The Woman Next Door

by Natasha Boydell

  Angie barely acknowledged her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Sophie asked, walking over to the bench and sitting down beside her.

  ‘I’m late,’ she said.

  ‘Late for what?’ Sophie was confused.

  ‘Late, late,’ she said, looking pointedly at Sophie and waiting for the penny to drop.

  ‘Oh,’ Sophie said, cuddling the dinosaur close to her for warmth.

  ‘Oh indeed.’

  ‘I take it this is not good news?’ Sophie asked tentatively.

  ‘Definitely not good news,’ Angie confirmed.

  ‘Okay, so have you done a test?’

  ‘No,’ Angie replied.

  Sophie regarded her. ‘Isn’t that something that you should do?’ she asked carefully.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve got one in the bathroom,’ Sophie said, jumping up, ‘I’ll go and get it now.’

  ‘Why’ve you got a pregnancy test in the bathroom?’

  Sophie looked down. ‘Me and Alan, we’ve been trying for a third but it’s not happening.’

  ‘Oh, Sophie.’ Angie felt even more awful. ‘I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Sophie said, looking up again and plastering a bright smile on her face. ‘Your issue is my issue and we’ll face it together. Now get yourself back inside and warmed up and I’ll be over in a jiffy. Where are the brood?’

  ‘Jack, Ellie and the boys are at football and Indie’s in her room, not to be disturbed.’

  ‘Right you are, now’s our chance.’

  Sophie stood up and marched back through the gate while Angie headed inside, wondering how she had ended up here. She’d been walking home from the tube station on Friday evening and had popped into the newsagents to buy a bottle of red wine when she saw some tampons on the shelf. She stared at them. Hadn’t her period been due on Monday? She quickly grabbed her diary from her bag and opened it up. There it was: a little ‘p’ marked in pencil which denoted the start date of her period each month. Angie didn’t like being unprepared.

  How on earth had she missed this? She’d been so busy at work and there had been some trouble at school, with Freddy getting whacked by a ball and having to go to A&E and Indie giving a teacher some lip, and she’d forgotten all about her menstrual cycle. Angie’s periods were like clockwork and she fell pregnant easily, so the odds were not in her favour. She did not want another baby. She was forty-two years old and had her hands plenty full enough with four children and a demanding job. There was no way she wanted to go back to sleepless nights and nappies. These were all very valid reasons, she told herself. But the real issue was that her marriage was still in recovery mode and this would destroy it for good.

  Jack’s last episode had come completely out of the blue. She had searched over and over again for a reason, something to explain why he did it, but the only one she came back to each time was that he was bored of playing husband and father and he needed a thrill, a break from the monotony. But this time was different because he went a step further.

  They were still living in Greenwich at the time. She had been doing the laundry one Saturday morning, turning his jeans inside out before putting them in the machine, when she saw something pink poking out of one of the pockets. She hooked her finger through it and pulled it out, dropping it in horror when she realised what it was. The offending item, a hot pink thong, fell to the floor. She stared at it in disbelief. What did this mean? Had he been to a strip club? Was he sleeping with someone else? The walls were closing in around her as the realisation sunk in that, regardless of the answer, this was not okay. And then she felt something else – fury. Pushing the thong into her own jeans pocket with disgust, she strode into the living room where Jack was watching TV with the children.

  ‘Jack, a word,’ she said, beckoning him to follow her upstairs. When they got to their bedroom, she closed the door and turned to face him, pulling the thong from her pocket and waving it at him.

  His face paled. ‘Angie, I can explain.’

  ‘Please do.’ She could almost see the cogs turning in his head as he tried to work out what to say, how much to confess. He was so easy to read. ‘You need to tell me the truth, Jack, because you know I’m going to find out anyway.’

  He sank down onto the bed, his head in his hands.

  ‘The truth, Jack,’ she said again.

  ‘Nothing happened,’ he began. Her heart soared with relief for a moment before she realised that there was still no real happy ending to this situation.

  ‘Something clearly happened,’ she said.

  ‘It was when I went out for work drinks on Thursday. A few of the boys went on to a late bar afterwards and we got talking to these girls. They invited us back to one of their flats for a nightcap and I was drunk and stupid, so I went along with the rest of them.’

