My Husband's Wife (3 page)

Their sex life was now very low-key; they were always either too tired, too busy or too can’t be bothered. Rosie knew deep down that if she had a better figure, she would be more comfortable initiating things, but until that day came, she would continue to layer up and hope for undisturbed sleep. She heard her husband’s deep sigh, then felt the heave and sag of a body weary of the baby discussion.

‘I know it’s what you want, Rosie, but everything happens for a reason.’

She listened, noting his use of ‘you’ and not ‘we’. She knew what was coming next and lay there silently, having predicted his response with uncanny accuracy.

‘I think it’d be hard to cope with a baby not only financially but space-wise as well. I mean, we’re okay for money right now, but next month, who knows? We just about manage as it is. The girls share a bedroom, the box room is full of crap and we could do with another room downstairs. Imagine if we had to find somewhere for a baby and all its gubbins. It’d be miserable.’

‘Or it might be the spur you need to get on with clearing out the box room. Half of it’s your old army stuff and sports kit, and we could knock downstairs through like we’ve always wanted. And actually, Phil, I think it would be the opposite of miserable,’ she whispered. ‘Remember when we brought each of the girls home? I had that feeling in my stomach like I might burst, like I was too lucky.’

‘It
was
wonderful, but I think with Naomi it was because we didn’t know what to expect and with Leona we were still shell-shocked after Naomi.’ He laughed. ‘But another baby? I think that ship might have sailed. We’re not getting any younger.’

‘I’m thirty-six! Lots of women have babies way older than me!’ she protested, louder than she intended.

‘They probably do, but I bet they also have spare bedrooms, spare cash and spare minutes in the day. We don’t have any of those things and I don’t want the girls to go without anything—’

‘Neither do I!’ she interrupted, irritated that he might be suggesting otherwise.

Both were quiet, firing silent reasons and justifications out into the darkness. Their bodies were tense, but neither wanted to be the first to move to the other side of the bed and escalate the row.

It was Phil that had the final word before sleep claimed him. ‘We need to give the girls the best we can. If it had happened, then we’d have dealt with it, but it hasn’t and if I’m being honest, Rosie, I’m relieved.’

She accepted his final kiss of the day and wiggled over to her side of the bed, where she buried her face in her pillow. There had been a few precious minutes earlier in the day, as she’d waited for the test results to show, when there had been the very real possibility that she was going to become a mum again, maybe even to the little boy that she longed for. And unlike her snoring husband, what she felt now was far from relief. She pictured the child that lived in her mind and felt nothing but deep sadness.

*

In the morning, Rosie woke bright and early, shoved the washing in the machine and prepped the packed lunches for the day.

‘What’s this?’ Phil stood in his work trousers with the padded knees and his black sweatshirt with the name
Tipcott and Sons
embroidered on his chest and peered into his Bob the Builder lunchbox.

‘It’s your lunch! What do you think? I always make your lunch.’ She smiled.

‘Yes, love, and I appreciate it, but lunch usually consists of a sandwich, a bag of crisps and a slice of one of your cakes. But this looks like...’ He screwed up his nose, ‘...grass.’

She laughed loudly; he still had the ability to make her laugh. And she was grateful for the jovial atmosphere that morning. The pregnancy test and their subsequent discussion was forgotten about, for now.

‘For God’s sake, Phil, it’s salad, with shredded kale and all sorts of lovely things in a sesame and soy sauce dressing.’

‘Oh no! We’re not on a health kick again, are we?’ He snapped the lid shut. ‘Better ring my mum and tell her to make Dad double!’

‘Don’t you dare! Yes, we are on a health kick. And we shall do it together. My magazine says we are twice as likely to succeed if we do this together.’

‘But I don’t want to succeed. I want to eat my sandwiches at lunchtime and a bit of your cake!’ He scowled.

‘You’ll thank me when the summer comes and you can get into your Superdry trunks that we got for Andy and Mel’s barbeque last year.’ She kissed his cheek.

‘I love you, Rosie, you know that, but the only way to shift weight is to actually do something about it. Reading articles isn’t enough.’ His tone was soft.

‘I know.’ She smiled. ‘But it’s not about how much you love me. It’s about how much I love myself and I don’t all the time, not looking like this.’ She ran the flat of her palm over the roll of stomach that pouched over her jeans. ‘I need to lose it for me and for my health.’ She felt embarrassed, hated having to discuss the subject, especially as she’d been that way since having the girls and could have lost it ten times over if only she’d stuck to her good intentions.

