The Home for Broken Hearts (22 page)

“I don’t really know,” she said, touching the back of her hand to her flaming cheek.

“Well, look, don’t tell me if you don’t want to, but in my experience booze usually makes a bad situation a million times worse.”

“Booze…”

“Yeah, Hannah—she was tipsy, wasn’t she? I’m sure she didn’t mean anything she said.”

“My sister hadn’t been drinking,” Ellen told him. “She wouldn’t, not when she was looking after Charlie. She might be
thoughtless, but she does love him.”

Ellen felt a pang of remorse. She had allowed herself to become so afraid that when Hannah and Charlie had arrived, she’d simply attacked without thinking. None of it had really been Hannah’s fault; she had believed that Charlie had told Ellen where he was going—and could she really blame Charlie for wanting an afternoon out of the house, having some fun for a change? He had made it abundantly clear that he didn’t get that with her, and he was right. Ellen saw herself for a moment, trapped in her home like a fly in polished amber, but even if that was true, even if she was trapped, she still could find the will or desire to escape. What was it about Hannah that made her so instantly furious? Privately she could concede that she was jealous of how easily Charlie and Hannah got on, but it was something more than that. Something that had happened since Nick’s death that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, that meant that whenever Hannah was around, she felt disjointed and uncomfortable. Theirs had not been an easy relationship, not since they were children, but rarely had it been so strained at it was now. Perhaps it was because Hannah was trying, because she was making such an effort to be there for Ellen now. It made Ellen wonder why she had never tried that hard before.

“No? Well, I’m wrong then,” Matt said, taking her denial lightly. “It’s probably because I’m spending too much time around alcoholics. It was just her eyes—you know, a bit bleary and bloodshot. She looked like people do when they’ve had a lunchtime drink. But still, I’m wrong. It seems to be my specialty today.”

Still lost in her thoughts, Ellen looked down at the tabletop and reran everything that Hannah had said. There had been something, something that she hadn’t said but that had been there in the room between them as real and as solid as this table. Hannah wouldn’t have gone anywhere with Charlie if she’d been drinking, would she? She was stupid and selfish
and vain; if Ellen put all the things she found annoying about her down on paper, the list would far exceed Sabine’s in length. Hannah was about as irritating as a person could get, but she loved Charlie—she wouldn’t have done that?

Ellen looked at Matt, sitting opposite her, looking at a loss as to what to do.
Poor man,
Ellen thought.
This is the last thing that he needs after a hard day’s work.

“Tell you what, you tell me what the fight was all about and I’ll tell you how I officially became the shittiest man on earth today.”

Ellen explained everything that had happened, looking at Matt as she spoke. “I let it all get out of hand, didn’t I? I overreacted.”

“I dunno,” Matt said. “I mean, I’m not a parent, but I imagine that in this day and age, not knowing where your kid is can be pretty scary.”

“Nick often told me that I was prone to overreacting,” Ellen told him. “He said that I questioned him too much and sometimes made him feel like he couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without me knowing about it. He said that I was too emotional, my skin too thin—that I responded to every little thing with my heart instead of my head.” Ellen raised her chin a little as she remembered. “He used to say, ‘Christ, Ellen, home is supposed to be a place I want to come back to, not somewhere I have to avoid. Try thinking once or twice before you open that mouth of yours.’”

“Really,” Matt said, taken aback. “Not sure I agree with him there. Whenever you open your mouth, you usually have something pretty interesting or clever to say.”

Privately, he thought that Ellen’s late husband sounded like a bit of a dick, but there was nothing at all in the way that Ellen talked about him to suggest that she thought anything of the sort.

“I should go and talk to Charlie, shouldn’t I?” Ellen said. “Perhaps I’ll tell him he can keep the games console but that he can’t have it ’
til his birthday in September. What do you think? I mean, Hannah meant well, trying to distract him from the anniversary—but it’s not gifts he needs, or even distractions.”

“Sounds like a good idea.” Matt nodded.

“I don’t want to lose him, I don’t want him to drift away from me. He’s everything to me—I’m not trying to stifle him, or keep him prisoner. I just love him, I just really love him—he must see that.”