  Jack paused, looking at Angie pleadingly. ‘We carried on drinking and then this girl started making passes at me. She kissed me and I sobered up pretty quickly, made my excuses and left. As I was leaving, she gave me her number and I threw it into a bin on the way home. I didn’t even realise she’d put that in my pocket. We were both pretty wasted.’

  Angie studied her husband carefully. Jack could be a juvenile prick but she didn’t think he was capable of lying to her. She had the truth. But what did she do with it now?

  ‘Why is it so hard?’ she asked him. ‘Being married to me? Being a father to our children? Why isn’t that enough for you? You chose this life; we didn’t force it on you.’

  ‘It is enough, Angie,’ he insisted, ‘it is enough. I love you all so much. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I don’t. I’ll get some help, I promise.’

  ‘I’ve been patient over the years, Jack. I’ve forgiven you when you’ve gone out and pretended you didn’t have a wife and children waiting for you at home. When you haven’t even bothered to tell me if or when you were coming back. I’ve resented it, but I’ve done it.’

  ‘I know, Angie, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.’

  She hated him at that moment, with his ridiculous little hangdog eyes. Why had she thought she was any different to the other girls whose hearts he had broken? Why had she thought she was better than them? In the end, she was the fool. She should never have married him; she’d been right about him from the start. Once Jack the jock, always Jack the jock.

  ‘You need to leave,’ she told him, glaring at him. ‘I don’t want you in this house.’

  ‘Please, Angie…’

  ‘You need to leave.’

  ‘But nothing happened,’ Jack insisted. ‘I would never cheat on you.’

  ‘But you nearly did. And it’s only a matter of time before you do.’

  ‘No!’ Jack said, standing up and moving towards her. ‘No, you’ve got it wrong.’

  Angie held up her hands to warn him from coming any closer. ‘You need to leave.’

  He nodded, his face weary with resignation, knowing that there was no point in arguing with Angie when she had made her mind up. ‘I’ll go to Sam’s,’ he said. Sam was his brother and he owned a flat in east London. ‘What will you tell the kids?’

  ‘I’ll work something out. I want you gone by the end of the day.’

  She turned and left, forcing herself to summon a smile and making her way downstairs to check on the children, who were still watching TV, oblivious to the fact that their parents’ marriage had been unravelling a few metres above their heads. An hour later Jack was gone.

  She didn’t tell a soul what had happened, not her mother, not her closest friends. She had never been one to air dirty laundry in public but the truth was that she was humiliated. The thought of people knowing that her husband had gone off to some poky flat to flirt with a cheap bimbo instead of coming home to his family mortified her. As the days passed, she kept it to herself, acting as though everything was perfectly fine while inside, she was breaking apart.

  But, as angry as she was with Jack for making a fool of her, s
he still couldn’t let him go. Yet again, she began to rationalise his behaviour and blame herself for overreacting.

  After four days, the children were constantly asking where he was, and while it was easy enough to fool the younger two, Indie and Benji weren’t stupid.

  ‘What’s going on, Mum?’ Indie asked.

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ she replied, putting an arm around her daughter.

  ‘Are you and Dad getting divorced?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that, please don’t think that. He’s just helping Uncle Sam with something.’

  ‘Has Dad done something wrong?’ Benji asked.

  ‘No, Benji, Dad’s done nothing wrong.’

  Angie couldn’t bear it any longer. That night she called Jack and told him to come home. He turned up on the doorstep so quickly she almost suspected him of being outside the whole time. She opened the door and let him back into the house.

  ‘I’m not sure what our future holds yet but we owe it to the children to try to work through this,’ she said firmly, in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘If it happens again, I’m leaving you.’ He nodded his agreement, not even trying to mitigate his behaviour.

  After that he did everything he could to make things right, knowing that this time he had almost lost her for good. For her part, she acted normally in front of the children and other people, putting on an almost Oscar winning performance of the happy wife. But behind closed doors she wasn’t ready to forgive him and she was unable to muster any warmth towards him, often giving him the cold shoulder. He didn’t complain once.

  They shared a bed but they didn’t touch or even say goodnight to each other. For weeks they lived like cellmates in that bedroom, trapped in the prison of their unhappy marriage, but as time went on it became too exhausting to lead two separate lives and gradually, they began to blur into one. She softened a bit at the edges, then a bit more, as the familiarity and easiness to their relationship start to return bit by bit. He said something funny and she instinctively laughed before she remembered that she was angry with him. He put a hand on the small of her back and she didn’t immediately flinch. One night he curled up behind her in bed and put his arm around her, and she relaxed into him. A week after that, they had sex for the first time in months.

