Magic Sometimes Happens Part 23

'Did you mean you thought that Ben and Lexie might be-'

'I just saw the way she looked at him in Barnes and n.o.ble when we happened to meet that afternoon. It was like they had a guilty secret. I told myself I was imagining things. After all, Ben flirts with every woman under ninety. He can't help himself. He's such a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'How do you know that, have you been talking to his mother?'

'You're so funny. I suppose I always knew that marrying Ben Fairfax was a big mistake.'

'You should always trust your intuition, Tess,' I said.

But perhaps I shouldn't trust my own?

PATRICK.

It felt so weird to go back to the USA alone.

It was like a part of me was missing. I needed to see Rosie like I needed oxygen. But I also wanted to see Joe and Polly. They'd flown back a week ago with Lex and Mr Wonderful.

My mother came to Minneapolis to see me and her grandchildren, to try to find out what was going on and set us right. She fussed and fretted round me, cooked for me and did my laundry.

She tried to talk to Lexie.

Lexie wouldn't take Mom's calls.

'Patrick, you're not eating properly,' Mom told me, sighing as she took another half-full plate away. 'But I can't say I'm surprised, with that woman giving you the runaround and stuff.'

I wondered about Rosie sometimes, wondered if she missed me, longed for me? I missed and longed for her like I was fit to die. She texted me and emailed me and called me. But all the time she was so formal and polite, I felt she wasn't missing me at all.

I thought about when we had said goodbye back at Heathrow. She hadn't hugged me, hadn't kissed me with a quarter of the feeling she had done whenever we had been alone together. So all that stuff she said about not ever having loved a guy before had she been warning me? Or was she merely being very British?

The girl was an enigma, a mystery, a riddle.

But I decided I would not believe I'd been a blip, and most times I was optimistic, confident that we would meet again.

The dean was pleased with everything I had achieved in London.

'Pat, you ought to firm up this relationship with London University,' he said. 'Maybe get more people there involved in your research, enrol some graduate students on a programme? Perhaps you could go back to the UK in April, maybe even stay until the summer? I believe there's funding.'

'I'll think about it, Dean.'

I wanted, needed, was desperate to see Rosie, obviously. But I also needed to check out Lexie's schedule, to find out where in Europe, or at least which hemisphere, she and Mr Wonderful were fixing to be next, before I made my plans.

I thought I might go get a beer with Ben. These days Ben was acting kind of strange. He was absent-minded and preoccupied. When we pa.s.sed a pretty graduate student in the corridor one morning, a girl he often said was hot for him, he never gave her even one glance, let alone a second.

Maybe he was missing Tess?

She had gone to England a few days after I came back to visit with her father, who was sick. Or that's what Ben had told me, anyway. But maybe he and Tess had had a fight? 'Come and have a beer after your cla.s.ses?' I suggested because he seemed so down.

'I'm not in the mood for beer,' he muttered. 'I got stuff on my mind.'

'Your new book it's not doing good?'

'My book is doing fine.'

'What is it, then?'

'Riley, will you quit interrogating me!' He rounded on me, glaring. 'You drive a person crazy, you know that? Why are you so freaking cheerful these days? Did you get to see some action while you were in Europe?'

ROSIE.

So Tess was sleeping on my sofa bed.

She wouldn't talk to Ben. She wouldn't go and see her family. She did go shopping sometimes, but all she bought was chain store rubbish from the rubbish end of Oxford Street.

'She's such a fool,' she said one evening while we watched tripe on cable and I picked up some pointers on how not to do PR, how not to market anything.

'Who's such a fool?' I asked. I must never say that something is faux anything, I told myself be it leather, fur or diamonds ever, ever, ever. It was tacky and it was deceitful. A product should be praised for what it was, and never weasel-worded for something it was not. Well not extravagantly weasel-worded, anyway. A little verbal ma.s.sage never hurt ...

'Pat Riley's wife,' said Tess, sloshing more wine into her gla.s.s. 'What the h.e.l.l's the matter with the woman? She has a lovely husband. He's clever, kind and funny, and he's good-looking, too. It's no wonder Ben's so flipping jealous and felt he had to screw his best friend's wife. You should see Pat with his children, Rosie, talk about a perfect father and the kids, they obviously adore him.'

A perfect father right. 'What are his children like?' I asked. Just to torment myself, of course. I didn't seem able to resist it.

'Joe must be five or six, and he's a little charmer. He looks just like Patrick straight, dark hair and big brown eyes. He chats away and tells you all about his school and hamster and what he wants to be when he grows up.'

'What's that?'

'He can't decide between an astronaut and Spiderman.'

'What about Pat's daughter? It's Molly, isn't it?'

'No, Polly. Well, she's super-cute. She has the same colouring as Joe, but he's quite small and skinny and she's a little dumpling. She sits on Patrick's lap and chews his shirt cuff and snuggles up against his chest and you can see he loves that child to bits.'

'Pat made you feel broody, didn't he?'

'No!' retorted Tess. 'Well, maybe just a little smidgeon.'

'Why don't you give Ben another chance?'

'Why would I do that? So I can be a literary widow, pregnant at the kitchen sink, waiting for the master to come home from s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g pretty female novel-writing wannabes? Raising all those children he says he doesn't want? I'm filing for divorce. I'm going to sue that b.a.s.t.a.r.d for every cent he's got.'

'You've made your mind up, have you?'

'Yes!' she cried. 'Why aren't you on my side?'

'Tess, I'm definitely on your side. But can you afford to hire a really hotshot lawyer?'

'It depends how much they cost.'

