My Husband's Wife (13 page)

‘I love him. Not loved. I love him!’ Rosie corrected, picturing his face again and crying afresh. ‘I saw her again, you know, as I was driving out of town. She looked very fancy, the kind of woman that would make me feel crap about myself even if she wasn’t sleeping with my husband. And all I can think of, having seen her looking so glam, is that I can’t imagine her being with someone like my Phil.’

The two women sat in silence for a second or two, both considering how to proceed.

Rosie scooped her hair to one side and sat up straight. ‘Did you know, Mel?’

Mel cast her eyes downwards and looked at her fingers on the tabletop. ‘I knew bits. He told Andy a few weeks ago apparently and Andy stewed over telling me and then he told me at the beginning of the week that Phil had been playing away.’ She looked up, regretting her casual choice of phrase. ‘I was so torn. I didn’t want to say anything in case it blew over – least said, soonest mended and all that. I thought saying something might cause more trouble.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve hated knowing that much about it without you being aware of it. It felt disloyal, horrible.’

‘Because it was, that’s why. You should have told me!’ she snapped.

‘Oh my God, Rosie! How could I? I didn’t know if it was going to blow over, I had no idea of the details and how on earth was I going to sit you down and break that? You have always thought the sun shone out of his arse, I wasn’t going to be the one to shatter that for you. I love you too much for that. It didn’t feel like my business.’

‘So how did you know he’d gone?’ She stared, her tone gentler, her mouth fixed in a pre-crying twist.

‘He called Andy and said he was going to tell you and that he was moving in with that tart!’

The toast pinged and shot upwards in the toaster. Neither made any attempt to fetch it.

‘I don’t know if it’s just a phase. As you said, it might all just blow over.’ Rosie’s tears came again. ‘I just want him back! I want him to come home!’

‘You can’t think like that. You need to get on with your life and what will be will be. You are so much more than that little band of gold on your finger. You are more than your husband’s wife, you are Rosie and you are fabulous. Your marriage doesn’t define you, it’s not all you are!’

Mel spoke with strength and conviction, but frankly it was more than Rosie could cope with. She closed her eyes as if unable to hear any more. ‘That’s all well and good, but the... the trouble is...’ Her voice was small. ‘It was all I ever wanted to be. Just that. Phil’s wife and the girls’ mother. It is enough for me and it’s all I want.’

‘But...’ Mel tried and failed to find the right response.

‘But what, Mel?’

‘Mummy?’ Naomi called from the sitting room. ‘Leona’s cut her foot on the fireplace and there’s blood on the carpet, the curtains and on my pyjamas and on her forehead!’

‘How the hell does she get blood from her foot to her forehead?’ Mel asked, and they both laughed briefly, then raced into the lounge to deal with the latest crisis.

Later that afternoon, with Leona sporting a large bandage on her cut foot, Rosie decided to take them for a quick stroll along the beach. She tried not to look at the families sitting bunched together on towels and blankets or hovering in the entrances of ridiculously extravagant beach tents, tried not to eavesdrop on the parents and kids and couples who tossed Frisbees, batted balls or read out snippets from the newspaper. And she tried not to think of the countless trips she had made down there with Phil since her teens.

She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs,
‘Enjoy it! Enjoy it all, because it can all be gone in minutes. The person you love and trust can have a change of heart and just like that you’re discarded!’
Instead, she plonked herself on the shoreline while the girls chased the waves in and out, squealing with joy when they mistimed their retreat and their feet and ankles got wet.

Leona sat on the wet sand, peeled the crepe bandage from her foot and ran back to her mum, flinging it at her before trotting back to the water. Rosie gathered it and rolled it carefully before popping it in her pocket. She realised she hadn’t told Phil about Leo’s little accident and reached for her phone, before remembering that he wasn’t really at work but had left. He’d gone. She slid the phone back into her pocket, unsure of the rules and trying to comprehend that, after speaking to him day and night since she was a teenager, this too had now stopped, she was not allowed. This thought caused her tears to pool. She pulled her sunglasses down from her head and pushed them up on the bridge of her nose, thankful for the privacy they offered.

Naomi picked up a length of seaweed and proceeded to chase her sister with it. Leona screamed so loudly that the lifeguard stopped and turned his head.

