The Dead Wife's Handbook (37 page)

I could watch Ellie sleep all night, but the netherworld has alternative plans. I feel myself being drawn away from her bedroom, lifted high up above it as the clouds gather beneath me until Ellie disappears from view and there’s nothing left for me to see but empty space.

Chapter 27

‘You look tired.’

Max rubs a hand up and down Eve’s back where they’re both standing, in their pyjamas, in my kitchen.

‘I didn’t sleep that well. I just couldn’t stop worrying about last night. I know you said Ellie was okay by the time she went to sleep but it was a pretty horrible evening all round, Max.’

So it’s the morning after the night before.

‘I know. But we can’t undo what happened yesterday. We’ve just got to try and hope that things are a bit better this morning.’

Eve retrieves the stove pot from the cupboard next to the oven and starts making coffee with a familiarity I instinctively baulk at. This may have been her first time sleeping over with Ellie in the house but it’s clearly not her first breakfast here.

‘I know you’re trying to be optimistic and I know I should do the same but I can’t help feeling a bit helpless about it all. Why should Ellie want another woman in her house after all? I wouldn’t if I were her. I can’t blame her for wanting you all to herself.’

Max smiles and pulls Eve into his arms.

‘Now that, Eve Abraham, is the truest thing you’ve said all morning.’

Eve laughs while nonetheless pulling free from his embrace.

‘But seriously, Max. What are we going to do? Perhaps I shouldn’t see Ellie at all for a while? Give her a bit of space with you, that’s probably what she needs, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t think we should be making any rash decisions about anything right now. Let’s allow the dust to settle this weekend and then take a view. Okay?’

Before Eve has time to answer, Ellie bounds into the room with her customary morning effervescence.

‘I’m starving. What’s for breakfast?’

Ellie flops into one of the kitchen chairs, her fluffy white-and-purple polka dot dressing gown tied snugly around her waist, her dog-slippered feet swinging energetically under the table.

Max and Eve exchange a tentatively optimistic glance by the hob before Eve turns to answer.

‘I thought I might make some French toast. If you fancy it, that is.’

‘Yum. French toast is my favourite.’

‘I know, a little bird told me. Have you ever tried it with maple syrup before?’

‘No. That sounds weird but kind of nice. Is that what we’re having this morning?’

‘Well, I thought we might, if you’d like to try it?’

Eve starts beating eggs and milk, while Max and Ellie sit at the kitchen table, Ellie at the laptop playing games, Max on his tablet reading out snippets of news to Eve. It’s nothing short of domestic bliss, the calm after the storm, a hint of how harmoniously this new composition may yet play out after last night’s discord.

It takes me back to all those hundreds of mornings when I was the woman preparing Ellie’s favourite breakfast for her. It was a weekend ritual between us from the time she was old enough to express her own mealtime preferences, a ritual that I’d assumed would continue for many years to come, interrupted only perhaps by the customary years of teenage withdrawal, resumed again when a family breakfast was once more to be enjoyed rather than endured. I’d always imagined that one day I’d be sitting with Ellie and her own children around the kitchen table – perhaps not that exact table, perhaps not this precise kitchen, but with the same enthusiasm for French toast, the same cosy domesticity, the same feeling of complete happiness that accompanies a day begun with the people we love the most.

‘Here we go, Ellie. There’s one slice to get you started, and there’s more going in the pan now. Don’t forget the maple syrup.’

Ellie slathers the warm, crisp toast with maple syrup and takes a comically oversized mouthful.

‘Mmm. This is delicious. This is definitely my favourite breakfast of all. Mummy used to make me French toast nearly every weekend.’

‘Well, I’m sure this isn’t as good as your mummy’s. No one’s cooking is ever as good as your mum’s.’

Ellie takes another mouthful, responding before she’s quite swallowed it all.

‘Mummy’s French toast was the best. But this is really good too. Daddy, can we start having this for breakfast every weekend again?’

‘Well, I don’t know about every weekend, sweetheart. But we can definitely have it more often, if you’d like.’

Ellie grins with the delight of a child in possession of a promise. As Eve returns to the hob to embark on the second batch, Ellie follows her and, apropos of nothing in particular beyond culinary gratitude, wraps her arms around Eve’s body in what is unmistakably an unsolicited, spontaneous hug.

