The Dead Wife's Handbook (28 page)

Eve’s studying all the photographs now, as I’m sure any new girlfriend would, and I’m wondering what she thinks of them, whether they make her sad that this is a family she’s not a part of or threatened that here is a happiness she can’t hope to compete with or irritated that Max isn’t yet ready to give up the ghosts of the past in spite of her offering him such an undeniably attractive present. Or perhaps she’s imagining the day when she might take them all down and replace them with photos of herself.

Max comes back into the room, looking less relaxed than he’d like to be.

‘Is everything okay? Is Ellie still not too keen on going to bed?’

‘Oh, it’s not that. She’s just really out of sorts. She’s usually great about bedtime. Today’s just been a lot for her to take in.’

I don’t know whether it’s intentional or not but there’s a hint of blame in Max’s voice as he flops down on the sofa and gestures for Eve to join him, throwing his arm
loosely around her shoulder with neither the conviction nor commitment she might have come to expect.

‘Well, it must have been a horrible shock, falling from that great height. And it was her first time in A&E, you said. That’s never nice for anyone.’

‘It’s more than that. Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps we shouldn’t have rushed things. Perhaps it was all too soon, her meeting you today. Maybe we should have waited after all.’

I see Eve’s body tighten as if bracing herself for an unspecified attack and a tautness settle on her face that I haven’t seen before.

‘To be fair, I did say I thought it might be a bit premature.’

‘Yeah, well, I wish now you’d tried a bit harder to talk me out of it.’

The tautness evolves into annoyance as Eve pulls away from Max’s perfunctory embrace.

‘Max, it was your idea. You’re the one who’s been pushing for this while I’ve been tiptoeing around on eggshells trying to support whatever you thought was for the best. It’s really not okay to blame me because it didn’t quite go to plan.’

‘I’m not blaming you. I just think, on reflection, we might have been better to wait, that’s all. She’s clearly more sensitive about it than we thought.’

Eve jolts off the sofa and begins scrabbling for her shoes from under it in what looks suspiciously like an intention to leave.

‘Than
we
thought? I don’t remember my reservations being that important to you during all those conversations
when I told you I didn’t think we should rush Ellie. God, I don’t know why I ever thought this was going to work.’

Max is staring at her, open-mouthed, clearly bemused as to how a couple of casual remarks have precipitated this outburst.

‘You’re not thinking of leaving, are you? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. It’s just been a tough day.’

‘I know, Max. I was there. It was tough for me too. Although you seem to have conveniently forgotten that in your haste to blame me for everything.’

‘I’m not blaming you for anything. I’m sorry if it came across like that. Hey, what’s going on?’

Max tries to rub a conciliatory hand on Eve’s arm but she shakes him off with a force I don’t think any of us – including her – were expecting.

‘I was stupid to think this could ever possibly work. It won’t. I should have known that from the beginning.’

‘What are you talking about? Ellie will be fine, it’s just a temporary wobble. I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet but she’s even invited you to her birthday party next month. I’m not sure we could have hoped for a better outcome today, could we?’

They’re both standing now, on either side of the fire-place, Max looking imploringly at Eve, desperate to make amends for whatever misdemeanour he’s inadvertently committed. Eve swings her head round to look at him, her expression a contortion of upset and disappointment and something else I can’t quite put my finger on.

‘What, so we can play happy families? It’s just not that easy, Max. I’m sorry, we should never have let it get this far. I’m going to go now, it’s for the best.’

‘Please don’t go. I don’t understand what’s going on. I want you to stay.’

‘There’s no point. You don’t get it. There’s just no point.’

There’s a desperation and a despondency in her voice that seem disproportionate to the conversation they’re having. I feel as perplexed as Max as to what’s going on.

‘What do you mean there’s no point? There’s every point. We’re fantastic together, you and I. You know it as well as I do.’

‘But sometimes that’s just not enough, Max. Really, please don’t make this any harder than it is.’

‘Eve, whatever’s going on, whatever I’ve done to upset you, I’m sorry. Whatever it is, we can work it out, I promise. And the reason I can make that promise is because I love you.’

