Page 18 of The Mistake

Vanessa’s face darkens and Pete feels a mild stirring of panic.Maybe Vanessa didn’t know it was temporary?But Pete thought they were both on the same page. She said she wanted fun and adventure, not marriage and babies.

‘How can you say that, Pete? I thought …’ Vanessa’s face crumples, and Pete feels like an absoluteshit. ‘Haven’t things beenamazing between us? I thought you realised you’d made a mistake with Natalie. That we were going to be together.’

‘Ness, I never said that.’ And he hadn’t. But now he thinks about things, maybe he should have been blunt and honest with Vanessa from the get-go and then maybe he wouldn’t be in this position now. He thinks back over some of the things Vanessa has said over the past few weeks. The pressure she’s put him on to stay longer, even though she knows Natalie and the kids are waiting for him at home. The hints at mini-breaks in the summer; the way she’s always free no matter how much they have on at work, and how she has so easily slipped back into affectionate ways with him, as if he’d never left her at all. Things that he has all conveniently ignored, just so he can slide into her bed feeling, if not guilt-free, then at least less guilty.

Pete follows her lead, slipping from the bed and reaching for his clothes. He feels oddly vulnerable, even though he is the one who has just broken Vanessa’s heart. ‘Vanessa, I love my wife and kids – I know I’ve said some things I probably shouldn’t, but I really do love them, they’re my world.’ He reaches down and pulls on his jeans, tugs his T-shirt over his head.

‘Pete, please. We should talk about this. You can’t honestly say you’ve never thought about what it would be like if we were together properly?’ Vanessa pulls her robe tighter around her shoulders – a robe that a couple of hours ago Pete would have been mad to pull off. Now, he feels sick as he looks at her, shame and guilt flooding his veins.

Petecanhonestly say he’s never thought about being with Vanessa properly. He’s never once considered giving up Natalie and the kids. He’s just been a greedy bastard who wanted to have his cake and eat it. ‘I don’t … I don’t think there’s anything to talk about, Ness.’ Pete pushes his hand through his hair, unable to meet her eyes. ‘We’ve gone into this wanting very differentthings.’

‘I didn’t,’ she says, tears coursing down her cheeks now. ‘I didn’t go into it thinking anything, Pete. It justhappened, and when I realised, I thought this was it.’

‘What?’

‘I realised you were everything I’d ever been chasing. Every man I’d ever dated who didn’t quite match up to my expectations, I’d always thought it was because something about them reminded me of my dad, but in reality, it was just that they weren’t you.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Pete doesn’t know what else to say.Christ, I feel sick.‘I’m not who you think I am, Ness. I’m not the person you want me to be.’ He wishes he’d thought this through before just giving in to his animal instincts. He’d been thinking with his dick, never even considering how far things would go. ‘This can’t …Wecan’t happen.’ Panic makes his fingers tremble as he tries to tie the laces on his boots. ‘I have to go. I’m sorry, I’ve made a massive mistake. I shouldn’t be here, and I can’t see you again. Not like this.’ Without waiting for a response, and without looking at her, Pete snatches up his phone and wallet and hurries out of the front door. A journey that usually takes him twenty-five minutes, Pete makes it to his own front door in fifteen, pulling on to the drive and checking his phone. He has a missed call and three text messages from Vanessa. Kicking himself for letting things go so far, he deletes the messages unread and blocks her number, before looking up at the dark windows of his own bedroom, where Natalie will be pretending to be asleep. He can see the soft yellow glow of Zadie’s night light in the window on the other side of the house, and he rubs his hands over his face.What the hell have I done?

Natalie

Erin is finally sleeping, and Natalie hums an old Taylor Swift song under her breath, feeling oddly serene even as she shoves Zadie’s wet sheets into the washing machine for the third morning in a row. Pete seems to be making a bit more of an effort to get home on time the past week or so, and it’s improved Natalie’s mood drastically, just knowing he will be home in time to help with the bedtime routine. Whatever was so urgent at work – client dinners by the looks of it; the couple of times Natalie checked Find My iPhone his car had been parked near Montpellier Square – seems to have died down, to Natalie’s relief, and although he’s still not fully present in spirit, at least he’s physically available. If she didn’t know him so well, she might have been concerned about an affair, but this is Pete. He can barely cope with Natalie, let alone the demands of another woman.