‘Thank you, Eve. The breakfast is really nice.’

Eve turns around to face her, glancing with shy pleasure at Max on the way. He’s grinning with pride – whether for Eve or Ellie, I’m not sure – as Eve lifts Ellie into her arms.

‘You’re quite welcome, little one. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.’

Ellie rests her head next to Eve’s neck, her legs wrapped round the perfect waist of this ready-made maternal substitute, her arms draped over blonde shoulders. As she absent-mindedly strokes Eve’s back I wonder whether it’s possible to die twice from a broken heart.

I want nothing more in the world than for Ellie to be happy, settled, comforted, cared for. Nothing could be worse than witnessing her distress last night. But I’d always assumed that the fiercest of my netherworldian heartbreaks would be to watch Max fall in love with another woman. Now I discover it is, in fact, to see Ellie do the falling.

The doorbell rings and I’m guessing from the looks of surprise around the kitchen table that they’re not expecting anyone.

Ellie jumps down from Eve’s arms with the anticipation of an excitable puppy.

‘Can I answer the door, Daddy.
Please
. I am eight now, after all.’

Max laughs and tilts his head by way of a sanction, prompting Ellie to scamper out of the room before he changes his mind.

In the absence of his daughter’s vigilant eyes, I watch as Max walks over to Eve and embraces her from behind, brushing the hair clear of one shoulder and talking quietly into her ear.

‘You’re amazing with her. We can do this, you know. It’s going to be fine.’

He rewards the top of her shoulder with multiple, rhythmic kisses, his breath no doubt warm on her neck, his hands on her arms no doubt offering the gentlest of reassuring embraces.

‘Look who’s here!’

Ellie bolts back into the room tailed by none other than my mum, who’s arrived just in time to catch the last vestiges of her son-in-law, in his pyjamas, kissing the bare neck of his new girlfriend, also in her pyjamas, in the kitchen of her daughter’s house first thing on a Saturday morning.

In the few seconds of heavily pregnant silence that follow, I watch my mum’s eyes dart shrewdly around the room, absorbing each individual fragment of information in order to reach the irrefutable conclusion.

You’d need an axe to cut through the atmosphere in here.

‘Do you want some French toast, Nanna? Eve made it with maple syrup and it’s really yummy.’

Mum turns to Ellie, a rictus grin fixed on to her face.

‘No thank you, darling. I’ve had breakfast already.’

The temporary respite from silence over, it’s a few more seconds before Max regains sufficient composure to find his voice.

‘Well, it’s nice to see you, Celia. What are you doing in town this weekend? You hadn’t said you might pop by?’

It’s intoned as a question but he’s failed to keep the hint of accusation from his voice. I feel desperately sorry for Mum. This is a scene no grieving mother needs to witness.

‘I’m just on my way to stay with some friends in High-gate for the weekend so I thought I’d pop in and say hello en route. I’m sorry – I thought you’d be up and dressed by now. It is nearly ten. I didn’t realize I’d be interrupting anything.’

Her tone is of contrition, though I sense it’s herself she’s feeling most sorry for and, quite honestly, I don’t blame her.

‘Don’t be silly. You’re not interrupting. Can I at least get you a cup of tea?’

There’s an effort to sound casual in his voice but I doubt anyone bar Ellie will be duped by it.

‘I’m fine, thank you, Max. I wonder if I might just have a quick word? In the sitting room? In private?’

Max nods, sheepishly, and follows her out of the kitchen. The door’s barely closed behind them before Mum starts speaking in an anguished, indignant whisper.

‘How could you, Max? How could you be so insensitive?’

‘Celia, I didn’t know you were coming today. I don’t think it’s fair to accuse me of being insensitive when I didn’t even know we’d be seeing you this morning.’

‘I don’t mean me being here and seeing that. I mean
her
being here, today of all days.’

‘I don’t understand. Why today of all days?’

‘You mean it really hasn’t occurred to you? You don’t think it’s a little inconsiderate to have her ensconced in my daughter’s house this weekend? You didn’t think Harriet would have told me that you didn’t take Ellie to the cemetery on Thursday? And that you’re supposed to be taking her today? Although I don’t suppose even that’s happening now if she’s here.’

