Chapter 14 Darcy

14 DARCY

NOW

It’s Saturday, and she’s awake early. Even when jet-lagged, Darcy likes to be up with the sunrise, making sure she starts the day right. A cup of coffee, some stretching, then she’ll head to the gym. It’s disappointingly small, the gym, with only two treadmills. She runs outdoors at home, but it’s already eighty-six degrees, even at six in the morning, and she doesn’t fancy running on sand.

She checks her phone for messages from the boys. Marsha has sent an update about what the boys did at school, what they ate, what time Jacob came to take them to his for the week. They coparent like this, one week at hers, the next at Jacob’s. She still isn’t used to the arrangement, nor to the unfairness that is only seeing her children for half the year because her husband decided to shag half the country. Whoever said all’s fair in love and war clearly never experienced divorce.

Ed and Ben have sent cute little notes from Marsha’s phone, including a video message telling her how much they love and miss her. Nothing from Charlie, who has his own phone. She sends two messages back to Marsha, both addressed to Ed and Ben, and another one to Charlie.

She throws the phone down and sighs. Yet another curveball from the wilderness of parenthood. Tantrums, she can deal with. Sleep deprivation—she’s got all the T-shirts for that one. But stonewalling? She loathes it. Her mother was excellent at it, and it drove Darcy bats. Darcy was like her father, an open book, naturally inclined to share, talk things through. Volatile, too, until she learned to control it. Ah, genetics. How much of parenting involves dealing with your parents all over again in the form of your children’s behavior? Echoes of the past, both the good and the bad.

Everything is different when it involves your own children. She has no idea—not a single clue—how to handle this one. And least of all from the other side of the world.

Maybe the time away will be good for Charlie , she thinks. Maybe he’ll come round once he realizes how much he misses her.

A small part of her is worried, though—what if he doesn’t? What if this is as good as it gets?

A red number thirteen sits at the corner of her WhatsApp icon, and she clicks on it, expecting to see a stream of messages from her parents’ group. The thread is about the dates for parents’ evening, and she scrolls through it, her heart sinking. Usually she’s tagged into such questions, because everyone knows she’s on it, that Darcy’s always on top of these things. School trips? She has every single date in her calendar, along with payment info and details about suitable clothing. But this is another consequence of the divorce—because she only has the boys every other week, she’s no longer the source of wisdom, the go-to Queen of School Knowledge. It has affected her other WhatsApp groups, too, the ones that have devolved into discussions about recipes and air-fryer tips, and the one about environmental sustainability. Darcy has a talent for repurposing furniture, but her wisdom is called upon less and less. No friendly messages, either, asking about her divorce trip.

It irks her. Secretly, she liked the role she had acquired among her peers. Darcy, Queen of Upcycling! It seemed to work better when she was married and a full-time mum. She suspects that people avoid divorced people—particularly divorced women—as though being cheated on is contagious.

To hell with them , she thinks, tossing her phone into a bag.

She gets up, brushes her teeth, pulls her hair back into a stubby ponytail, and throws on her gym gear. Thank God she brought shorts instead of leggings—the humidity would cause chafing.

The gym attendant is there already, handsome, young, muscular. She feels the first stirring of something that has lain dormant for years—sexual attraction. A reminder that she has a libido. Perhaps she should take Camilla’s advice and shag everything with a pulse. There has not been another man since Jacob. Not since their first date seventeen years ago. She’s not built to be unfaithful. She can be selfish, has dealt many blows below the belt during a row, and Charlie’s stonewalling definitely comes from her side of the family. But infidelity is not in her genes. Once she’s with someone, that’s it.

“Good morning,” she says to the attendant. A boy, really. In his early twenties. She feels so old now, when she considers she could essentially be a mother to a man this age. It makes her nostalgic for her own twenties, when she and everyone her age was breathtakingly gorgeous and didn’t know it. Completely oblivious to the staggering beauty of youth that was dripping away from them with every minute.

The place is all hers. She’s glad she got up early. She hates gyms, both because of the inevitable germ bath that accompanies a visit to one and because of the idea that she has to work out in full view of strangers. But this one is empty, with the exception of the hot adolescent who is staring at his mobile phone by the water cooler.

She places her water bottle in the cupholder of the treadmill, then walks for five minutes to warm up her muscles. She used to be able to plow straight into a jog, but nowadays her calf muscles scream for days if she doesn’t take time to stretch and warm up properly.

She’s only beginning to jog when she hears the door open, a man’s voice greeting the attendant. A few moments later, a figure appears on the treadmill next to her.

Her stomach drops. It’s Rob, Jade’s husband. He meets her gaze, his dark eyes locking with hers. No nod or smile, no acknowledgment.

She turns away before anything slides into her expression, her eyes fixed on the numbers on the treadmill screen.