‘Well, I’ll support you, of course, but I can’t guarantee that I won’t stop for a sneaky pasty on the way home.’ He laughed.

‘Well just don’t tell me about it!’ She laughed too. ‘Where you working today, still up at Mortehoe?’

‘Yep.’ He nodded. ‘You should see it, Rosie. My word, it’s something else. The architect is up there every day. Poor bloke’s being run ragged. She keeps changing her mind about the colour of the tiles in one of the bathrooms, the way a wall curves by the pool, could he make the laundry room wider, is it too late to have a real fire in the bedroom? She’s a right pain in the arse and I swear to God it’s like as soon as she’s got something she’s had to argue and fight for, she doesn’t want it any more, has us all running around in circles, just because she’s got all the time in the world. I hate to think how much she’s spent, must be at least three million all in.’

‘God! You are kidding me?’ Rosie gasped. ‘Three million!’

‘Yep, and that’s just on the rebuild and refit, mind, not what it cost to buy the land and the house that sat on it.’

‘Mind you, prime bit of land, that. Right on the clifftop,’ Rosie mused.

‘True. And it’s not her only home; apparently she’s got a place in London and one in Florida. But I bet the others don’t have the view she’s got up at Mortehoe. It’s beautiful.’

‘It would have to be for three million quid. Did you say it has a swimming pool?’ Rosie tried to picture it.

‘It’s got two. One outside – an infinity pool that makes it feel like you’re swimming off the cliff – and another massive one in the basement, where there’s also a gym and a sauna and all sorts of other bells and whistles. It’s like a bloody hotel!’

‘No hotel we’ve ever stayed in.’ Rosie lifted her shoulders excitedly. ‘I’d love to see it.’

‘If she’s not around, I’ll try and get some photos on my phone. I find it quite amazing how one person can have so much, all that space. Mind you, if we weren’t constantly shelling out for kids and what not, we might be able to have a swimming pool.’

‘Where would you put it, exactly? In the front room? The back garden’s just big enough for my washing line!’

‘Good point, think we’ll leave it. I’d only keep falling in every time I went to reach for the remote control.’ He smiled.

‘How’d she get so much money?’

‘Apparently she and a couple of others started a smallish company that got floated on the stock exchange and she got millions.’

‘What’s she like?’

Phil exhaled. ‘Don’t know how to describe her really. I’ve not spoken to her much. She looks like one of them women who spends a lot of time in the hairdresser’s – you know, bouffy hair and nails all painted, and loads of make-up. The kind of woman you could never snog or you’d end up with a mouth covered in lipstick.’ He puckered his lips theatrically and leaned in towards her. Rosie backed away, holding up her palms, unwilling to kiss him before she had cleaned her teeth.

‘Oi! I should think you wouldn’t want to snog anyone!’ She laughed.

‘I don’t want to snog anyone but you, Rosie, you know that.’ He pecked her cheek despite her protestations. ‘But I’ll say this about her: for all her fake nails and teeth, she gets things done. Got half the contractors in Devon running around like ants at her command, and that takes some doing.’ He gave a nod of approval.

‘What was her company, then, that she put on the stock exchange?’

Phil shrugged. ‘Something to do with computers, I think. I don’t know.’

Rosie laughed. ‘Well, I know
you
don’t know, you can’t even work the satnav!’

‘I tell you what, love, I’ll have it programmed for the Red Barn quicker than you can say sesame and soy dressing if you keep making me eat this.’ He waved the lunchbox in her direction before placing it in his tool bag. ‘I could murder one of their breakfasts.’

‘Can I come to the Red Barn?’ Naomi waltzed into the little kitchen, in her uniform and ready for school. Thankfully, her face was glitter-free.

‘No. And I’m not really going, I’m only teasing Mummy.’ He winked. ‘But if I went, I would definitely take you with me. Have a good day, my girlies, and I’ll see you all tonight. Hopefully it will be less eventful than last night.’

‘Bye, Daddy!’ Leona sloped down the stairs.

‘Bye, darling. I was just saying, try not to shove anything up your nose today.’

‘What about my finger?’ She stared at her dad as she held her index finger in the air.