Max emits the sigh of a man who knows that he has to upset some of the people most of the time.

‘Of course I’m still taking Ellie to the cemetery today.’

‘Please don’t tell me she’s going with you?’

‘Her name’s Eve, and no, of course she’s not. Ellie and I are going on our own.’

Mum seems almost disappointed by this, as though her anger would have been better served by a different response. She lowers herself on to the sofa, the sting removed from the confrontational tail.

‘I still think it’s wrong, her being here this week of all weeks. I know you want to move on with your life, and I’m trying to be supportive of that, really I am, but don’t you think there are some times that are sacred, that should be preserved just for family?’

Max sits down next to Mum, his face full of the placation I know so well.

‘Honestly, Celia? Yes and no. Of course I think it’s important to take Ellie to the cemetery and for us to mark the anniversary, though I disagree with you and Harriet that it has to be on the exact day. Not at Ellie’s age, anyway. And on the subject of me moving on, I know this is hard for you, and I’m trying to sympathize with your position too, but I honestly think that two years isn’t a bad time for me to be making these kinds of transitions.’

Mum’s face resumes her look of annoyance and I can see that Max has, inadvertently, riled her all over again.

‘Two years is nothing, Max. It’s the blink of an eye in the course of a lifetime. I just wish you could have waited a little longer. Would it really have been impossible for you to have given it a bit more time, to have allowed the dust of Rachel’s memory to settle, before you brought another woman into her home? This was Rachel’s home, Max. How do you think she’d feel knowing there was another woman staying here now?’

It’s a rhetorical question, not simply because I’m not there to respond, but because Mum’s tone has already made it clear what the answer is.

‘I honestly don’t know, Celia. I can only try and do what feels right, here and now. It’s taken all this time but I think I’m only just beginning to understand how much shock I was in after Rachel died. I think the abruptness made it almost impossible to comprehend that she really had gone. It’s been the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to acknowledge, that my day-to-day life with her is over. But I think I finally have, and so in a way I suppose it does feel like this is the right time to start moving on. Because
however much I wish it weren’t the case, Rachel’s not here for me to share my life with any more, and it feels like either I accept that or I spend the next forty-odd years in a permanent state of denial.’

Max’s tone is gentle, imploring, patiently indisputable. It’s why so many of our conflicts – mine and his – ended so quickly, so calmly. It’s a tone that’s difficult to argue against, a tone that’s difficult to resist. And it’s a tone he maintains as he continues talking.

‘Look, I know it must have been a bit of a shock, walking in to find Eve here this morning. But she really is very nice and she’s great with Ellie. I think she’s great for Ellie. I’m not suggesting for a second that it won’t be hard for you, but I’d really like you to get to know her and to be able to spend time with all three of us in the future.’

It’s the most heartfelt of entreaties and it seems to me almost perverse that so much can be said in two short speeches.

Because this is the first time I’ve heard Max so clearly express an intention to build a life without me. A life in which he loves another woman. A life in which he’ll allow – encourage, even – someone else to mother my child. I feel like I’m watching the death of my marriage, a marriage I have no desire to dissolve and yet one which I’m powerless to save. As though Max has handed me a decree absolute for a divorce I never agreed to.

‘Do you really mean that, Max?’

‘Mean what?’

‘That you want me involved in your life with Eve? That you’d like us all to spend time together?’

‘Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?’

Mum’s shoulders relax with the relief of receding anxieties.

‘I’ve just been so worried, Max. I didn’t know how you’d feel about having your ex-mother-in-law around while you’re … while you’re starting a new relationship. To be honest, I’ve felt like little more than a glorified babysitter for the past few months.’

Max places a sympathetic hand on Mum’s arm.

‘I’m so sorry if I’ve made you feel like that. Of course you’re always going to be part of our lives. Ellie’s only got two grandmothers and I don’t think she’d ever give up either of you without a damn good fight.’

All three of us smile at the thought of Ellie’s tenacity.

‘Thank you, Max. That means so much, more than you could possibly know. And I know I don’t tell you often enough, but I do think you’re doing a marvellous job with Ellie. I’m really very proud of you. And Rachel would be proud of you too.’