Three tiny words, those three words that expend so little energy to say and yet everything to mean. They’re the words I knew would sear my already broken heart if I ever heard him utter them to anyone else. And now he has, and they are, the hot, burning sensation coursing through my veins and threatening to scorch me from the inside out.

‘Don’t say that, Max. Don’t waste that on me. I’m not the person you should waste that on.’

‘It’s not wasted. It’s the truth. I’ve known it for ages and now I’ve said it I can’t imagine what on earth has kept me from telling you for so long. I love you and I want to be with you. So please tell me what’s going on.’

Max puts his arms around her and as he pulls her towards him she bursts into deep, visceral tears. She allows
Max to guide her back to the sofa, his shoulders relaxing with the relief of a crisis postponed if not averted.

‘I can’t. I’m sorry, Max. I just can’t. Telling you wouldn’t make any difference. It won’t make anything better. It’ll only make things worse. Trust me, please.’

‘Tell me what? What’s so bad you can’t tell me? It can’t be any worse than some of the stuff I’ve told you.’

Eve raises her eyes and I see in them the weight of a burden too heavy to bear alone.

‘It is, Max. It is worse. And I’m so, so sorry I haven’t told you before. You don’t know how many times over the past six months I’ve wanted to confide in you, and I know it sounds like the weakest of excuses, but there’s just never been the right moment. I didn’t want to risk ruining what I knew was such a good thing. Because I don’t think connections like this come along very often and I desperately didn’t want to jeopardize it. That’s the only reason I haven’t said anything before. Can you at least believe that?’

Max nods, all the reassurance and confidence drained from his face and replaced with a terror in his eyes about whatever truth is on the verge of emerging. The momentary silence between them now is deafening, a silence which may transpire to be the catalyst for a myriad of disappointments.

Eve takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, stemming the tide of her own tears. When she opens them again she turns to face Max and begins to talk.

‘When I was growing up, my parents’ best friends were a couple called Duncan and Julie. They were the kind of foursome who did everything together – weekends away, Sunday barbecues, taking care of each other’s children.
They were like a second family, really. But when I was fifteen, Duncan and Julie separated and for some reason – I never found out why – my mum and dad took Duncan’s side and I never saw Julie again.

‘I’d known Duncan all my life and I suppose, looking back, I was a little bit in awe of him; he was funny and charming and it was around this time that I first started noticing he was quite handsome too. I don’t really remember being aware of that before he and Julie broke up. He was spending a lot of time at our house and often he and I would spend hours talking on our own and gradually he started confiding in me about the separation, spinning me all the tired, clichéd lines about why and how they’d grown apart. Except I was fifteen and I didn’t know what tired clichés they were then. I was just flattered by the attention and by the fact that an adult was talking to me as though I were an equal. You know how it is when you’re fifteen and all you want is for people to treat you like a grown-up and it never dawns on you that your desperation to be seen as an adult is precisely what marks you out as a child still.

‘Anyway, to cut a painfully long story short, one thing led to another and before I really had time to stop and contemplate what was happening, I found myself having an affair with Duncan. Although affair is probably too grand a term for it. It was more of a six-week-long mistake. I’d only ever kissed two boys before and neither of those encounters had exactly set the world alight. I suppose Duncan made me feel like the woman I wanted to be but didn’t yet realize I wasn’t ready to become. He should never have encouraged that kind of trust from me in the first place, should never have submitted to his
own pathetically weak-willed desires, should never have got involved with someone so young, not least given the deception of my parents it involved. He was a complete bastard, really, although it took me quite some time to understand it.’

‘A bastard, Eve? The man took advantage of you, he betrayed your parents’ trust, he broke the law, for god’s sake. He should be behind bars.’

Max is incandescent with rage and it takes Eve’s firm, calming hand on his shoulder just to keep him on the sofa with her.

‘Max, I know it’s hard but you promised you’d let me get to the end. I’m so sorry; that’s really only the prologue.’

