State We're In (47 page)

‘Mummeeee, look at me.' Both women looked up just in time to see the older Dean let go of the swing chain and fly through the air. Remarkably, he landed on his feet. He laughed hysterically with adrenalin and pride.

‘He is just like his uncle.'

‘I'm Jo, by the way.'

‘Zoe.' The woman did a little wave, even though Jo was sat right next to her. It would have been odd to shake hands in the park. Jo's brain wasn't firing on all cylinders, tired from the pregnancy, and it took her a moment to make the connection. When she did, she didn't think it could possibly be true.

‘Your brother didn't used to live in Chicago by any chance, did he?'

Zoe looked startled. ‘Actually, yes, yes he did.'

‘Oh my goodness. I don't believe it. Dean Taylor?'

‘Yes, that's right.'

‘Your brother Dean is the love of my life
Dean
.' Jo's delight at the coincidence almost cancelled out the embarrassment she felt saying such an exposing thing so many years after the event. She beamed, thrilled to have found him again, albeit indirectly. ‘Well how the hell is he? Is he married? Sorry, that's really cheeky of me,' Jo gushed. ‘But I can't tell you how much I loved that man. I thought I'd never get over him. Don't tell him that, will you?' She paused. She'd rushed on because part of her still wasn't ready to hear the inevitable. No doubt he'd married an American model, they'd have four beautiful children by now and he wouldn't even remember her name. Jo? Jo who? he'd say when Zoe relayed this story to him next time they caught up. Or worse still, Zoe might tell her that he hadn't ever married; he was still stewing, consumed with fury at her mother and his father, unable to move on with his own life. That would be worse than anything.

When her mother had come home to Wimbledon all those years ago with the news that she'd met Dean and that he had flown to England to find Jo, Jo had allowed herself to hope. For a week or so she'd imagined that at any minute he might walk up their drive, explain that he'd needed time but was ready now to declare that they could begin again.

He didn't come.

She'd phoned his mobile, dozens and dozens of times, but he'd always allowed her call to go straight through to voicemail. Initially her messages were calm and cheerful; eventually they deteriorated into undignified pleas. It didn't matter, as he never returned any of her calls. It took months for her to accept that he never would. Years for her to stop wishing that wasn't the case.

She had surprised everyone by not falling to bits. She had been determined that she would dignify her encounter with Dean by turning her life around, so she'd applied for countless journalist jobs. After some months, she'd finally secured a position on a trade magazine as a travel journalist. She'd travelled extensively since. She'd visited South Africa, Australia, Canada, India, Bali, Cuba and most European countries. On her trips she'd nursed baby cheetahs, played the didgeridoo, gone ice skating on a frozen lake; she'd had her face painted with henna, slept on a beach in a hammock and visited most of Europe's impressive galleries and major museums. She'd learnt to accept challenges and welcome opportunities. At first she did so imagining that one day she'd tell Dean all about her adventures and prove some point or other to him, but as the years passed, she simply got into the habit of relishing opportunities and new experiences in their own right. She allowed the longing for Dean to fade, but she retained the lessons he'd taught her.

Falling in love with Andy, a non-identical twin with an unreliable income but a great sense of humour, was one such opportunity, and becoming a mother was her most profound and significant experience. Jo loved being a mother and a wife as much as she'd always hoped she would, and she loved the fact that her work was flexible enough to allow her to maintain a career too. Last year she'd planted a cherry tree in her small but well-kept garden, she regularly peeled apples and maintained one continuous strip of peel, she'd visited the Ice Hotel and she'd eaten macaroons at Ladurée in Paris, even though Dean had never allowed that to go on her official list.

Jo owed Dean a great deal. They had not managed to be together for ever, but he was always with her. As she made this mental tally, she prepared herself to hear about his no doubt glittering life. She wondered whether his wife would be a blonde or a brunette.

‘So how is he?'

‘He's dead, Jo.' Zoe reached out and squeezed her new friend's arm. ‘Are you …' She paused. ‘Do you happen to be Jo Russell?'