'Ben will hire a brilliant attorney do I mean attorney, is that what they're called who will make you look like some pathetic foreign gold-digger who had schemed to do this from the start. I mean to run away.'

'Rosie, he was s.h.a.gging Patrick's wife! It was disgusting. I can't imagine anybody normal enjoying stuff like that.'

'But you have no evidence. That's unless you snapped them with your phone?'

'Of course I didn't, dummy. It never crossed my mind.'

'So now you've deserted him. Or that's what he's going to tell a judge. He might refuse to pay you anything. He might say you've already cleaned him out.'

'Yeah, right,' growled Tess. 'I'd like to clean him out with Dyno-Rod. I'd like to shove a pipe right up his a.r.s.e and-'

'Yes, okay. Did you remember to bring your jewellery?'

'Yes, of course I did. I got my diamonds from the bank, as well. I called there on the way to catch my plane. Why do you ask?'

'f.a.n.n.y says the woman always keeps her jewellery and all her other personal what did she call them chattels.'

'Good, I'll flog it all on eBay. Jewellery and clothes and shoes and handbags, everything that'll keep me going for a while.' Then Tess sat up straight, looked hard at me. 'You've discussed all this with f.a.n.n.y, have you?'

'No, of course I haven't. But she mentioned it some months ago while we were chatting about something else.'

'When you told her I'd got married, eh?' Tess slumped back on the sofa. 'I always knew the woman was a witch. I wish she'd cast a spell on Ben and make his nuts fall off. But in the meantime, I'm going to get my own back.'

'How will you do that?'

'I'll tell Patrick what I saw them doing.'

'Do you think that's wise?'

'I think he needs to know the truth about his s.h.i.t best buddy and his wife.' Tess got out her Galaxy. I let her carry on.

'By the way,' she said as she was tapping, 'I rang Mum. I'm going home tomorrow. She needs some help with Dad. He's in a bad way, apparently.'

'She's forgiven you for getting married without inviting any of your family?'

'Yeah, I think so. But she also said it's got to be a white meringue, ten bridesmaids in pink taffeta and half a dozen pageboys next time, or she'll hang and draw and quarter me.'

April.

PATRICK.

The text from Tess, it freaked me out.

I read it twenty, thirty times and even then I couldn't quite believe it. The fortieth time, I did. Okay, I thought, that's after I was finished killing Ben in half a dozen cruel and unusual ways, now you must play it cool.

What were my options? Do absolutely nothing, file for divorce this very minute, try to find some middle way? Whatever I did next, I was not about to start a fight for custody of Joe and Polly. I doubted I would get it, anyway. Whatever Lexie's failings as a wife, she couldn't be faulted as a mother.

Also, if I started court proceedings, any good attorney Lex instructed would very soon find out that I was seeing Rosie and would drag my name and Rosie's through a ton of mud or worse than mud.

I consulted with the dean and London University and fixed it so on April 22nd I was due back in London to give a dozen lectures and also do experimental work on thought-to-text at Queen Alexandra College.

I'd be there until July, maybe going back to the US from time to time, but being a mostly cyber-presence back at JQA. I'd get an apartment, I decided, so I could have the kids stay over when they were in Europe.

It would be good to get away from Minnesota where we still had ice and snow and blizzards. Everyone had gotten tired of winter and was longing for the spring, but this must have been one of the coldest springs on record, a mere continuation of a miserable winter.

I emailed Rosie to tell her I was coming to London for the summer. Rosie emailed back to say it would be nice to see me. Oh nice to see me right.

But when she came to meet me at Heathrow and when I saw her coming toward me, all the doubts I'd had about her loving me, they vanished, and I knew I was home. She looked amazing, black hair wild and curling round her lovely heart-shaped face, gorgeous grey eyes wide, red lips parted in antic.i.p.ation, long legs doing great PR for her designer jeans. I dropped my stuff and took her in my arms and held her tight, tight, tight for five, ten, fifteen minutes, maybe more.

'I didn't dare allow myself to hope you would come back,' she whispered when at last we broke apart a little.

'I couldn't stay away.'

'Your work, your family, your life they're all in America.'

'But you're in the UK, and where you are is where I want to be.'

'Oh, Pat you say the nicest things!'

'The beer is better, too. The last time I was over here, I kind of got a taste for your real ale.'

'You must be the most romantic man I've ever known, Professor Riley.' She socked me on the jaw. Or I should say she would have socked me if I hadn't caught her hand in time.

'Did you drive?' I asked.

'No, my poor Fiesta's just failed its MOT and so it needs some work. I came by train.'

'Let's go get a taxi back to London.'

'Okay. Where are your children at the moment?' she enquired, as I gathered up my stuff and as we started heading for the exit.

'They're in the UK as well. Lexie and the Limey are in London, so the kids are on an outside-of-curriculum vacation.'

'When Tess told you about Ben and Lexie, did you-'

'Give a s.h.i.t?' I shook my head. 'It was a shock, of course. But I did some thinking as I was coming over here and I realised I was not surprised. Well not surprised at Ben, at any rate.'

'At Lexie, maybe?'

'Yeah, perhaps. But if she could cheat on me with Mr Wonderful, why not with my best friend? Come on, Rosie, let's go find that cab. We need to make up for lost time.'

So why did I not care?

I should have cared. One time, I'd have beaten up on Ben, like I had when we were little kids back in Recovery and he had gotten me into big trouble with Miss Ellie over missing doughnuts. He'd stolen them and sold them at recess and told our teacher it was down to me. Of course I took my punishment and, after school was out, I flattened him. But afterward I found I was ashamed. I made a solemn vow. I'd never strike another human being, not even my best friend. After all, there was a bunch of other ways to make my feelings known.