Max raises his eyes to meet Eve’s imploring gaze, his own face contorted with disbelief and disappointment and the fear of someone who can see the past rushing from the shadows to confront him and a future he’d hoped for slipping uncontrollably from his grasp.

I look at Eve and can see the apprehension in her eyes too. Her face has taken on a complexity and a history that until now her beauty had successfully concealed. Of all the possible secrets in Eve’s otherwise perfect closet, I doubt Max would have imagined this one any more than I have.

Eve’s hand drops from Max’s shoulder and into her own lap, where she begins twisting the ring on her right middle finger with agitated preoccupation. She takes a long, deep breath as if hoping to inhale the fortitude she needs to continue.

‘The reason it only lasted a few weeks – it may well have gone on much longer otherwise – was because I got
pregnant. We hadn’t exactly been taking precautions which, looking back, astounds me; not that it should have occurred to me because every fifteen-year-old assumes they’re impervious to trouble, but it still amazes me that Duncan took that risk.’

Eve was pregnant? At fifteen? I’m not sure I can think of any adult less likely to be the bearer of this particular secret. I’m flabbergasted. Although not as stunned as Max is, judging by the look of disbelief on his face as he stares at Eve unblinkingly, as though in need of every available second to reassess his girlfriend anew.

‘Suddenly the unimaginable was terrifyingly real. I was fifteen and pregnant by a forty-two-year-old friend of my parents. It was like my worst nightmare had come true. You’ve no idea how strict and conventional my mum and dad were – I just knew it would destroy them. So I did what you do when you’re fifteen and realize too late that you’ve made a terrible mistake: I kept it a secret. All I told Duncan was that I didn’t want the affair to continue and that if he didn’t leave me alone I’d tell my parents what had happened which, unsurprisingly, was enough for him to retreat immediately. And then I buried my head in the sand and hoped that somehow, miraculously, it would go away. I don’t really know what I was thinking. I suppose I wasn’t thinking much at all. I suppose I was just panicking. I just pretended it wasn’t happening and allowed months to go by in a state of complete denial.

‘It wasn’t until I was over four months pregnant that my mum noticed I’d put on weight, despite the fact that I’d barely been eating anything other than toast for weeks by that point. After a single trip to the GP she knew the
reason why. Even then, even when we went to the doctor, I thought that somehow it wasn’t going to be true, that he’d find something else wrong with me, that the baby would have inexplicably disappeared. I suppose I hoped that my fear might have taken care of it for me.

‘My parents were mortified, as I knew they would be, as any parent would be. But the perverse thing was that they weren’t angry with Duncan in the slightest. They never so much as threatened to tell the police. All their fury landed at my feet; I was a disgrace to them, they hadn’t brought me up to be so immoral, I’d thrown my life away, they couldn’t bear to look at me, I disgusted them – it was a fairly extreme litany of disappointments. They insisted I should have an abortion and that no one else should ever know about it. And I agreed because I didn’t know what else to do. I think by that stage I was almost relieved that someone else was taking control of the situation. I just wanted everything to go back to normal. It didn’t dawn on me then that nothing was ever going to be normal again.

‘By the time I had the abortion I was already twenty-two weeks pregnant, so I had to be induced and give birth to the baby. I can barely remember any of the details now. I think I’ve blocked most of it from memory. But there were some complications and I haemorrhaged and so they had to operate on me. I remember my fear as I was wheeled into the operating theatre but it wasn’t until afterwards that they told me that the only way they could save my life was to remove my uterus. So when I came round from the anaesthetic, I woke to the discovery that not only did I no longer have a baby, I no longer had the means to have any other children in the future.’

Max emits a tormented sigh and instinctively takes both of her hands in his as though, all these years later, he may yet be able to protect her.

My own head is dizzy with the rush of revelation. It’s too much to take in. Of all the adversities in all the world, having that choice taken away from you is the last affliction I’d wish on anyone. Anyone at all.

Max opens his mouth as if to respond, but Eve shakes her head and it’s clear that there’s yet more to come.

‘I’m sorry, Max. I know how hard this must be, but I’m nearly done, I promise.