The Daughter in Law

by Nina Manning

  ‘I’ll stick it on the fridge at home.’ I said loudly and stuffed the box with the wrapping paper into my handbag, knowing it would stay there for many weeks along with screwed up receipts and packets of chewing gum. I turned to Ben. ‘Fancy showing me your room, handsome?’

  I stood in Ben’s old bedroom looking at the neatly arranged paraphernalia along the tops of the drawers and the endless framed photographs of Ben and Annie together. I noted that there was never anyone else posed with them.

  My mind flooded with a hundred thoughts, all with one binding theme, how much did I really know about Ben? Here I was in his childhood home, having tea with his mum and yet I could sense an absence. Annie’s obvious dislike towards me was palpable and the beach house bore a sadness, a feeling of loss; the missing parent in the photographs illustrated that clearly. I wondered if perhaps the lack of a father figure in Bens life played a stronger role than he or Annie would ever admit.

  Ben had dived onto the double bed and was lying on his side, supporting his head with his hand. His dark hair, although persistently tousled, bore a slight shine from his shower that morning and I was tempted, as I always was, to run my hands through its silkiness. He usually had some stubble but today he had shaved for the occasion, highlighting his strong jaw and full lips. He blinked slowly, and gave me the softest of smiles.

  It was hard for me to believe he had only begun moving out of this house three months ago, in September. We’d only been together for two months, but by then we knew about the baby. Ben was overjoyed and so began bringing more of his things from home to the apartment I shared with Eve. Now looking around Ben’s old room, I could see how Annie had converted it into a museum, a shrine to her only son. It made me think about the rest of the house that I had seen so far, that bore no memories or photographs. It was as though Annie had wanted to cram it all into one room, away from prying eyes.

  I carried on looking around the room and made a show of pointing at various school certificates in neat wooden frames.

  ‘What?’ Ben said in a high-pitched voice. ‘What can I tell you Daisy, I’m a much-loved boy. My mother is very proud of me,’ he said with definite sarcasm and lay back on the bed placing both hands under his head.

  I cocked my head and screwed my face into a frown. ‘What is it? You’re golden balls in her eyes? Why is that so terrible?’

  ‘Come here,’ he commanded, therefore side-lining my question. I joined him on the bed where we entwined ourselves around one another, each limb clambering for space. Ben kissed my neck which made me squirm around; the sensation was just too much for me, so I began laughing hysterically.

  With the noise of my laughter, neither of us would have heard the floorboard outside let out a soft creak as it was relieved of the weight of a stationary body.

  Annie

  I knew there was something about my new daughter-in-law that was so familiar. She was striking in her overall appearance. Tall, long golden hair, rosy cheeks – she was a handsome woman, there was no denying it. I could see what Ben saw in her.

  But there had been something else that played on my mind after they left. I had seen her somewhere before. I knew something about her.

  All I needed to do was cast my memory back a few years, when the face from the sixty-inch TV screen had haunted my every waking hour, when I read newspapers back to back to follow the reports. That was when I had seen Daisy before, her face had come to me unexpectedly amongst the chaos of those years, the article on her tangled in with the trail of words I read daily, checking, always checking. I remember her story leapt out at me and for a time, distracted me from the face I didn’t want to see. Initially I felt sorry for her, looking at the photo of her in her school uniform, just a girl, but as I read on, I discovered there was more to a photograph than meets the eye.

  I had never forgotten that news story, and I had read a fair few. I read the papers for years, never wanting to miss anything. Then one day I finally felt safe and stopped. But not before I had seen Daisy’s story.

  So when she arrived at my house I knew straight away I had seen her before. I could tell by the way she presented herself that she was holding tightly onto her past and that she was trouble. To arrive wearing red heels when pregnant? What does that say about her? That girl was danger. I was adept at knowing when danger was approaching and I knew exactly what I needed to do.

  I needed to protect my son.

  After Ben and Daisy left, I sat alone in the front room staring out through the window where the darkness had enveloped the view of the sea. Having returned from the shops and seen the face on the TV screen just the day before, I was still in shock and now I was on extra high alert. I thought about the vast expanse of water just a few feet away and hoped it would protect me.

  Even through the darkness and the closed windows, I could feel its energy and its intensity. It soothed me – that feeling, brooding and melancholic as it was, was better than the nothingness I felt without Ben. His presence had been fleeting but I could still hear the echoes of our conversations; I could see the empty tray from our tea and the dishes were stacked in the kitchen from our lunch. But he was gone again now.

  He had slipped away too easily and all I could think about was how was I going to bring him back.

  I blamed his father. He wasn’t the man he should have been for that boy. I thought about contacting Rory on a few occasions as Ben grew older. But I was scared. Scared of how he would react. Scared of the man he had become in the time we had been apart. But mostly I knew I was scared of who I had become since we parted.

  I was a mother. My pure raw love was for that boy of mine and no one else would ever feel from me the sort of emotions I felt for Ben.

  It was always going to be me and Ben. And no one else.

  Until he met her.

