Page 33 of The Mistake

‘Eve.’ Pete throws on a smile as she reaches him, fumbling in her pocket before drawing out a tissue. ‘Is everything OK?’ He feels the first flicker of alarm as her mouth draws down. Has she spoken to Vanessa? Does she know what he’s done? And then he bats it away, sure that if Eve knew what had gone on between him and Vanessa she wouldn’t be crying – she would be screaming blue murder at him.

‘Have you seen Natalie?’

‘No, not since my speech.’

Eve gives a shuddering sigh. ‘So you didn’t hear what she said to me.’

‘No, Eve, I didn’t hear what she said to you.’ Impatience makes Pete’s tone short, and he glances over Eve’s shoulder again, still looking for Natalie’s messy bun, for the hot pink of her dress.

‘She shouted at me in front of everyone – in front of all your guests,’ Eve says, her eyes filling again. ‘Shehumiliatedme, Pete. All I did was offer to take Erin up for a nap and she just flipped on me, telling me Erin is her baby, not mine, and I’m smothering and interfering …’ She gasps out a sob. ‘And that I should justback off.’

‘Well, she does have a point,’ Pete says, distracted by movement at the edge of the patio doors. The light is beginning to fade, and for one heart-stopping moment he thinks it’s Vanessa stepping out into the garden, but then he blinks, and he sees it’s just Mari, making her way across the garden towards Emily.

‘What thefuck, Pete?’ Eve’s voice is sharp, her brows knitting together as she turns her face to him. Her fists clench and her mouth tightens in fury.

‘No, I didn’t mean … Look, all I’m saying is, you do spend a lot of time at our house, Eve. I have to agree with Nat on that score. I know you think you’re helping, but in all honesty, you’re kind of making things worse.’

Eve stares at him, saying nothing, leaving him to fill the silence.

‘It’s great, you know, that you’ve been such a good friend to Natalie, but she needs to be able to bond with Erin on her own. You coming in and taking the baby out and getting her off to sleep, or cooking for Zadie and then throwing it in Nat’s face that Zadie will eat for you and not for her—’

‘I beg your pardon? That’s not what’s been happening at all!’

‘All I’m saying is, just chill out a bit. Give Natalie some space. Youaresmothering her, and by doing that you’re damaging her ability to bond with Erin properly. At the end of the day, Eve, you’re not a Maxwell, and you never will be.’ It feels good to tell Eve what he really thinks. He has had to listen to Natalie defending Eve’s presence in their house for so many years –She’s lonely, Pete. She just wants company, Pete– but recently Natalie has taken to spouting off about how Eve is always trying to take over with Erin, how smug she is when Zadie eats every scrap off her plate – and he’s had to listen to Eve slag his husband-and-parent skills off for sixteen years. He’s pretty sure that Eve was over the moon when Erin put a spanner in the works for their plans for Australia – and if Erin hadn’t come along, he’s no doubt that Eve would have tried to persuade Natalie it was a bad idea. There’s no way Eve would give up Natalie and the kids without a fight;it’s almost as though she thinks they belong to her – as though they’re her family, not his. There is a warm wave of relief that finally Natalie seems to have seen the light as well, and he wishes she was there so he could high-five her.

‘Pete, none of what you’ve just said is true.’ Eve’s voice takes on a steely tone. ‘Throwing it back in Natalie’s face that Zadie ate my pasta? That’s just fucking ridiculous. I don’t just turn up at your house, Pete, day and night – not that you would know because you’re never there. Nine times out of ten, I come over to your house because Natalie has called me andbeggedme to come and help her.’ Eve’s face takes on a triumphant expression as she realises that Natalie has never told Pete she calls Eve for help when Pete isn’t around. ‘That’s right – she calls and begs me to take the baby. I’ve found her sobbing her heart out while Erin screams in another room more than once.’

Pete blinks, not sure he’s hearing right. Natalie has been complaining about Eve coming over to the house so much – why would she do that if she was the one calling Eve? ‘Maybe she has asked you to come over and help once or twice, but, Eve, you’re cancelling your clients just so you can come over here. Natalie told me she saw your appointment book. You let yourself into our house, for Christ’s sake. Where the fuck did you even get a key?’

‘You bastard,’ Eve hisses, her nostrils flaring as a vein begins to pulse at her temple. ‘You really are a piece of shit, aren’t you? Answer me this, Pete – if Natalie thinks I’m so mental, and such a stalker, why am I the one she told first about her pregnancy? Why am I the one who went to the dating scan with her?’

Pete wants to laugh, can feel the corners of his mouth tugging up into a smile. The woman really is bonkers. ‘No, Eve, I think you’ll find I was the one who went to the scan with Natalie.’