“I bet he does,” Matt said. “I bet he’s in his room right now realizing he’s been unfair to you. He’s just kicking out, testing boundaries. He’s trying to grow up and for him it’s going to be harder than it is for a lot of kids. It’ll be painful for you both.”

“I’ll go and talk to him,” Ellen said, half rising from the chair.

“You know what?” Matt rested his hand on her forearm. “Let me go and check on him—neutral party, that sort of thing.”

Matt took the stairs up to Charlie’s room three at a time and knocked on his firmly shut door. “Mate, got a sec?”

Matt waited, and after a second Charlie pulled open the door an inch and peered out at him with one watery, vivid blue eye. Matt’s heart went out to him, the poor kid. Charlie was doing his best to look like he didn’t give a damn, but Matt guessed that very probably the thing he wanted most right now was a hug from his mum.

“Well?” Charlie asked.

Matt reached into his pocket and pulled out a DS games cartridge. “Borrowed this off a bloke at work. Splinter Cell, he says it’s pretty good. I was going to play it later but you can try it first if you like.”

Charlie thought for a moment and then opened the door a crack more and took the game out of Matt’s hand. “I could have been playing on a PlayStation if Mum wasn’t being so unfair,” he grumbled.

“Really?” Matt crossed his arms and leaned against the
door frame. “You really thought you’d get away with that?”

Charlie shrugged.

“Your mum’s downstairs worried sick about you. Cut her some slack, all right? She does her best.”

“Why do you care?” Charlie asked. “Why are you sticking up for Mum? You’re only the lodger, you know.” Matt couldn’t argue, nor did he understand why it mattered to him so much that things were okay between Charlie and Ellen. When he’d first moved in he’d been a little embarrassed to be renting from a widow and her son and not taking up residence in some swish docklands crib, but now, after years of getting by more or less on his own, without a thought about whether or not he liked it, he’d begun to get used to the rhythm and flow of a family around him again. A fairly odd, disparate little family, but the five of them were becoming just that all the same, and Matt had discovered that he liked it.

“I like your mum and I like you—you’re a pretty cool kid, you know.”

“Right.” Charlie was tight-lipped.

“Yeah, and if there’s ever anything I can do to help…”

“Really?” Charlie looked skeptical.

“Yeah, as long as it’s not asking for back issues of
Bang It!
Don’t want your mum to murder me before I end my probation period.” Charlie rewarded Matt with a ghost of a smile. “Right, well, I’ll leave you to it.”

Matt was on the top stair when he heard Charlie say, almost under his breath, “Cheers, Matt.”

Ellen looked up when Matt returned to the kitchen, her olive skin blanched, her face pinched.

“Is he…?”

“He’s upset, and angry and embarrassed. But I reckon he’ll be all right in a bit.”

Ellen nodded. “Thank you, Matthew.”

Matt smiled, taking pleasure in hearing her say his name.

“Anyway,” Matt said, picking up a thin plastic bag that had
been resting by his legs, “I stopped off and bought some lagers on the way home. Want one?”

He cracked open a Stella and drank straight from the can. After a moment’s hesitation, Ellen followed suit.

“So tell me about how you became the shittiest man on earth,” Ellen said.

“You know what,” Matt said, stretching his legs out and smiling at her, feeling an unfamiliar sense of peace descend. “It doesn’t really seem that important anymore.”

Matt watched Ellen watching Charlie across the kitchen table over breakfast. For once, he had arrived downstairs and was ready for school on time, which was interesting because as far as Matt could tell, Charlie still wasn’t talking to Ellen.

“Good morning, darling,” Ellen had said, unable to disguise her surprise and pleasure at the prospect of getting fifteen minutes to make amends with Charlie before he went to school. “Did you sleep okay? I came up to talk to you last night but you were flat out already.” Tentatively she reached over and touched the top of his head as if she were about to ruffle his hair, but then she thought better of it a second too late to completely pull out of the maneuver. Charlie shrugged off her touch and picked up a piece of toast that she had put in front of him.

“Look.” Ellen sat down opposite him. “I’m sorry I shouted and got so angry last night. It was because I was worried, Charlie—I got all worked up and, well, by the time you came home, all the worry had turned into anger and I took it out on you. That was wrong.”

Charlie said nothing, keeping his eyes down as he munched.