  Grace

  It was a mild spring afternoon when I saw the advert in the local magazine. A lady who had a large kitchen was running cookery classes from her home and so I signed up, eager to improve before any children came along. I had an idea in my mind that when I became a mother, I would also become an earth goddess capable of whipping up any meal for any occasion to appease my husband and satisfy my children’s hunger.

  I arrived at Emily’s house one warm mid-March morning and signed myself up for several weeks of cookery classes.

  Emily with her large waist and ample bosom, looked at my name on the paper and said:

  ‘Grace – that was my mother’s name.’

  I took my place behind the large circular counter and nervously eyed up the other women. Then my eyes fell upon the lady next to me before my focus was moved to the little boy playing next to her feet. He was a bonny lad, only about two or three years old. I watched as he opened the door of the train carefully and shut it again without any force. Feelings came rushing back to me. Feelings of loss. A longing for all the dead babies. I was supposed to be a mother so why wasn’t it happening? Why was I being punished? I just needed my body to hold on to the next baby, that was all. I was determined to make it right. I thought that if I became the housewife I was meant to be then the babies would come. And so the cooking was going to help. I needed my husband to look at me again with those eyes, just like he used to.

  He had been so distant recently. After the last baby. What was it? The sixth? Or was it the seventh? By this point I had lost count. I didn’t mean to. The last three came and went so quickly I had simply lost track. I named them in the beginning. But he said I was ridiculous. If the babies were being stubborn, though it pained me too much to even admit it, at least I would be able to offer my husband something else in the way of homely wife skills until we were blessed with the gift.

  I thought we would be able to have dinner parties; I would cook for all his work colleagues and people would say, ‘Oh yes, that wife of yours, she sure can cook. You’ve got a good one there.’ Then eventually the gaping hole in our marriage that should by now have been filled with the joyous manic messiness that children br
ing, wouldn’t seem so empty and obvious.

  He came from a large Irish family. His parents were waiting to be grandparents again. I knew that I alone would never be enough for him. He needed me to have a child. I would start with the cooking. Show how I could be a good wife.

  Then keep trying for the babies.

  A miracle was sure to happen.

  Daisy

  People think we married too soon. Maybe we did. But when we found out I was pregnant, it felt like the right thing to do. Only time would tell. Maybe we should have done it the other way around and found out more about the other person before we committed our lives to one another.

  I will always remember the night I first laid my eyes on Ben, in the club on the quay in town. I had seen him arrive while I was dancing wildly, then suddenly I was enjoying the sensation that he was watching me too. I couldn’t stop looking at him as he made his way to the bar. Our eyes locked for a moment, and he smiled a bashful smile right at me before lowering his head. But after I went to get more drinks, the place where he had been standing had become a gap slowly filling up with more sweaty bodies.

  It became an urgency, the desire to find him. How was it possible to have such a connection with someone from so far away, with no words?

  I was so hot I felt I needed some air. But then suddenly he was behind me.

  ‘Are you leaving?’ I heard the voice as I headed towards the main exit. The bass from the club was a dull thud from behind the double doors as we stood, just the two of us in the foyer. I stopped, turned and smoothed a stray piece of hair against my head and raised my eyebrows. There he stood, tall, thick dark hair that hung around his ears, a hint of a stubble. He was still wearing his black leather jacket. It was old and battered but it suited him, like it was made for him.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure now,’ I laughed.

  ‘You look, um, great.’ He pushed his hair away from his face and looked sheepish. His eyes darted between me and our surroundings.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said with a small self-conscious smile. I felt the energy build between us in the small space.

  I went on to tell him that I was a fitness instructor and after a few minutes he found the confidence to invite me back to the bar. We found seats amongst the chaos and ordered margaritas with salty rims.

  ‘I hope I didn’t appear creepy. Following you outside like that.’ He was possibly feigning coyness as he tucked his long thick dark hair behind his ear. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Michael Hutchence, with his battered black leather jacket and sultry look.

  I looked down at his hands which were large and looked incredibly clean and soft; they were hands that hadn’t grafted.

  ‘Is this your bag? Clubs like this?’ he asked

  ‘Sometimes, I’m with my flatmate Eve; we like to dance. Let off a bit of steam. You?’

  ‘Not really. I was persuaded by a mate to come in for a quick drink. We’ve just finished a gig next door.’

  ‘You’re in a band?’ So he really was a rock star.

  ‘Many. I go where the work is, take whatever I can.’

  ‘So you’re like a prostitute, of the musical world?’

  He stared at me blankly for a second. My heart raced as I anticipated a negative response to my throwaway comment. Then his mouth grew into a huge smile.

  ‘Yes, that is exactly what I am.’ His whole face visibly lit up.

  I threw my head back and laughed loudly. I loved his subtlety; he had no ego, everything about him was enchanting and magnetising me more towards him.

  I knew then, that moment, I had to have him.

  We talked and drank and laughed and I slipped in closer to him on a stool so our bodies were touching. My hand kept finding its way to his leg. At one point he turned and looked at me and neither of us spoke for a second – we just took one another in. I felt a rush of emotion that I had never felt for anyone before and all I could think was how I didn’t want the night to end. My mind had already wandered to the following day and if I would see him again.