Eve crows with laughter, loud enough to make people turn and look in their direction. ‘Come on, Pete, you’ve had two kids before. Didn’t you wonder why there was only one scan at twentyweeks? Natalie had a dating scan at twelve weeks – three weeksaftershe told me she was pregnant.’

Pete feels all the air go out of him, the way he did when Stu took him down in a particularly fierce rugby tackle back when they played for the university first team. ‘She didn’t even know she was pregnant until she was twelve weeks gone,’ he says.

Eve laughs again, shrill and rusty, the sound making Pete think of screws tightening into brickwork, the screech of metal on stone. ‘No, Pete, that’s just what she told you. Natalie found out she was pregnant when she was seven weeks. She told me two weeks later … it must have been around the end of May last year? She told me when we had lunch together, and when I asked, she said she hadn’t told you because she didn’t know how you’d react.’

Pete can’t find the words to express how he feels right now. He thinks back to the beginning of that summer – of looking at university brochures and discussing degree courses with Emily, and how he had come home to find Natalie asleep, a pair of Emily’s baby bootees clutched in one hand. He’d thought she was feeling sentimental about Emily flying the nest, when in reality … He swallows, feeling sick. Eve isn’t lying.

‘Maybe,’ Eve leans in, hissing the words so he has to fight to hear her over the strains of Post Malone coming from the speakers, ‘you should pay more attention to what’s going on with your wife, instead of spending your evenings in that fancy gastropub in town with someone who isn’t your wife.’ Pete’s gut clenches, as Eve looks him up and down with disgust. ‘I guess I should leave the party now, Pete. Go back to my sad little lonely life, and leave you to your perfect family. It’s clear you Maxwells don’t want me around, and clearly I made a mistake thinking I meant more to you all than I actually do. But before I go, I do have one more thing to say.’

‘What?’ Pete is barely listening; he feels numb, as if he doesn’t belong in this body.

Natalie lied to me.The thought flashes across his mind.

‘I used to feel sorry for the two of you, you know? I thought it was such a shame neither of you could appreciate what you had. I couldn’t understand how you were both so miserable, how neither of you seemed to be able to find happiness in this gift you’ve been given in Erin.’ Eve shakes her head before she raises her eyes to his, her face solemn. ‘After what I’ve seen lately, I don’t think either of you deserve that happiness.’

Natalie

Natalie blinks, her face blotchy and stiff with dried tears as she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the vanity table. Glancing down, a wave of nausea hits her as Vanessa’s face pouts up at her from the photographs where they lie scattered on the carpet. Sliding off the bed, Natalie scoops them up, shoving them back inside the file and locking it back in the drawer, before sliding her fingers over her dress. She feels dirty, tainted, as if there isn’t enough soap in the world to make her feel clean again.

‘Where’s Natalie?’ The words drift up through the open window from the garden below, and Natalie realises she’s been gone for too long. Regardless of the fact that she’s just found out her husband has been sleeping with his ex-girlfriend (who is slimmer than you, prettier than you, and probably more enthusiastic in the sack than you, a spiteful voice whispers in her ear), it doesn’t change the fact that she still has a house full of guests and at least another two or three hours to get through before she is alone.I can’t do it, she thinks.I can’t go out there and pretend like nothing’s happened.All Natalie wants to do is curl up into a ball and sob her heart out, right after she’s punched Pete hard in the face. Her limbs feel watery, her head spacy and disconnected, and she realises she’s felt this way before, as a child. After a full day of crying and accusing Natalie and her father of all kinds of things, her mother had self-medicated a little too hard, and it was at two o’clock in the morning that Natalie had watched the paramedics load her unconscious mother into an ambulance. A few hours later, her father had knocked on her door and told her to get ready for school. Natalie had felt this way then – weirdly disconnected, her arms and legs wobbly, sure she would fall asshe tried to stand. But she hadn’t. She’d been twelve years old, and it had taken everything she had to put on her uniform and pack her school bag, all the while knowing the neighbours had seen her mother being taken to hospital in the middle of night, knowing the other children would surround her, wanting to know what had happened. Now she thinks about it, there have been so many times that she’s felt this way – none of them as bad as the hospital incident – after endless rows with her mother, a hard ball of hurt and anger in her chest as she forced herself out of the door, forced herself to carry on.

Icando this, she thinks, as she smooths her hair in the mirror and fans at her hot cheeks.Just treat it like all the other times, one foot in front of the other. All I need to do is avoid Pete until the party is over.

Stepping out onto the landing, she peeps in on Zadie, relieved to see a huddled mass in her bed, the covers pulled up high and the curtains drawn. Maybe she did feel sick after all, Natalie thinks, a pinch of guilt nipping at her. Hurrying down the stairs, hoping that not too many guests comment on her absence, Natalie halts abruptly on the bottom stair as Pete turns away from the front door, his face drawn.

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