My Husband's Wife (39 page)
Authors: Amanda Prowse
She threw her head back and sighed, running her hand over her tailored designer jeans. ‘I don’t mind as long as I’m with you. How about lunch in Bristol? Somewhere with a view.’
‘I know just the place.’ Sven reached over for her hand and brought it up to his lips, grazing her knuckles with a kiss. ‘I think a nice walk and then lunch, with champagne.’
‘What are we celebrating?’ she asked.
‘Another day together.’ He smiled.
‘You spoil me,’ she simpered, placing her hand on his thigh.
‘That’s because I love you.’ He grinned as he put his foot down and headed for the motorway. She pictured the two of them travelling along the motorway with the windows down and the wind whipping through her hair. They had no responsibilities and no timeframe on their day. Jacks chortled and indicated to pull out of the lay-by. The dream dissolved, but although fleeting, it had lifted her spirits.
Sitting in the traffic, she beamed as she cleaned the dash with a spare bit of tissue that she had found in her pocket. The car in front moved forwards and Jacks followed suit in her dad’s old Skoda Fabia, waving and smiling at her various neighbours, whom she knew by sight if not by name.
Turning on to the Marine Parade, with the seafront to her left, her eye was drawn as it always was to the Weston Wheel. ‘Like the London Eye,’ as Pete always said, ‘but better, cos it’s in the West Country!’ She smiled at the big sky and the outline of the pier on the horizon, a beautiful sight to gladden any heart on such a bright blue autumn day. She ignored the druggies and dispossessed who gathered in the shelters dotted along the front. The season had finished and so they lay undisturbed on the benches, whiling away the day with nothing to stand up for. She passed the parade of shops, her attention caught only when yet another one had changed hands or been boarded up, which happened with regularity in Weston, especially when the grim reality of winter in a seaside town hit home.
Jacks thought about what she might make for tea, noting the students who clutched A4 files to their chests as they waited for buses in skinny jeans and silly woolly hats that made it look like they had animals or puddings on their heads. They stood next to young professionals who commuted to Bristol and Portishead and who were fast buying up Weston’s vast Victorian villas, extending them, improving them and pushing up the prices. She had admired those houses for as long as she could remember: beautiful, spacious buildings with grand fireplaces, wide staircases, tiled hall floors, boot scrapers by the heavy front doors and the odd turret perched whimsically above an attic corner. When she was younger she used to dream of sleeping in one of those round rooms, like a princess. They were now and always had been beyond her wildest dreams.
Sven and his family had lived in one of those villas and with hindsight she supposed that had been part of his appeal. Until she met Sven, Jacks had thought her own family were quite worldly: unlike her mates’ families, her mum and dad took her to the pub, where they would eat scampi and chips or, in the summer, give her the choice of KP cheese-and-onion crisps or nuts while they sat outside. Her dad would always have a pint, her mum a Martini-and-lemonade with a slice of lemon on the side of the glass, and she would have Pepsi in a bottle, which she drank through a straw. To her, Pepsi meant America, and she coveted all things American. But Sven made her realise that her family was anything but worldly. Their occasional holiday in a Devon caravan park and the odd day trip to London were nothing compared to his globetrotting childhood. She listened in awe to his tales of aeroplanes, mountains, deserts and palm-fringed tropical beaches. Another world entirely. The more she learnt of exotic destinations far and wide, the less enamoured she became with the familiar streets of Weston-super-Mare.
‘Ah, Sven...’
She pictured her dad’s disapproving stare. ‘Don’t look at me like that! I can remember him, can’t I? There’s no harm in that, Dad.’
Ever since he’d passed away, she’d carried a little image of him inside her head. Not the sort of snapshot that might materialise when she visited a place they used to go to together or heard a piece of music he’d liked. No, this was literally a mini picture of him, a younger and happier version, his hair still dark and lustrous, his eyes crinkling with humour and a twist about his mouth as though he was about to laugh. An image of him from the days before the gauze of sickness had muted every part of him. And this image sat at the centre of her mind, always. So much so that if she wanted to read a page or look at a picture, she almost had to duck around him.
*
The lights in the town centre were in her favour and she got through the one-way system in a haze of green. She thought that she was probably the only person who hoped for red lights, wanting to enjoy the solitude a little longer.
Turning the key in the front-door lock, she shouted, ‘I’m back, Mum!’ She climbed the stairs, opened the bedroom and was unsurprised to see her mother sitting upright, her fingers fidgeting with the bow of her bed jacket.
‘Have you got my letter?’ Ida asked anxiously. ‘I need it.’