  When my friend and flatmate, Eve, made an appearance next to us, I raised my eyes at her indicating I was fine. She walked away backwards making an over the top thumbs-up sign behind Ben’s back, but he caught her out of the corner of his eye. I began laughing hysterically and when he looked around properly, Eve had transformed the action seamlessly into a ridiculous dance move. He seemed casually amused.

  We ordered beers and drank them in near silence. Occasionally sniggering at some of the more inebriated clubbers. I felt warm and fuzzy with alcohol and I supposed he did too.

  Then he asked me, ‘Are you ready to leave now?’

  I looked at the face of the stranger just inches from mine, his eyes twinkled from the alcohol. I knew I was ready.

  I collected my coat from the cloakroom on the way passed and we headed outside. The quay was alive with people bustling to and from pubs.

  I felt his hand slip into mine and the intimacy from a stranger’s touch was addictive. I didn’t want to let go. We walked over to the quay wall.

  A boat was arriving back in from a cruise party, a string of fairy lights hung across the deck and on board it was brimming with drunken laughing guests. Two young girls in high heels and tiny short skirts walked past howling and jeering. Ben lit a cigarette and offered me one. I shook my head. He sat and smoked it whilst I leant into him and I could smell the citrus scent of his aftershave and the leather of his jacket that had been lingering next to me all night. I inhaled him like he was a drug. He finished the cigarette and threw it on the floor, half stamped on it and we both watched as the bright ember faded and struggled to remain alight.

  He put his arm over my shoulder and pulled me closer to him. I looked up; I could feel the buzz of the alcohol but above and beyond that, an aching intensity that started in the pit of my stomach and soared through my legs and arms, into my neck, across my face and then finally ended where my lips met Bens.

  It had been a long time coming, this feeling of completeness.

  I had succeeded.

  He was all mine.

  I had expected to wake up in horror, as I had done countless times, to realise that the shadows of the past few hours had concealed an ugliness of the stranger in my bed, but this time, something was different.

  The hazy morning light of my bedroom set a perfect scene as we slowly woke next to one another. Something within me had shifted. I didn’t feel all those feelings of hatred and despair that were the typical by-product of a one-night stand with a stranger. Despite feeling slightly on edge, trying to come to terms with this unfamiliar sensation of wanting to lie next to a man in the morning, it felt almost normal.

  Until then, I had forgotten I was capable of feeling normal.

  We dressed and went into the lounge where I brought him coffee and toast. I had to press my heels into the floor to stop myself from launching across the table and into his lap.

  He slurped his coffee, an action I added to the long list of endearing qualities I was racking up: from the way he rubbed his stubble so it made a scratching noise to the way he double blinked when he was listening intently to me, showing his concentration.

  I asked him what he did again. He wrote songs and depped for bands, he reminded me.

  He tapped his teaspoon on the side of the table in a drumbeat.

  ‘Ah yes, musician, that was it. I wondered why alarm bells were ringing. My mother warned me away from musicians,’ I told him jovially, vaguely able to recollect a lucid one-sided conversation with my mum that consisted of her listing unsuitable men.

  ‘What’s wrong with musicians?’ A smile crept out of the corner of his mouth as he leant back in his chair. He stretched his arms up. His grey T-shirt was crumpled after a night on the floor next to my bed and I felt my cheeks flush at the memory of him removing it.

  ‘You are all so melancholy and a little bit flaky.’ I looked into my coffee. ‘Creativity comes before anything else, and well, basically you’re all a bit hard up.’


  Ben nodded. ‘Yep, sounds about right. I’m a skint melancholic flaky musician.’ There was an air of sarcasm to his tone.

  I quickly added. ‘It’s just one of those little bits of advice that mums give to their daughters, you know? Did your parents not give you any advice growing up?’

  Ben gave a sniff and turned his head away from me. ‘I don’t have a dad. It’s just me and my mum. We live in a beach house up the coast about thirty miles away.’ He breathed in and let out a loud sigh. He suddenly seemed agitated and pulled out a packet of cigarettes from his jeans pocket and lit one. He inhaled, pushed his hair back with one hand and then opened his mouth in an exaggerated ‘O’ as he exhaled. ‘I was only here last night for a gig, I rarely come out. I’m a bit of a hermit normally.’ His voice was raspy, from the night before when we had shouted to one another over the music.

  I was fully aware that he had glided over the subject of an absent father and it made me think about something that Eve had told me about absent fathers, and what to look out for, specifically in boys: depression, self-criticism, low self-esteem.

  Cheaters.

  I looked at Ben again, at his stubble, at his large soft tender-looking hands that had clearly never done a day’s real labour. At his dark eyes, that were like pools waiting for me to dive into, so I could swim into his soul. He dropped his cigarette in his empty coffee cup.

  All the while I watched him and drank him in, I was acutely aware of what he could be thinking about me. How I presented myself? What did he see? Would he ever be able to know the real me?

  I asked him what tune he was tapping out with his active teaspoon that had found its way to the edge of the cup, saucer and sugar bowl.