Page 44 of Broken Country

“Do you think you’d have got married if you hadn’t had Leo?”

The words are out before I can stop them. “Sorry, it’s none of my business,” I say.

But Louisa shakes her head, unfazed. “In all honesty? Probably not. Gabe asked me to marry him the moment I found out I was pregnant. It was me who wanted to wait. Looking back, I was still hoping he’d fall in love with me.”

“And Tessa? I can’t imagine she was happy about you being pregnant?”

“She didn’t care one bit. Just thrilled we were engaged and we were giving her plenty of time to plan the party of her dreams.”

I pick up my drink and take a big glug of gin. It is never a good idea talking about Tessa Wolfe. I can hear her scornful tone as if it were yesterday.Boys like Gabriel don’t end up with girls like you.

“Why did you split up in the end?”

“I was visiting my parents in the States and my father invited Michael—Marcus’s father—for dinner. They were working on a movie together. It’s a cliché to say it was love at first sight but he was just so smitten with me, so charming and forthright. He said he was completely bowled over by me. And you know, that was something I’d never experienced before. I’m not making excuses, really, I’m not. I will always feel guilty about falling in love with someone else while I was married.”

She looks straight at me with a clear, unflinching stare. “You can’t imagine how wearing it is, how endlessly demoralizing, knowing your husband loved someone else far more than he would ever love you.”

I look down at the table, trying to gather myself. I can’t really believe what I am hearing. Once upon a time, the only thing I wanted to know was that Gabriel loved me more than Louisa. It gives me little pleasure to hear it now. I love Frank and the life we built together so painstakingly. There will never be a time when I don’t love Frank, when I don’t need him. Even having this conversation feels like a betrayal. And yet, I feel it, the unmistakable rush of adrenaline. A knot of excitement in the base of my stomach.

“I don’t know what went on between the two of you, but I can tell you it ruined Gabriel for anyone else. I was an obvious rebound, I’d been in love with him from the beginning.”

Every word Louisa speaks seems to echo right through me. Beneath the table I clasp my hands together, almost afraid to look up at her.

“Everything has happened the wrong way round, hasn’t it?” Louisa says, and I inhale sharply in an effort not to cry.

“Can I say one more thing and then we’ll change the subject, I promise. I can see you’re upset. I’m sorry, Beth.”Louisa reaches out and takes hold of my hand, just for a moment. Her diamond engagement ring is insultingly large. “It’s not too late.”

She leaves the rest of the sentence unsaid.

It’s not too late for you and Gabriel.

Before

My favorite times are when both families are together, which happens, without fail, on Bobby’s birthdays. He is seven today and it’s doubly special because tonight Jimmy is introducing us to his new girlfriend, Nina.

They met a couple of weeks ago when she was lost in a maze of identical-looking fields and flagged down his tractor. When he heard she was the new publican’s daughter, Jimmy said he’d give her a lift home.

“In that?” Nina said, looking skeptically at the Massey Ferguson with its coating of mud, cow shit, and various other substances.

“Too posh for it, are you?” Jimmy said, riling her before they’d exchanged more than a couple of sentences.

“Hardly,” she said, clambering up next to him.

They’ve been seeing each other ever since and David, Frank, and I are trying our best not to show our relief. The three of us have had plenty of conversations about how best to keep Jimmy on track. Most of the time he’s fine, but there are the drinking sprees that come out of nowhere and often end in trouble. We are all hoping Nina is going to be the answer.

My parents and sister arrive first with a carload of presents. Eleanor is down from London, she always takes the day off on Bobby’s birthday. She is a hotshot solicitor these days, after fighting her way to the top of the firm she first joined as a secretary. She’ll take over one day, I have no doubt about it. She has a flat in Parsons Green, which I have yet to see, and earns more money than Frank and I coulddream of, but I wouldn’t swap lives with her, nor she with me. We’re very different these days, Eleanor and me.

“Where’s my favorite boy?” she says, swooping Bobby into her arms.

Her presents are always the best, partly because she can afford it, but mostly because she puts so much thought into choosing them.

When Bobby unwraps her package, he screams: “Oh, my God, Elly!” and Eleanor beats her palms together like a seal; she loves to please him. Inside is a battery-powered record player. Bobby has become obsessed with music in general and Elvis Presley in particular. The farmhouse throbs to the sound of “Hound Dog” and “All Shook Up” turned up so loud, I sometimes wonder if the windows might shatter.

It wouldn’t take much: The frames are mostly rotten, the glass thin and cracked in places. Fixing up the farmhouse has always come bottom of the list.

My mother, Eleanor, and I are cooking tonight’s feast. We’ve become rather good at it. My mother hated cooking when we were growing up and mostly left it to my dad, but she’s a different woman as a grandmother. She rings up weeks before the big day to “menu plan for our prince,” as she jokingly calls him. Tonight it’s beef stew followed by pineapple upside-down cake, Bobby’s favorite. My dad has brought red wine to go with it and Coca-Cola for the birthday boy.

While we cook, Bobby and my father start work on an Airfix model he has given him, peering in confusion at a bag of plastic parts. I hope Bobby never grows out of Airfix, because my father certainly won’t.

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