*

Rosie was preparing supper for the girls when her phone buzzed. It was the call she had been waiting for.

‘Hello, Mo.’

‘Oh... oh...’ Her mother-in-law tried to speak through her tears.

‘Don’t cry.’ Rosie smiled weakly to herself; this advice was far easier to give than act upon. The truth was she had barely stopped crying all day. The girls had made her a card with a sad face on the front and big fat blue tears running down the orange cheeks. An arrow pointed to the face with the word
Yoo
written next to it in green felt tip. She got the message. Now she glanced again at their work of art, which was propped against the window behind the sink.

‘Oh, Rosie!’ Mo’s sobbing made it hard to converse and this in turn set Rosie off again.

She tried to fill the pauses as best she could. ‘I can’t... can’t imagine you not being...’

‘I will always be there for you, Rosie. I have been there since you were a young girl and that won’t change,’ Mo managed.

Rosie gripped the phone with both hands, beyond grateful to hear that the woman she loved was not going to cut her off from the only proper family she had ever really known. ‘I can’t believe it, Mo. I can’t.’

‘I know. Us too. I don’t know what to say.’

Rosie heard the sharp intake of breath and was quietly pleased at her mother-in-law’s displeasure, happy that she would be putting pressure on Phil to end this nonsense and come home. Just thinking of him being elsewhere was torture.

‘Why don’t we come and get the girls tomorrow and bring them back here, give you a chance to get your head straight and they can have a run around?’

‘Thank you. They’d love that.’ She nodded, thinking ahead to a day alone and the peace it would offer.

Rosie found it hard to see her father-in-law the next morning. There was a new awkward tilt to his movements and a faster blink rate that made them both uncomfortable. She knew that this was just the beginning. As he shepherded his beloved granddaughters into his van, she caught a glimpse of the future, saw herself handing over the girls to a family that might be embarrassed, torn by her presence. Despite Mo’s kind words of comfort, and her obvious distress, she knew that Phil leaving had removed the cornerstones from the walls that kept her safe. She felt vulnerable and afraid of the isolation that loomed. Naomi and Leona waved goodbye furiously as Keith pulled out of the road with a friendly beep of reassurance that did little to reassure.

With the house to herself, Rosie sat on the sofa and stared at the detritus that littered the floor, a mat of toys, clothes and the odd wrapper and toast crust. Stooping low, she gathered a stray sock and sat back on the sofa; even this small task took more energy than she had to spare. Her pale leather handbag was on the floor and from the top poked a little white triangle.
Of course!
Until that point she had all but forgotten about her mum’s letter.

Lying flat on her stomach and with her arm outstretched, she reached across the floor, hooked the bag by its handle and dragged it back towards her. This required far more effort than simply standing and picking it up, but there was nothing logical about her actions or the situation in which she found herself.

Pulling the envelope out of the bag, she laid it flat on her palm and ran her fingers over the loose, gummed strip, thinking that her mum must have held it in her hands, licked the edge. It was overwhelming to be in contact with something that had felt her mum’s touch. Their old address was written on the paper, which had yellowed around the seams. The neat blue biro script had also faded. On the reverse there was a round stain from the bottom of a carelessly placed damp mug. She found it irritating that someone had considered this precious thing a suitable coaster.
Typical.
Angrily, she pictured her dad.

It was one single A4 sheet that had been folded and folded again, not the beautiful cream vellum or watermarked Basildon Bond that she had pictured. The paper choice itself made her feel sad. She tried to imagine writing a letter of such importance and simply grabbing the nearest pad and tearing a sheet from it. Especially if that letter concerned her five-month-old daughter. She pictured Naomi and little Leona, at that exact age. The idea of not seeing them made her shudder. She tried to picture herself on the day the letter arrived: tiny, vulnerable, sleeping, trying to smile, looking at her environment, keen for input. She would have lay, unaware, as the postman, hardly a figure of interest, slotted through the letterbox this letter now in her hands.

Unfolding it, she was instantly disappointed by its length. One measly paragraph. Rosie turned it over, but the reverse was blank. She held the sheet up to her face and read the lines that had been hidden from her for over three decades.