Jo could not speak. The world had ground to a slow, painful halt, no longer able to orbit without him. She had stopped breathing, unable to find oxygen in the air now she knew he was no longer doing so. Her heart pounded against her ribs and the beat ricocheted through her entire body. She could feel it thumping behind her eyes, in her ears, in her nostrils. Deep, deep low between her legs, where she'd always felt him and always would. She could taste metal in her mouth. She could not focus.

She'd heard Zoe's words, she'd understood them, but they could not be. They were so very, very wrong. Dean was the most alive person she had ever known. He'd taught her to live. It was impossible that he was dead. He was immortal. Zoe's words just didn't make sense. They circled Jo like flies but she couldn't bat them away, nor could she catch them to try to order them and understand them. They ducked and dodged the part of her brain that should be able to process them, yet at the same moment she knew they were permanently tattooed on to her heart.

‘Do you happen to be Jo Russell?' Zoe asked again.

Jo nodded. ‘Yes. Well, I was. Jo Doyle now. Married name. I changed, not for work but for everything …' She trailed off. She didn't know how her mouth was managing to relay these ordinary facts. How could ordinary facts be, when he no longer was?

‘Oh Jo, he was coming to you. He crashed his car. He swerved to miss a kid who was chasing a football into the road …'

Zoe broke off. Although she had told this story hundreds of times, she still found it unbearable. Jo wished she'd stop altogether. She didn't want to hear it. Why was she in this park today of all days? Why were they both on this bench? If Zoe had picked a different park, then Jo would not know this awfulness. If Zoe had even sat further away, or if little Dean had not swung so high and she hadn't had to call out his name, then they'd never have started to chat. Jo didn't want to hear; hard as it was for Zoe to say, she had the feeling that it would be much more bloody to listen to. Jo wanted to shush Zoe, put her finger over her ears or, more desperately, gag Zoe. Jo swayed. She was sitting down, so she had nowhere to fall, and yet she felt she was slipping. Down, down, down.

Zoe's lips moved. Jo studied them, but she didn't know that Zoe was asking her if she was all right. Whether she'd like some water. Zoe scrabbled around in her bag for a second time that afternoon and produced a plastic bottle of mineral water. Jo took it from her but couldn't remember how to open bottles. How to drink. The bottle rolled off her lap and on to the dusty ground. Zoe's eyes oozed concern.

‘He ended up with the car wrapped around a lamp post. He'd sat in traffic for ages, apparently. Taken some back streets. He was going a little fast; wasn't he always? They told me it was instantaneous.' Zoe sighed and looked doubtful. Jo wondered how many nights this sister must have agonised over that detail. Was it fast, or did he suffer? Please God, not that.

Jo's head imploded. She felt it deflate and then fall down her neck, causing a severe pain in her spine. It was right that she should implode, dissolve, disappear altogether, because he had. Even though she and Dean had not spoken for years, she had always lived bigger because she'd thought he was somewhere on the planet, sharing the sky and the sun and the moon with her. Now she was in danger of splintering, cracking, vanishing.

‘I'm so sorry, Jo. We didn't know where to find you.' Zoe's voice was gentle and even. Jo hated her voice because of the things it was revealing, but she also loved it because Dean had listened to it over and over again. By being next to Zoe, she felt somehow closer to Dean, even though this was their final goodbye. ‘We called all the contacts in his phone, but it took a few days, and by the time we called you, your number was out of use.'

‘It was a company phone.' Jo remembered this detail because when she'd reluctantly handed back the corporate phone to
Loving Bride!
she'd been very aware that they might lose touch. She thought that was the worst thing that could happen. She hadn't known the worst thing had already happened. ‘He had the addresses of my family members written on a pad in his kitchen,' pointed out Jo pitifully. This was a fact she'd tortured and comforted herself with, in equal measures, for months after his silence.

‘I didn't clean out his apartment, I couldn't face it. Some of his friends did it for me. They probably thought—'

Jo jumped in, understanding perfectly. ‘That I was one of a number of women who wanted him to stay in touch, one of a number of women who he had no intention of staying in touch with. Insignificant flings.'

‘Except you weren't that.' Zoe squeezed Jo's hand. Jo looked at her hopefully.