‘No. Postman hasn’t been yet.’ Jacks walked to the open window and closed it a little. The place smelt fresher, better now that the bed had been stripped and the air had had a chance to circulate. ‘How about I make you some porridge? Or would you prefer toast today?’
‘When’s Don coming?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure.’ Jacks smiled, still uncertain how best to respond to the request for her father.
‘I didn’t want it all written down and now I don’t know where the letter has got to.’
Jacks sighed and sat on the side of the bed. She pushed her mother’s bed jacket up her arm, watching it gather in little folds under her elbow. She then squeezed out a blob of hand cream and massaged it into her bony fingers, slender wrists and pale palms.
‘Smell that, Mum, it’s lavender. Isn’t it lovely?’ She lifted her mum’s hand and placed it under her nose.
‘Smells like France.’ And just like that, a moment of comprehension, a memory from another time and place that floated clear and acute to the top of the cloudy soup of her thoughts.
‘That’s right! You and Dad had a lovely trip to France, didn’t you? Do you remember going to the lavender fields? You went on a coach and you brought me back a dried bunch. It kept its scent for ages. I had it hanging in the kitchen, it was gorgeous. Everyone commented on it.’ She smiled, remembering her parents’ big adventure for their golden wedding anniversary. Her dad had packed three packets of Rich Tea biscuits and enough fish-paste sandwiches to last the whole four days, just in case they didn’t like the food.
‘I need my letter.’ And just like that, they were back to square one.
Jacks nodded. ‘I’ll go get your breakfast.’
She tucked the blanket under her mother’s legs and closed the door behind her. After retrieving the bundle of soiled laundry from behind the bathroom door, she doused the shower with a liberal slosh of bleach, then made her way downstairs. Stopping halfway at the sound of the bell that rang for her attention, Jacks sighed. She thought of her dad and how much she had loved him.
His last day played like a movie inside her head. His eyes wide, grasping the oxygen mask with difficulty, fingers slipping and missing as they struggled with the flimsy elastic that held the plastic cup over his nose and mouth. She hadn’t helped him, didn’t want to acknowledge his weakness, tried to keep up the charade. She had instead smiled, as though he could manage and was still the strong, capable man who cut the grass and drove the car. She had picked at her nails, bitten them, anything but become his carer, aiding where his gnarled knuckles refused to yield. She had tried for nonchalant. ‘Take your time... I’ve got three hours on the car.’ Her flippant practicality hiding a heart that was splitting like a ripe tomato, spilling and overflowing with desperate sorrow.
Don’t leave me, Dad, please don’t leave me, I’m not ready...
The truth was she would never be ready.
‘I need you to promise me something.’ His words coasted on stuttered breaths, his voice a failing whisper. ‘Promise me...’
‘Promise you what, Dad?’ She attempted a jolly tone through her steady stream of tears.
‘Promise me... that you will look after your mum. Please... Try...’ He held her gaze, hanging on, waiting for reassurance.
She nodded. ‘I promise.’ And as soon as the words had left her mouth, he let out a long, laboured breath as his fingers unfurled.
She often replayed those last minutes. Her face, inches from his, breathing in the last breaths that he exhaled, sharing the tiny space in which life lingered till the end. She kissed his fragile head and stroked his papery cheek and he left her. Finally, slowly, he left her alone in that room and she felt a large part of her capacity for joy leave with him. Her dad died. Her dad! She had to keep saying it to herself because even after a month, a year, eighteen months, it still felt like a lie in her mouth. How could he have left her? She needed him. But of course she didn’t say that. Jacks was a grown woman with a family of her own and as everyone said to her, ‘It’s the natural order of things... He had a good life... It’s the end of his suffering...’ That may have been the case, but it still felt like shit. He used to say that one man couldn’t change the world, but he was wrong, he changed her world, made it a better place. And she loved him very much. That was why she had made the promise. He had never asked anything of her before and she wanted to make him happy. The trouble was, she found it very hard to love her mum. In fact, as painful as it was to admit, she didn’t always like her.
A
MANDA
P
ROWSE
has always loved crafting short stories and scribbling notes for potential books. Her first novel,
Poppy Day
, was self-published in October 2011 and achieved a number one spot in the eBook charts. She was then signed up by publishers Head of Zeus.
Perfect Daughter
became a number one bestseller in 2015.
Amanda lives in Bristol with her husband and two sons. She has now published eleven several novels and six short stories.
Amanda Prowse’s
No Greater Love
sequence is a series of contemporary stories with love at their core. They feature characters whose histories interweave through the generations: ordinary men and women who do extraordinary things for love. They are stories to keep you from switching off the bedside lamp at night, stories to remember long after the final page is turned...
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