Rob walks for thirty seconds before powering the treadmill into a sprint. Nine miles an hour. Her dial reads 6.6 miles an hour. She pushes the PLUS button to increase her speed, Rob’s thick legs pounding quickly next to her, his arms swinging. A moment later, he increases his speed, and she increases hers. It’s a game , she thinks, a silent competition , and she isn’t sure why. He puffs and grunts as he pushes himself harder and harder, sprinting so fast the whole treadmill is moving. The door opens again, and from the corner of her eye she sees the attendant leaving.

Shit , she thinks. The withdrawal of the third person in the gym is like a new chemical being thrown into a pot, altering the balance. Her irritation turns quickly to vulnerability. The gym is made of glass, but you can only see out from the inside, not in from the outside. The glass panel in front of her shows only the palm trees and the sauna. No sign of anyone nearby.

She slows down the speed on her dashboard to a fast walk. Part of her desperately wants to head back to the villa, and she’s furious with the attendant for leaving like that, is already scripting a complaint in her head. To the management: at no times should gym users be left unattended… Another part of her hates that she’s doing what all women do when confronted with an aggressive male, which is back down, seek the escape route, mentally prepare to knee an attacker in the bollocks. It’s exhausting, living with the undercurrent of threat because of your gender. She was secretly glad when she had sons; so little had changed for women that she dreaded raising girls, dreaded the thought of preparing them for a world that makes being a woman so bloody difficult.

She stays on the treadmill, eyes straight ahead, playing Rob at his game. She can see him glancing over at her. He’s in touching distance, the treadmills set ridiculously close together on account of how tiny the gym is. Not exactly Covid-friendly. She mind-scripts another complaint to the resort management.

Rob slows down to match her speed. His head is firmly turned toward her now.

“Where do I know you from?” he says.

“Hmmm?” She turns her head and smiles mildly, as though she’s only just realized that he’s there. God, she wishes she’d brought earbuds.

“I said, where do I know you from?” he says, his lips curled into a sneer.

“Oh,” she says. “We met the day before yesterday. I was chatting with your wife by the pool.”

“Nah,” he says. “I don’t mean then. We’ve met somewhere before, haven’t we?”

She gives a laugh that comes out far more shrilly than she intended. “I don’t think so.”

He keeps staring. “I have this gift,” he says. “Terrible with names, never forget a face.”

“Really?”

“Have you heard of that test you can do online? Super recognizers?”

She shakes her head, but she has.

“I’m in the top five percent.”

She watches the window in front of her, not to avoid his gaze but because she can see the door of the gym in its reflection. She’s watching out for the attendant, or another guest, because her nerves are jangling, all her female instincts on full alert. The problem with the gym being in a whole other part of the resort is that Rob could bludgeon her with a dumbbell and she’d be dead before anyone knew it.

She hits the red STOP button on her treadmill and feigns tiredness, like she feigned it so many times when she could read Jacob’s desire for sex in his gestures, in his increased tenderness toward her. She gives a slight sigh, raises a hand to rub imaginary bleariness from an eye, takes a long drink from her water bottle. She steps down casually from the treadmill and dabs her brow with a towel, heading toward the door.

When she steps outside, she hastens along the track toward the wooden causeway. She’s careful not to look as though she’s running away, but lengthens her stride, her pulse quickening. A voice in her head tells her she’s overreacting. So what if this man came into the gym and ran beside her? So what if he said he knew her? That kind of report would make any resort manager dismiss her out of turn.

But when she glances back, she sees the gym door swing open, Rob’s powerful form lurching out. She sees him glance to his left, then to his right. He sees her and starts running.

Oh God .

She moves faster, light on her feet. She feels the causeway beneath the soles of her trainers, but she’s still a good four hundred yards away from her villa. No one is around. A bird with a long, pointed beak skitters across the path in front of her, and bats lift off from the trees into the blue morning sky. Keep calm , she thinks, but it’s useless. Her heart is jackhammering in her throat, and recognizing how freaked out she is by Rob striding quickly behind only serves to make her fear worse.

The long sway of villas is in sight. She spies someone sitting on their upper balcony, with a good view of her and Rob, and breathes easier.

“Good morning,” she calls up, pointedly. The man looks down, confused, and waves. She waves back, arm high, signaling to Rob that they have an audience now. When she glances back, Rob has slowed to a walk, studying his mobile phone. Apparently oblivious to her.

At the door of her villa, she lunges for the handle, relief swamping her. But it’s locked. Shit. She pats her pockets for the key. Where is it?

“Looking for this?” a voice says.

She jumps a little at the sight of Rob standing right behind her, grinning. He holds a key card out to her. She reaches for it, but he swipes it away.

“Say please,” he says.

She reels at the arrogance of it. Then, relenting: “Give me the card.”

“?‘Give me the card, please ,’?” he urges.

“Fuck off,” she snarls, and his grin widens.

“That’ll do,” he says, handing it over. She snaps it from his fingers and presses it against the door, pushing down the handle and stepping into the villa.

“It’ll come to me,” he says.

“What will?” she says, turning angrily to face him.

“Where I know you from,” he says.

Darcy quickly shuts the door.