Emily saunters into the kitchen, wearing hot pants and a barely there top, wrinkling her nose at the slight smell of piss from Zadie’s sheets. ‘I’m going out.’

‘Oh?’ Natalie starts the washing machine and moves to the tap to wash her hands. ‘I thought you were working today.’ Emily has worked in the small coffee shop on the edge of town since she was fifteen, and has taken extra hours over the summer.

‘I took the week off.’ Emily moves to the fridge, opening the door and starting to pick listlessly through its meagre contents.

‘You took the week off? Why?’

‘To spend it with Jake.’ Emily pops a cherry tomato in her mouth and closes the fridge.

‘Jesus, Emily. Are you serious? You’ve taken the entire week off? You’re on zero hours, you don’t get holiday pay.’

‘So what? I am entitled to some time off, you know,’ Emily huffs. ‘I’ve revised all year for my A levels, got stressedto the maxtaking my exams seeing as how I got literallynosleep thanks to Erin crying all night every night, and now they’re finished and you don’t even want me to have a day off. Plus, I’m eighteen. I can make my own decisions, I don’t need your permission.’

Why are teenage girls so dramatic?The thought that she has to go through this phase another two times makes Natalie want to groan aloud. ‘I’m not saying you can’t take time off. I’m just saying that a week is a lot of money to lose when you’re supposed to be saving as much as you can before you go to university. It’s OK for Jake.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? It’s not Jake’s fault he can’t afford to go to university.’ Emily’s voice rises and Natalie feels her own temper flare. ‘Just because you hate him. I know you do.’

‘I don’t hate him.’ Natalie doesn’thateJake. She just thinks that twenty-one is too old to be interested in an eighteen-year-old girl. And she’d kind of hoped that Emily would find someone with her own level of drive and ambition eventually. Not now. And not a boy from the wrong side of town, whose father is a distant memory, and who doesn’t seem to be able to hold down a steady job.

‘Yes, you do,’ Emily counters. ‘You make it perfectly obvious every time you roll your eyes when I mention his name, or when you make comments under your breath about him.’

‘Well, I’m hardly going to be his biggest fan when he upsets you all the time, am I?’ Natalie says, resisting the urge to roll her eyes right now. ‘You came home crying last week over him talking to Lexi Smith after you’d left the pub. And the week before, when you found out he’d liked some random girl’s Instagram photo.’

Emily’s eyes fill, her mouth turning down at the corners. ‘I know the real reason why you don’t want me to go out, and it’s not even about you hating Jake. You don’t want me to have a life, you just want me to stay at home and look after Erin.’

‘Emily, that’s not fair—’

‘No, it’s not bloody fair,’ Emily shouts, her voice thick with frustration and unshed tears. ‘You used to be such a cool mum – I used to actually be able to talk to you – but now all you ever do is mope about and moan and get me to look after Erin. She’s your baby, not mine, and I don’t want to spend my summer looking after her.’

‘Hey, that’s out of order. Jake is always tagging along with you when you take Erin out.’ Natalie doesn’t think she asks Emily to look after Erin that much, but when she stops to consider it now, Emily is the one she turns to for help when Eve is with clients and can’t pitch in. ‘To be honest, the last time I left her with you while I dropped Zadie at gymnastics, the pair of you didn’t do such a great job, did you? I came back to both of you playingFortnite, and Erin with a soaked nappy.’

‘I changed her literally an hour before you got back, but you wouldn’t know because you weren’t here.’ Emily swallows, her voice lowering to barely above a whisper. ‘Even when you are here, you don’t have time for me. Not any more, anyway.’

The words are like a shard of glass piercing Natalie’s heart. ‘Em, you know I appreciate you, but—’

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