The First Wife (6 page)

‘Because of
me
?’

‘Oh yes, she looks up to you enormously. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? There she is, fifteen, seething at the world. There you are, twenty, with your beautiful hair and your lovely clothes and all your books. She has a curfew – you get to arrange your life how you like it.’

I had to laugh at this. ‘She has a curfew, and I never go out.’

Julia smiled. ‘It’s the principle of the thing. You know, when we decided to let out the room, I was afraid we’d have a student living with us, coming back at all hours, being sick in the garden, all that. That’ll teach me to stereotype the younger generation.’

I had no idea what to say to that. After a few awkward seconds, I decided to tell the truth.

‘I’ve never been drunk in my life,’ I said. ‘I lived with my grandparents and we had two glasses of sherry on a Sunday. Apart from that I’ve never had alcohol.’

‘No! You’ve never had a glass of wine?’

‘Never.’ I anticipated her next few questions. ‘Or beer, or champagne, or, I don’t know, vodka or whatever else there is. No. Never. If you look in my food cupboard, you’ll see I’ve got a bottle of sherry in there. It’s the only tipple I know.’

‘Well,’ said Julia, ‘we’ll have to remedy that. Will you have dinner with John and me tonight, Lily? I was going to try to make an effort and cook something nice anyway.’

This threw me. I tried to say the right thing, but it came out very primly. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Only if you let me cook for you next time.’

‘You’ve got a deal.’

Over dinner, Julia asked me about Christmas. I had just forced down half a glass of wine, so I was less guarded than usual. White wine was not the nectar that popular culture seemed to promise. I hated it. However, John had insisted on presenting me with a glass of red as well, upon hearing the shocking news about my inexperience, and that was even worse. In fact, I knew at once that it was beyond me. It was soupy and indigestible. White wine, therefore, looked almost palatable in comparison.

Julia had cooked a vegetable lasagne. It was not the sort of food that Grandma would have sanctioned in her kitchen, because everything we ate had to involve a piece of protein, a piece of carbohydrate, and vegetables, ideally from the garden, though when my grandparents became incapacitated I stopped the vegetable patch and started a local box delivery.

I closed my eyes, out of habit, waiting for ‘grace’. I was ready to recite my sonnet. It was going to be ‘From you I have been absent in the spring’ – ‘Sonnet 98’. I only just stopped myself in time.

‘So,’ said Julia, passing me the garlic bread (a novel and pleasing taste sensation), ‘what are your Christmas plans, Lily?’

‘Christmas?’

‘I know it’s still a way off, but will you be visiting relatives?’

John was chewing hard, as if he wanted to swallow quickly and say something. ‘Annual family duty?’ he managed to get out, in the end. ‘We all have to do it.’

‘I don’t think I even know where the rest of your family are,’ Julia added. They looked at me expectantly.

‘Oh, there isn’t any,’ I told them. Normally I would have left it at that, but the wine was making my head spin, and I felt reckless. ‘Not that I know of, anyway. The grandparents I lived with; they were it. They were my mother’s parents, and she was their only child. I’m an only child too. There probably are people out there related to my dad, but I wouldn’t have the first clue who they might be, or where to look for them.’

‘Oh,’ said Julia, knocking back her drink and holding her glass out to John. ‘You poor thing!’

‘Mmm,’ I agreed, gulping down my white wine glass and holding that out to John too, since he had the bottle in his hand. It seemed to be the polite thing to do. ‘I knew I would be on my own at some point, but I didn’t have any plans, because . . . Well, because it was easier not to, I suppose.’

‘And were you very young when you lost your parents?’ John asked, putting the bottle down.

I drew a deep breath, and took another large gulp of wine before I replied. It made me dizzy.

‘I didn’t exactly lose them,’ I said. I looked at my plate. There were fatty globules on the cheese sauce, and I suddenly felt nauseous. I decided to see what the truth would sound like, if I said it out loud. ‘They . . . Well, as far as I know, they never intended to have a child, and when I came along, they never really managed to be parents. They weren’t particularly young or anything. They were just bad at it. It was always Grandma and Granddad who took care of me, and then my parents decided they’d really had enough. When I was eight, they moved away. I think they live in New Zealand now, but I’ve never heard from them.’ I carried on talking, to cover the shocked silence. ‘When my grandparents died, one after the other, pretty quickly, I found an address in the cottage. I knew Grandma would have one for them. I wrote a note, and I asked them to come back, but they didn’t reply. And now I suppose they wouldn’t be able to find me even if they wanted to.’

