Page 80 of All Summer Long

Robinson looked at the plate.

‘You’re trying to what, exactly?’

Lena stood behind the breakfast bar and gazed at him.

‘Concert’s in a couple days, honey. I know how you get before a show.’ She softened her voice. ‘I only want to help.’

He almost laughed at her sheer audacity.

‘Did you take a recent blow to the skull, Lena?’ He shook his head, incredulous. ‘Because amnesia is the only reasonable explanation I can come up with for why you’d think it acceptable to turn up here this morning and attempt to play the good fucking wife.’

Lena leaned her elbows on the breakfast bar, her face a study of distress, her brown eyes brimming with tears. In all the years they’d been together, this was one in the handful of times he’d ever raised his voice at her.

‘I was a good wife to you, Robinson,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘I made a mistake. People do that. We can’t all be Pollyanna.’

Robinson silently absorbed the way her acerbic reference to Alice almost choked her.

‘What do you want me to say?’ she said when he didn’t respond, throwing her hands up in the air. ‘I’m sorry? Is that it? You want me to grovel and beg you to take me back?’

He shook his head.

‘I don’t want your apologies, Lena. I don’t want your apologies, and I don’t want your pancakes. The only thing I want from you is the key to my house, because you’re no longer welcome here.’

Lena straightened her shoulders and wiped her eyes. He watched her draw herself up to her full height and set her jaw high in the air, like a cobra preparing to strike.

‘I’m a strong, proud, southern woman, Robinson Duff. Since when did it become okay for you to be rude to me?’

He shoved his chair back and crossed the room, suddenly more angry with her than he’d ever been before.

‘You come in here, and you dare to preach at me to be polite, whilst you lean over the exact same breakfast bar I found you having sex with my best friend over?’ He slammed his hands down hard on the counter, making her jump.

‘I’ll tell you something, shall I? This,’ he banged his hands down flat against the surface to make his point,‘this, is the first time I’ve laid so much as a hand on this fucking breakfast bar since that day. I couldn’t even stand to look at it.’

His face was inches away from hers now and he could see the shock in her wide eyes.

‘Now, let me make myself real clear here, Lena, because I don’t want to have to say this again. I don’t want your food, I don’t want your apologies, and I don’t want your cold, hard body in my bed ever again. I don’t want you.’

The words ground out of him, released after too long trapped inside, cathartic for him, catastrophic for her.

Lena’s mouth opened and then closed again, and the look in her eye hardened from hurt to furious.

‘This is about her, isn’t it? Polly-fuckin’-anna.’

He knew what she was trying to do and he wasn’t prepared to play her games.

‘Much as it must be convenient for you to blame someone else, Lena, no, it’s not about Alice. It’s about me realising I don’t love you any more.’

She shook her head, bitter fury turning her face unattractive.

‘She’ll never make you happier than I can.’

Robinson looked at her levelly.

‘She already did.’

They stared at each other in angry silence, and then Lena banged her fist down on the breakfast bar and stormed for the door. He said her name as she put her fingers on the handle and she turned back, triumph in her dark eyes because he hadn’t been able to let her walk away after all.

‘Your key,’ he said, picking up the pancakes and dumping them in the bin. ‘Leave your key on the hall table on your way out.’

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