Ellen sighed and sat back in her chair. “But it was wrong of you to go off without telling me where you were going or who
with, too. And it was wrong of you to lie to Hannah about telling me.” Still Charlie was unresponsive. “So I’ve decided that I’m not going to take the games console back.…”

Charlie’s snort was sarcastic and derisory as he rolled his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head, Matt noticed with interest as he ate his cornflakes leaning up against the fridge.

“And,” Ellen continued, “if you apologize to me and to Hannah for lying, then we can say that it’s a birthday present and you can have it in September. What do you say?”

Charlie looked at her, his blue eyes vivid in the morning sunshine as he appraised his mother with near-naked contempt. If Matt had been able to place a bet on what the boy was about to say just then, he would have put all his money on something bitter, reproachful, and insightful, something cruel but true, because the cruelest things were often the most true. But Matt would have lost all his money, because Charlie uttered only one word.

“Whatever,” he said.

Matt watched Ellen’s shoulders tense, her whole body a battlefield where her anger and her desire to be friends with Charlie again fought on.

“So what do you have to say?” Ellen asked.

Charlie got up, scraping his chair across the kitchen tiles so that they screeched.

“Take it back to the shop,” he told her levelly. “I’m not apologizing.”

He picked up his school bag in one hand and his remaining piece of toast in the other and walked out, slamming the front door behind him with such force that the mugs rattled on the draining board.

“I didn’t handle that too well, did I?” Ellen said, more to herself than to Matt. “You know, this is my job, being a mother—it’s what I’ve made my whole life about and now I can’t even do that anymore.…”

Matt put his cereal bowl down on the table and briefly
rested a consoling hand on her shoulder before picking up his keys and laptop bag. He’d stayed in last night, watching TV in his room, aware that Ellen had gone to bed early and exhausted. As a consequence they had missed their post-midnight meeting, and when he’d woken up that morning, well rested and without a hangover, Matt realized that he had missed it.

“If he didn’t care about you or what you thought or what you said, then he’d have just gone straight to school,” Matt told her, grabbing his jacket. “But he didn’t. He got up and ready early so that he could come down here and ignore and insult you—see, it’s not all that bad!”

Matt paused to look at Ellen. She was dressed in a man’s shirt again, her long hair as yet unbrushed, tumbling over her shoulders in a rare moment of abandonment before being twisted into the knot at the nape of her neck that she favored. She looked like she’d just got out of bed with a lover, Matt realized with a tiny internal thrill, letting his mind wander just a little further for one illicit moment, picturing Ellen in the seconds before she had pulled that shirt on, imagining her lying semiclad on her bed, her black hair spread out on the pillow, trickling between her breasts, which were… It was hard to guess exactly what her body was like under the clothes she wore, which was partly the reason why wondering about her was so interesting. Unlike the women who made it their mission to obliterate mystery with low-cut tops and high-cut skirts—and in the case of the models who graced the pages of
Bang It!
, barely any clothes at all—Ellen kept everything hidden, covered. She locked her body away, which just at this second and to Matt’s great surprise made it seem even more intriguing. And Matt knew that even if, when he unbuttoned that shirt, the body underneath it was far from the air-brushed perfection that he was bombarded with daily, he would still feel that rush of discovering a newfound land; that he would still desire her, for all the physical frailties and scars that made
her the woman she was, as vulnerable as a piece of glass—a piece of glass that for that dangerous moment he wanted to hold in his hands.

There are places that you don’t go, mate,
Matt reminded himself sternly as Ellen, feeling his gaze on her, looked up and then down quickly, heat flaring across the bridge of her nose as if she had guessed exactly what he was thinking.
And your widowed landlady is one of them.

Women were wrong about him. Carla, and Lucy, the associate editor, and all the angry, bitter girls he’d left in Manchester thought he was a moral void, an incarnation of women-hating evil, even though he had always, mostly always, been up front and honest with them about his intentions, if not about the column that they were quite likely to appear in. But he had some standards, and Ellen was the line he would not cross. As much as she had started to fascinate him, there was something else going on—he liked her. He liked her too much to try to sleep with her, and more than that he wanted to help her, he wanted to do something to smooth that frown that dissected her brow so neatly in half.