Julia banged her glass down on the table and opened her mouth, but did not say anything.

‘Should be shot,’ John suggested.

‘Oh,’ said Julia. ‘Absolutely right they should be shot.’

I tried to smile. ‘It’s OK. I don’t have them in my life, do I? I don’t have to deal with them any more. I’ve blanked lots of it out, but when I remember my early childhood, it’s not specific events, it’s just trying to get these people to want me, when they don’t. That’s all I see.’

‘Thank God for your grandparents,’ said Julia.

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘They saved me. Without them, I’d probably be a psychopath.’

They both smiled, as though I had made a joke, although I hadn’t.

‘So,’ said John, ‘you’ll spend Christmas with us, if you can bear the noise. Will you do that?’

‘Thank you,’ I said, hoping he meant it. ‘That would be lovely.’

I woke late the next morning, with a pounding headache. At first I thought I was ill, and was quite looking forward to spending the day recuperating in bed with a book. Gradually, it dawned on me that this might be what a hangover felt like. I had read about hangovers. I could feel the individual veins pulsing at my temples. My throat was dry and painful. My stomach heaved and gurgled. I drank all the water I had by the bed, and waited until it sounded quiet before I scurried out to the bathroom for a refill, and to brush my teeth because they felt furry.

I didn’t go downstairs until midday, and when I did, feeling pale and wobbly, I was surprised to see Julia peeling potatoes, listening to the radio, and helping the twins with their homework, all with a smile on her face.

‘Oh, hello Lily!’ she said, all brightly. ‘We weren’t sure if you were in or out.’

I put the kettle on. ‘In. Feeling a bit rough, actually.’

‘Oh no, are you ill?’ She gazed into my face. ‘You do look terribly pale.’

I glanced at the twins, who were sitting at the table comparing drawings of parallelograms. I swallowed hard. The two of them looked so wholesome, and both of them were so like Julia. I wanted to be a child like them, with a mother, rather than an adult with a hangover.

‘I think it was the wine,’ I managed to say.

‘The wine? But you only had, what, a couple of glasses?’ She smiled. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re not used to it. There’s some paracetamol in the bathroom cupboard. Take two. Eat something. You’ll be fine.’

‘OK.’ I looked out of the window. It was a sunny, crisp-looking day. ‘Then I think I’ll go for a walk, down to the beach. Clear my head.’

I walked back to the harbour, leaned on the same railing and stared out. I had no urge to climb over today. I had lots to think about. I should probably never drink wine again, but at some point, when I had recovered, I would try beer. There was plenty of food I had never eaten. I wondered, for instance, what curry would taste like.

The boats bobbed around on the waves. The cold air nipped my nose. My head had cleared, and I felt so much better that I decided to buy a pasty and eat it on the way home. A Cornish pasty had been a treat that Granddad used to produce, still warm in a paper bag, occasionally, when I was younger. Now, with my tiny income and my continued reliance on benefits, it was still a treat, but I had two pound coins in my pocket, and I was going to spend them.

I bought my pasty from a shop on the corner of the main street. They were almost sold out: even though it was Sunday, Falmouth was busy with people walking, shopping, talking, as though it were Saturday. The bells of the church were ringing complex tunes in the background, and I considered diverting my route home to see if there was a wedding to look at. Seagulls squawked overhead, and I felt a couple of them swooping close, interested in the pasty.

I turned left up a steep side road. There was no way to get home without going up two steep hills and down one, no matter which route I took. I set off up the first one, a lane that was mainly used by forklift trucks belonging to Trago Mills, the local department store, as they brought things down from the warehouse. Not many people used this lane. As I walked, I took a huge bite from the pasty in my hands, and then I looked up and I saw him.

As he came towards me, I frantically tried to chew and swallow my mouthful of meat and pastry. I gulped it down, a painful lump travelling slowly down my throat, and looked at him. He smiled. It must have been a casual smile to a passing stranger, but I had never seen a more intense, a more generous smile. With one look, he seemed to stare straight into my soul. I winced to myself even as that clichéd thought flitted across my mind.