Phil scratched his head. ‘Your finger is okay, as long as there’s nothing on the end of it.’ He kissed her head and shut the front door behind him.

‘Daddy was just telling me, he’s working on a big house that’s got two swimming pools in it! Can you imagine that?’

Naomi considered this as she hopscotched around the kitchen floor. ‘What’s the point of having two? You can only swim in one at a time.’

‘Don’t know, Nay, and I don’t think it’s anything that I am going to have to worry about. Not in this lifetime.’

Rosie had a favourite place to sit. It was a wooden bench on the headland overlooking Combesgate Beach, set back from the cliff edge. If she stretched her neck, she could see from one bay to the next, watch the tide rolling in and spot the weather long before it arrived. She thought of it as her bench. They had history that seat and her, and she had to admit, if ever she arrived to find someone sitting on it, she felt ridiculously aggrieved.

According to her dad, her mum had liked to sit and think on the same bench. Apparently they’d done some of their courting there too, which made it extra special to Rosie. When she was younger, she would sit there and chat to her mum. She would tell her all about her day, if there was anyone she fancied at school, what she wanted for her birthday, that kind of thing. Those were special times for Rosie. The fact that she had never met her mum and had absolutely no idea what she looked like wasn’t relevant. The mum she created in her mind, the neat, smiling, attentive listener, was just about as perfect as a mum could be; and she smelt of apples.

At the age of six, sitting in the bathtub in their colourless, austere bathroom, where the tile grouting was grey and the towels were thin and stiff, Rosie had opened a bottle of apple-scented shampoo. Its sweet, synthetic smell was one of the most glorious things she had ever sniffed. Inhaling it until she was utterly intoxicated by the mouth-watering aroma, she decided there and then that this was the way her mum would have smelt. In her mind, anything that smelt of apples could only be good.

All Rosie knew was that her mum had disappeared just a few hours after she was born. There were no photos and sadly, no memories. Ever since she could remember, her dad’s stock response had been, ‘Something happened, Rosie, and she just couldn’t live with me any more,’ and that was always the end of the conversation. Rosie spent her childhood trying to imagine what her dad could possibly have done to make her mum run off like that. During her bench chats she often used to apologise on behalf of her dad, for whatever it was that he’d done to scare her mum away.

Sometimes Rosie used to secretly wonder if, actually, she had somehow killed her mum when she was born and her dad was just covering that up, pretending it wasn’t her fault, to make her feel better. In her fertile, childish mind she would let her imagination run wild with images of her mum slipping away, deathly pale but still beautiful, hands reaching out, lips trying to tell Rosie something really important, eyes fixed and bright, looking at her and trying to convey what her mouth could not.

As strange as it sounded, it was easier in some ways to imagine her dead. Better that her mum was gone and unable to get in touch than that she was alive somewhere but had chosen to remain hidden, scared off by Rosie’s dad.

Or, when she wasn’t imagining her dead, she imagined her with a lust for travel, too far away for contact. She pictured her in the jungle, living wild and tanned among beasts, in tropical heat, carving out paths with a rusty machete and sipping water from clear waterfalls, crouched on slippery rocks with one eye on the lookout for snakes. At other times she pictured her wrapped in furs, trekking across ice floes, navigating icy cold plateaus with frozen lashes and teeth that chattered in the cold, her trusty rifle stuck to her palm in case of polar bear attack. Rosie often placed herself in these imaginings, having either built a tree house high in the jungle canopy or a cosy, concealed igloo. In both, she would have the kettle boiling and a red and white tablecloth set for tea and when her mum stumbled, through the door, relieved and grateful, she would hug her tightly and kiss her face. ‘How I’ve missed you! My beloved daughter!’

The reality was, though, that Rosie had no idea what happened. All she knew was that, not long after her mum went, her dad upped sticks and relocated them both to a new house further out of town. To the adult Rosie it seemed as if he was trying to outrun the memories of his wife, escape the guilt. As a child, it had worried her greatly that if her mum had wanted to return home, wanted to come and find her only child, she wouldn’t know where they’d gone. Rosie used to imagine hiding a note with their new address on it, and she knew just where she would leave it, behind the wonky brink at the back of the coalhole. She was confident that her mum would know to look there, that she could read Rosie’s mind, just as Rosie could read hers. This she still maintained, even now.