The Reunion

would see how he loved her. He booked a flight to France: he’d go the following weekend, he’d speak to Nat. He had things straight in his head, he’d been straightened out by Lilah, of all people. He drove the girls to school, he worked, he slept. And then he got the message from Natalie, telling him to come as quickly as he could, and he understood that the weekend would be too late.
    He was terrified that he wouldn’t make it, not just that he wouldn’t be able to say goodbye, but that he wouldn’t be there for Nat, that in the end she’d have to do it alone and he’d have let her down, again. He felt grateful, for the very first time, that at least when Conor went it was with the brittle snap of a vertebra, quick and clean. But he was there. He made it, and he brought Zac with him, so at least he had got something right.
    Andrew walked Zac back from the woods to the house in silence. The light was just starting to fade, and he thought he detected for the first time since he’d returned a coolness in the breeze, just the faintest scent of rain. He found Natalie outside, sitting in the hammock, feet tucked up under her, back perfectly straight, looking out over the valley. She smiled at him when she saw him.
    ‘Please come inside tonight, Nat,’ he said. ‘Sleeping out here has got to be killing your back. And anyway, I think it might rain.’
    Natalie looked up at the perfectly clear sky, then looked back at him, cocked her head to one side. ‘You think?’
    ‘Please, Nat?’ He sat down next to her.
    ‘OK,’ she said. She gave him a very small smile. ‘She’s gone now anyway. She was here, yesterday, I could feel it. But she’s gone now.’
    Andrew didn’t say anything, he just smiled at her, touched her face. It wasn’t like her, to talk like that; she didn’t believe in ghosts or afterlives, she was staunchly rationalist. But you never knew how you would feel, until it was someone you couldn’t bear to lose forever.
    ‘Are you OK?’ Natalie was looking at him, her brow furrowed. She leaned closer to him, brought her hand up to her face to hold his. The hammock rocked ever so gently from side to side. ‘You look so tired,’ she said.
    ‘I’m fine. I was just thinking about… practicalities,’ he lied. ‘I have to go back the day after tomorrow. I want you to come with me, Nat. I want you to come home now.’
    ‘Of course,’ she said, as though there were never any question, as though she had completely forgotten the horrible way he’d treated her the last time he left. ‘Of course I’ll come back with you. I haven’t seen the girls for three weeks.’
    He winced a little, he wasn’t sure what she meant by that. She was coming back for the girls, or coming back for him? Was it an either/or thing? Couldn’t she just be coming back?
    ‘I can’t wait to get home now,’ she said, ‘I just can’t wait.’ And she smiled at him, green eyes looking up from under lowered lashes, and he knew that it wasn’t just for the girls, it was for him, too, and his heart skipped a beat.
    Natalie slept in the house that night, she slept soundly at his side. Andrew lay awake again, listening to the noises of the house and the night. He heard Jen padding around in the room next door, shushing the baby. He heard low cries in the distance, strange, ghostly sounds that made him irrationally fearful. Natalie didn’t stir once.
    When he slept, it was fitful and he woke with a terrible start from a bad dream he couldn’t remember. Still, Natalie slept. He slipped out of bed and crept downstairs, where he found Jen in the living room with Isabelle; he had a flash of déjà vu, back to the day when he and Jen had argued, the day Jen had told him about Dan.
    ‘Hello,’ he said softly and the pair of them turned to look at him, two sets of enormous brown eyes set in pale, drained, unhappy faces.
    ‘Bad night?’
    Jen nodded.
    ‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked her.
    She shook her head.
    He made her some tea anyway, brought it to her and sat down in the armchair opposite hers. They hadn’t really spoken since he got there, not about anything other than Lilah, in any case. It hadn’t been the time. Now, perhaps, in the chilly early morning, just the two of them and the baby, he could apologise to her, tell her he’d been wrong, judgemental, unkind, a hypocrite. But he couldn’t find the words, so they sat quietly, just the occasional fretting from Isabelle breaking the