Roy,

It’s been five months now and I wanted to say, don’t hate me. I didn’t want any of it, not marriage, not kids, not the routine of laundry and housework, not the small seaside life, none of it. I wanted more than to be known as my husband’s wife. I wanted a life for me. I wanted to be me. I know you thought that a baby might make everything okay, you said as much, but it didn’t. Not even a bit. I knew if I came home with you both, I’d be trapped, possibly forever. It’s best for you both that I went when I did, a chance for everyone to have the life that was meant for them. You included. This is kindest. I don’t love you, Roy. I know this will be hard for you to read now, but eventually it will help bring clarity. A caged animal will eventually fight for freedom and I would never want to fight like that with you.

L

Rosie read and reread the words. Her mum hadn’t even mentioned her by name – there was not a single enquiry as to her welfare, nor any words of love or regret. Not only that, but it was obvious that Rosie had misunderstood the situation all these years. It wasn’t her dad who had been at fault after all, it wasn’t something he’d done or said that had forced Laurel to run off; quite the opposite, in fact. Laurel simply hadn’t loved him, hadn’t wanted him and so had packed her bags and gone. Her dad, hurt and abandoned, had been the one that stayed. And he’d decided to take the blame, presumably to make life easier for her.

In her present state of mind it was almost too much to process.

Replacing the sheet inside the envelope, she thought how much she would have liked to share the letter with Phil. But then she was struck with a cold spike of dread as she realised that the sentiments it contained might be ones with which he wholeheartedly agreed.

*

It was late afternoon when the telephone woke her. She lumbered from the sofa and was delighted to hear Naomi’s breathless gabbling.

‘Nanny said we can have a sleepover and go and get eggs from the chickens in the morning for our breakfast. Can we, Mum? Can we?’

‘Let me think about it a second.’

She rubbed her face, trying to wake up, trying to think if there was anywhere they had to be or anything they had to do that might interfere with the grand plan. She opened her mouth to speak, but Naomi halted her flow with her words. ‘And Daddy said he will come and read to us before we go to sleep because he isn’t living with us any more and he can see us at Nanny’s, so can we, Mum? Pleeeease?’

It was as if she had been punched in the stomach. She leant against the wall. It was the first time since Phil had gone that she felt pure fury. Over the last couple of days she’d spent hours trying to figure out how much to tell the kids and when to do so, and yet he’d seen fit to tackle the topic while they were away from her and without her knowledge. She felt sick.

‘I guess so, Nay. And you know, there’s nothing to worry about. Everything will be fine.’ Her reassurance was met with silence. ‘I’ll pick you up in the morning. I love you.’

‘Love you, Mum!’ And she was gone.

Rosie wasted no time. With anger as her fuel, she slid the screen with her shaking finger. As she waited for him to answer, she tried to steady her pulse. He didn’t pick up. Immediately she pictured him in the Downton Abbey-style home of his lover, sipping champagne as they swam and laughed together, ignoring the phone that went straight to answerphone.

Rosie considered the prospect of being all alone until the morning; it filled her with a quiet dread. She made her way once again to the sofa, lay back down and closed her eyes. Half an hour later she came to, alerted by the sound of a key in the front door.

And just like that, he was back in their house.

She propped herself up, wishing she’d cleaned her teeth and that the house was tidier. Feeling awkward in front of him, the man who’d held her hand through their wedding, childbirth, minor surgery and loss, was a new sensation.

‘I knocked but...’ He gestured towards the hallway.

‘I must have dozed off.’ She shuffled around into a sitting position, wishing she had opened a window, freshened the place up a bit.

It had been less than seventy-two hours since they had seen each other, but it felt like a lifetime. He was changed. They were changed. The tiny fissures had already cleaved into chasms too great to be crossed and the frightening thing for Rosie was how quickly this had happened. Her tears came unbidden and she was angry at the display.

Phil sat down on the sofa. ‘Don’t cry,’ he said.

‘Don’t cry? Why does everyone say that to me, as if I have any choice? You think I want to cry? I don’t. But then there are lots of things I don’t want.’ She glared at him through her sobs. ‘I’ve done nothing but cry. You have no idea what you’ve done, do you? And how... how can you tell the girls that you don’t live here any more without talking to me first, without agreeing a plan? I can’t believe you did that! Is this what it’s going to be like?’ She sniffed.