Harry Summer was different in the flesh, because no wedding photo, no magazine spread, no website (I had sat with Julia as she showed me his image on the computer) could possibly have captured the charm of the man. He was handsome like a film star, his face impossibly proportioned to be the perfect, ideal face for the male of the species, his hair glossy, his shoulders broad.

We grew closer. I could hear the thud my boots made on the tarmac. A seagull took flight in front of me. I stepped back slightly, and felt stupid.

He was still looking at me, still smiling.

‘Hello,’ he said, as we passed, but he didn’t slow down. I had a sudden urge to grab the sleeve of his jacket (a jacket I was pretty sure I had removed from the dry cleaner’s plastic cover, less than a week ago) and announce myself, but I resisted.

‘Hello,’ I said back, in a voice that came out too quietly. My legs were trembling. For some reason, I felt different. I was glowing, just from the way he looked at me.

He was like that with everyone: I knew that. It was why he was a celebrity. All the same, I walked home with my hangover gone, and a small smile on my face. Now I knew for sure that I did not fancy Al.

He would, he decided, stop the car right outside the house; he wouldn’t even bother to turn into the car port. His ribs were really aching now. Maybe Rachel would be able to get the doctor to pay him a visit, or perhaps she would take him straight to the hospital. Maybe he should have gone directly there himself, but it was too late now.

As he turned the corner, he was relieved just by the sight of their little one-storey house, the front lawn littered with bats and balls and a rickety plastic slide. His space in the car port was taken by two trikes, anyway, carefully parked by his younger children, no doubt. This was home, and any other thoughts he had, about seeing Europe for instance, were stupid. Good thing he’d never said them aloud. Not often, anyway.

Rachel’s car was here. Jack smiled at that. Her minibus, more like. He would have thought you could get three kids across the back seat of a normal car, and two parents in the front: job done. That was the way it had been when he was a kid, but apparently this was no longer the case. These days, the moment your second child was born, you had to upgrade to a ‘people carrier’, a hulking great thing with flip-down seats in the back, so you could transport a five-a-side sports team everywhere you went. LeEtta was three, Aidan was five, and their eldest, Sarah-Jane, was eight years old, but they were still paying off the bloody car.

Still, he was glad to see it, because it meant Rachel was home. He needed his wife. It was a basic thing, and probably all of this was karma, serving him right for the things he’d been thinking just before he crashed. He had everything: craving travel and adventures was just stupid. It was his secret fantasy, the way other blokes looked at porn. That was all. He knew, as he rubbed his aching ribs, that he never, ever wanted actually to act on it. The National Geographic channel would be enough for him.

There were a couple of other cars parked on their stretch of road, which was unusual, because normally it was empty. He actually had to reverse park between them to get himself as close to the house as possible. Twisting in his seat was agony, so he just did it using his mirrors, and although he ended up a fair way from the kerb, he did not suppose it mattered. At least he hadn’t clipped either of the others.

The sun was hotter than he’d realised. He walked gingerly up to the door and pulled back the screen. He was just about ready to collapse. Some ice-cold water would, he thought, be good.

‘Rach?’ he rasped. ‘I’m back. Had a bit of a mishap.’

He pushed the wooden door, the actual door, but it was locked. This was unusual: they normally only locked it when they were out. She must have gone to the shop or over to one of her friends’ for coffee and a gossip. He fumbled in his pocket, got out his keys. Put the key in the lock, turned it. Pushed the door open, and stepped in. Listened to the scuffles inside.

He did not get a bad feeling until he heard the whispering. There was a definite edge of panic to the sound, although he could not hear the actual words. As he walked, taking long purposeful strides that were bloody agony to his ribs, he had the distinct feeling that there was something heavy and bad hanging right above his head, by a thread. A thread that was shortly to be cut by one of those imaginary swords, whatever they were called.

She was in the bedroom, and although she was dressed and looking at him with that defiant expression of hers, her T-shirt was inside out and her hair was all over the place. Rachel was twenty-eight, six months younger than him, but she could easily pass for twenty-three, and she was asked for ID all the time. Her long blonde mane was normally arranged so that every hair was in its appointed place, but now it was messed up so much that he almost laughed. Her face was so sweet and innocent, but that innocence was rather belied by the presence of a member of Jack’s rugby team, over by the window, looking as if he might be about to exit through it. And also by the presence of the local physio, on all fours, as if he might be about to climb under the bed.