still bruised from a recent roller-skating party.

  When everyone was ready Flora, Bella and Max raced down the sandy path that cut from their back garden across the dunes to the beach. It was warm but windy, the sky an empty canvas of white cloud. It could have been torrential rain and thunder and lightning: nothing was going to stop the children from getting in the water. Tasha and Charlie walked behind. Despite the friction between them they couldn’t help but laugh as they watched the children strip off their clothes and sprint into the sea, shrieking and splashing each other with ice-cold water. It was a blessing that they had the distraction, otherwise the unresolved tension between them would be unbearable.

  ‘I feel bad! We should be in there with them,’ said Tasha.

  ‘Have you not got your costume on?’

  ‘No!’ Tasha shivered at the thought. ‘It’s nowhere near warm enough for me to get in!’

  ‘Well, I’m braving it!’ he said as he added his T-shirt to the pile, slipping off his flip-flops and sprinting into the sea. He was in surprisingly good shape considering that he rarely got to exercise. As she watched him run towards the water she longed for the time when he might hold her in his arms again, thinking of the thousands of hugs he had given her in the past and how she had taken them completely for granted, along with everything else he offered her.

  ‘Da-aad!’ shrieked three little voices, returning his splashes as he bombarded them with spray. Soon they were all completely soaked through, running back to Tasha to find towels from her beach bag with shivering bodies and chattering teeth, salty wet hair plastered across their faces.

  ‘I’m freezing!’ Bella trembled with cold. ‘Can we go back to the house?’

  ‘We’ve only just got here!’ Max said. ‘No way!’

  ‘How about some races to warm you up?’ Tasha suggested. ‘First to get to the big rock gets to choose what we have for dinner!’

  All five of them sprinted across the sand to the rocky outcrop at the far side of the beach. Charlie slowed his pace to ensure that he was last, trying not to drop the fishing nets, buckets and spades that he was carrying.

  ‘I won!’ Flora screeched, panting as she sat on the rock with Bella and Max close behind.

  ‘What’ll it be, then, darling?’ Tasha asked, leaning forward and resting her hands on her thighs to catch her breath as she joined them.

  ‘Fish and chips obviously!’ Flora grinned.

  ‘Fish and chips! Fish and chips!’ chanted Max and Bella in delight.

  Feeling slightly warmer, they traipsed around the rocks catching shrimps and searching for crabs before building a sandcastle. Flora got a stick and wrote Hargreaves House in the sand beneath their castle, carefully decorated with shells, stones and seaweed. It stood proudly, a transient work of art ready to be swept away by the incoming tide.

  A coral blush tinted the sky as dusk fell. Worn out from their exertion, they walked back to the house for warm baths and hot Ribena.

  Later, Charlie drove
to the fish and chip shop, returning with newspaper swaddles of battered cod and salty chips. They devoured their food hungrily; the sea air having worked up a healthy appetite. After the children had fallen asleep Tasha and Charlie watched a movie. She decided she would wait and see if and when Charlie brought up Javier, that it was better not to mention it or try and talk to him unless he wanted to. She knew she had to keep the peace between them as much as she possibly could.

  ‘Do you want me to sleep on the sofa?’ she asked as they turned off the lights and locked up.

  ‘I will,’ he said.

  ‘No, Charlie… that’s unfair.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ he repeated. ‘You take the room.’

  ‘What if the children come down?’

  ‘I’ll say I woke up early.’

  ‘If it’s the middle of the night?’

  ‘They won’t come down. If they do, I’ll say I wasn’t feeling well. They’re more likely to come into you…’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll just say the same thing. That you weren’t feeling well so you went downstairs to get a drink.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Charlie…’ Tasha wanted to say so much yet when he looked at her she felt lost for words. ‘I love you,’ she said.

  He returned her gaze but he didn’t say anything. He just nodded, following her upstairs to change into his pyjamas and brush his teeth before going back down to the sitting room with a blanket. Tasha got into the bed feeling guiltier than ever. It should be her having an uncomfortable night on the sofa, not Charlie. But he was too much of a gentleman to let it be the other way around. Realising she hadn’t checked on the children, she got out of bed and tiptoed into their rooms. Reassured that they were all sleeping peacefully, she slipped under the covers and closed her eyes, willing her exhausted mind to stop its incessant chain of thought and sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-eight