‘I wasn't?'

‘No.'

‘What was I?' She thought she knew. She'd always tried to believe it, but she needed to hear it.

‘We talked about you once. I knew immediately that you were different for him. You eased the anger in his soul. You were the woman who taught him to trust and to forgive. You taught him that he deserved love and that he'd get it.' Zoe put her arm around the shoulders of the woman swollen with pregnancy, and Jo reciprocated by slipping her arm around Zoe's waist. ‘You, Jo, were the love of his life.'

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Spare Brides
, the richly compelling new novel from Adele Parks, coming soon from Headline Review

Lady Chatfield – wife of Lord Chatfield, daughter-in-law to the Earl of Clarendale, daughter of Sir Harold Hemingford, Lydia to her friends – allowed her silk robe to drop to her feet. She liked the feel of the fabric shimmying down her body, like breath. Now naked, she stood in her dressing room and wondered, as she often did at six thirty in the evening, what her maid, Dickenson, had picked out for her to wear this evening. She tried to guess, through a process of elimination, as her dress was probably in the maid's care now. A stain might be being dabbed into oblivion, lace might be being steamed so it would stand proud like a fence, or a hem might be being subjected to a last-minute stitch or two so that the correct amount of calf was on show. Dickenson was thorough; her most-often-used phrase was ‘just to be sure'. She treated Lydia's garments like newborns: pampered, worshipped.

Lydia inhaled the dust and silence of the old house – resting after the bustle of tea, reprieved as there was to be no formal dinner here this evening – and scanned the padded silk hangers. She spotted her tangerine organdie and silk frock, the one with crystal beading shaped like teardrops, plus the teal moire taffeta silk that she liked to wear with a jaunty sash belt; in addition, she carefully counted numerous gowns in chiffon: saffron, scarlet, cobalt and emerald, all decorated with tulle or organza and delicate pearl beading. None of these colourful dresses would do. She examined the white and cream gowns. What was missing?

It was all a little frustrating really. If she'd had the energy, she might have been quite cross about the entire debacle, but she rarely allowed herself to become properly vexed nowadays; she considered doing so such poor taste. Taking everything into account, she had little to moan about. Yet she had expected a new gown from Callot Soeurs fashion house. She'd ordered an oyster silk treasure with lashings of diamanté beads spilling from the neckline down her breasts and shoulder blades. With painful clarity she'd been able to visualise the effect she would have made on entrance to the Duchess of Pembrokeshire's New Year's Eve ball. The dress had a darling plush fox-fur trim around the hem and cuffs and she'd planned to wear it with her purple velvet shoes, the ones with the elegant heel and glass beading. Purple with oyster and fur was the sort of combination that was bound to make the papers. The dress ought to have arrived before Christmas. It hadn't. It was difficult to complain; no one actually expected really decent service any more, not since the war. And the French – well, the French especially were horribly unreliable, a law unto themselves. That was why the English – beaten down by rules and queues – found them so fascinating and irresistible.

Lydia sighed. Her breath and mood clouded the cold air. Where was the housemaid? She ought to have poked the fire in the bedroom; a girl could freeze to death in her dressing room if the servants were slow. Lydia bit down on her irritation. It was misdirected and unfair. Still, it was hard that she didn't have anything new for tonight; she was sure that every other woman in the British Empire would have a clear idea what to wear as she watched 1920 melt away, as she sighed a relieved welcome at 1921. One year further on. One step further away. Making the whole ghastly business more past, less present.

She wished Dickenson would get a move on too. The goose bumps that were erupting all over her body looked ugly. She robustly rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Ought she to pop on her own drawers and brassiere? She didn't mind doing so; dressing herself was actually what she preferred, but Dickenson invariably made such a fuss if Lydia did take the initiative, grumbling, ‘Is Lady Chatfield trying to do me out of a job?' Silly really, since they both knew that Dickenson's duties extended far beyond those traditionally associated with a lady's maid, and that, in truth, she was stretched, often frazzled. As Lydia wondered whether she ought to reach for her silk dressing robe again, Dickenson burst into the room.