Chapter 4

"...I'll have the documents ready. When would you like to come in?"

"This afternoon."

He didn't come back to the office. He didn't come home.

But every morning, without fail, a text message appeared on my phone.

Mum, it's getting cold. Make sure you're layering up. Your joints — you know how they get.

Mum, I found a new job. Small company, not much pay. But I think I can make something of it. Don't worry.

Mum, I left some of those shortbread biscuits you like on the doorstep of the old flat. They said you weren't there, so I left them with the building manager.

Every day, one message. I read each one and put my phone away without replying.

It wasn't hardness.

It was self-preservation. In my last life, every time I softened, he would kneel and swear and make promises — and the promises would last exactly as long as it took for Vivienne to call him. I didn't have the energy for another round of that. I couldn't survive it.

A month went by.

And then Sebastian walked through my office door.

My assistant announced him as "a Mr. Harrington." My hand paused over the document I was signing. Then I set down my pen.

"Send him in."

He'd aged. His hair had gone mostly grey. He filled a suit that had seen better days, and his face carried the particular look of a man who'd had more plans than outcomes. But his eyes were the same — that calculating sharpness that had always made me feel like I was being sorted into categories.

He sat across from me and looked around my office with something that wasn't quite admiration and wasn't quite envy.

"Diana," he said finally. "It's been a long time."

I said nothing.

He cleared his throat. "You look well. These past twenty years seem to have agreed with you." He shifted in his chair. "I came to see how you were doing. We were married for a long time. There's history between us."

"What do you want, Sebastian?"

He hadn't expected the directness. He readjusted his expression.

"All right. I'll be plain. Diana — it's been twenty years. Whatever grudges we've been carrying, it's time to let them go. I know I wronged you. I'll admit that. But I gave you Ethan. He's had twenty good years with you. Surely that counts for something. And Vivienne and Ethan — they're in love. Real love. Why make it harder for them than it needs to be?"

"You gave me Ethan," I said. "Is that what you think happened? That you gave him to me?"

He had the grace to look uncomfortable.

"I'm here to ask you to stop opposing the relationship. They're in love. I support them."

"You haven't paid a penny of child support in twenty years," I said. "You told me, when your son was ill and I came to ask for help, that he could die for all you cared. And you're here to tell me you support them."

He went red. "That's—"

"Get out of my office."

"Diana—"

"Get out."

He stood up, face mottled. "You're determined to be bitter for the rest of your life, aren't you? Fine. But when you've pushed Ethan so far away he wants nothing to do with you — don't say I didn't warn you."

He was still talking when Gemma appeared in the doorway.

She looked at him. She looked at me. Then she looked back at him.

What followed happened very quickly. By the time the police arrived, Gemma was sitting on the floor holding her head where she'd walked it into the wall, explaining in an aggrieved voice that the gentleman had pushed her first. Sebastian was holding his face. He was placed in the back of a police car. I called legal to go and manage the situation — and to ensure he didn't come out again until he'd had time to reflect.

After he left, I stood in the middle of my office for a moment, not quite sure what to do with what I'd just witnessed.

Apparently, things could be handled that way.

I made a note of it.

That evening the door knocker went at nine o'clock.

"Mum. Please open the door. I know you're in there — the light's on. Let me in. I just want to talk."

I opened the door.

Ethan stood in the hallway. He'd lost weight. His coat was rumpled and his jaw unshaven. He was holding a thermos flask in both hands.

He looked like something that had been rained on for a month and hadn't quite dried out.

The moment he saw me, he went down on his knees.

"Mum." His voice was rough. "Vivienne's pregnant."

I looked at him.

"I know Dad got picked up today. She's been having pain. Please — let him go, Mum. For the baby, if nothing else."

"The baby has nothing to do with me."

He stared up at me. "Mum. That's your grandchild."

"I told you. I don't want the son. I certainly don't want the grandchild."

The colour drained from his face.

He stayed there on his knees for a long time, looking up at me, and the expression on his face shifted from desperation to something bleaker and more final.

He stood up slowly.

"All right," he said. "If that's really where we are. Then — then let's make it official. You don't have a son. I don't have a mother."

He turned and walked back down the hallway.

The door closed behind him.

I sat down on the floor of my entryway and pressed my back against the wall and stayed there until the feeling passed.

It passed eventually. Everything does.

This was not the same as dying. But it felt like learning to.