Losing You by Susan Lewis Page A

of the decision required an explanation he said, ‘He can handle it without me and I need to catch up after losing this morning. Is Oliver’s car there?’
    ‘Hang on, I’ll have a look.’ A moment later she was back on the line saying, ‘No sign of it.’
    Which meant his son still wasn’t home after staying out all night. ‘OK, I’ll try his mobile,’ and abruptly ringing off, he drove on to the lights at the bottom of Bridge Valley Road before connecting to Oliver.
    ‘It’s Dad,’ he said into the voicemail. ‘I know you’re old enough to come and go as you please, but a little respect wouldn’t go amiss. In other words I’d appreciate you telling me if you’re intending to stay out all night. Call me when you get this message.’
    As the lights changed he accelerated on to the Portway where the towering cliffs of the Avon Gorge rose majestically either side of him, and the slick, brown sludge of the river was snaking its way to the estuary at Avonmouth. Within minutes he found himself at a complete standstill thanks to an accident, or roadworks, he had no idea which. Annoyed with himself for coming this way, since it was a ludicrous route to have taken anyway, he inhaled several deep breaths in an effort to ease some of his tension.
    Damn Sylvie. Damn, damn, damn her. He detested the way she made him feel every time he saw her – strung out with guilt, anger, regret and even something he really didn’t want to feel about the mother of his children, disgust. What about love? Maybe, some, but certainly not of the kind he’d felt when he’d married her twenty-five years ago. The overriding, insatiable passion they’d shared then had long since died. Now, apart from gratitude for the home she’d created and admiration for how bravely she’d fought her cancer, the warmest feeling he could muster towards her was pity – and a kind of grief, he guessed. Yes, definitely grief for the loss of the woman she used to be.
    She was right, her drinking had become worse following the death of her father, though she’d had wine or champagne with every meal, sometimes even breakfast, for as long as he’d known her. And many were the occasions when he’d had to usher her out of a reception, or dinner, or some sort of charity banquet before she disgraced herself. Maybe if he’d been around more when the boys were growing up she wouldn’t have been forced to seek refuge from her loneliness in a bottle, at least that was what she often threw at him. And maybe he was in some way to blame for her drinking, but not the jealousy, never that; because in all the years they’d been together he’d never once given her cause to doubt him.
    She wouldn’t agree with that, of course. What she wouldsay was that he was pathologically incapable of keeping himself zipped up – and his answer to that, but only to himself, was if he’d thought he could get away with it then in more recent years he probably wouldn’t even have tried to hold back. It wasn’t as if opportunities hadn’t come his way, because plenty had. This wasn’t him being boastful, it was simply a truth occurring fleetingly to him, if at all.
    Viagra?
    Where the hell had that come from?
    He wouldn’t even try to guess, because fathoming his wife and the way her mind worked had turned into as pointless a task as trying to make her see things the way most normal people did. She simply wasn’t capable of it any more, which was why he knew he should be concerned by her threat to go public with what she knew. Although with Sylvie that could mean almost anything, if she was planning something crazy like telling the world that he knew more than he was admitting to about the girl, Mandie Morgan, he was already sinking with dismay to think of the chaos that would bring down on them all.
    As if her addiction wasn’t causing them enough already.
    Just thank God the boys didn’t know about the men she’d started taking home at night; or the way she often