  Eventually she considered that his punishment had been served and knew that the only way they were going to move forward was if she truly forgave him. But she couldn’t forget.

  ‘Every time I go into that laundry room I see those disgusting pink knickers on the floor,’ she told him one evening.

  ‘What can I do, Angie? How can I make this better?’

  ‘I think we need to move house. And not just house, we need a fresh start, a clean break. I think we should move somewhere completely new. We’ve been talking about how we need more space and now’s our opportunity.’

  ‘Okay. Anywhere in mind?’

  ‘How about Finchley? Near my mum.’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was that simple, no debate, no arguments. He was so eager to please her that he probably would have agreed to move to Antarctica. She had no doubt that he loved her, that he needed her and the children. But it was like he had two different identities – the adoring husband and father who lived for his family and the thoughtless lad wishing he was still captain of the football team, chatting up girls in the nightclub and getting a kebab on the way home. She had married one but the other had snuck into the bargain.

  They put the house on the market two weeks later. Their friends were shocked by the suddenness, but Angie had her solid explanation ready and everyone accepted it without suspicion. Freddy and Ellie saw it as a great adventure but Benji was distraught and Indie was furious. However, Angie stood by her decision and Jack backed her up, championing the move and reasoning with Benji and Indie, encouraging them to consider the positives.

  When they moved, it was Jack who had kept them going with his enthusiasm, who made them all laugh and held them together during the stressful months of the refurbishment. And slowly, at their own paces, they had all begun to embrace their new life.

  Benji and Indie had settled in at school and made new friends, Ellie and Freddy bonded with Tom and Katie, Jack got involved in the local community, and Angie found Sophie, who was now striding back down the garden.

  ‘Got the test,’ she mouthed as she came in through the back door, patting her pocket and looking around her furtively in case anyone was watching.

  ‘I’m not sure I want to know,’ Angie replied.

  ‘Come on, Angie, this isn’t like you. The sooner you know, the sooner you can deal with it.’

  ‘Can we at least have a cup of tea first?’

  ‘Okay,’ Sophie agreed, switching on the kettle and moving around Angie’s kitchen with a familiar ease. She made them both a drink and sat down next to Angie.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Angie replied. Then she added, ‘Yes.’

  ‘How are you feeling about it all?’

  ‘I feel really bad talking to you about this, Sophie. I had no idea that you were trying.’

  ‘Forget about that,’ Sophie waved Angie’s concern away. ‘This is about you.’

  Angie looked at Sophie’s friendly, open face and desperately wanted to confide in her. But just as she was on the cusp of blurting it all out, she stopped herself. She just couldn’t do it.

  ‘I love my children but I don’t want another one,’ she said simply instead. ‘Four is plenty, five is too many. And I feel too old to go back to babies.’

  ‘What do you think Jack would say?’

  ‘Oh, he’d be delighted. Which is why he mustn’t know about this until we know what’s what.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sophie agreed. She stood up and held out her hand. ‘Let’s get this done.’

  Angie took it. Sophie was right, she had to find out one way or another, even if she didn’t want to know. Together they made their way quietly up to the loft room and Sophie waited for her on the bed while she went into the en suite. She came back clutching the test, sat next to Sophie and waited. After a few minutes, the result was pretty clear to them both. It was negative.

  Sophie let herself back into the house and made herself a cup of tea. It was unusually quiet because Alan had taken Tom and Katie to the park and she had the place to herself for a little while longer. She sank down onto the sofa and took a small sip of her scalding tea, craving the comfort that it usually brought her. She was feeling a little flat.

  When Angie had told her that she might be pregnant, her first reaction had been jealousy. Sophie and Alan had decided to try for another baby last year but after months of ‘planned fun’ as Alan liked to call it, nothing was happening and she was starting to think that it probably wouldn’t.

  Yet here Angie was, not even trying for another baby – not even wanting one – having a pregnancy scare. But when she’d seen the distraught look on Angie’s face, her initial envy had vanished and she had felt sorry for her. She knew how hectic Angie’s life was already and could see how throwing a new baby into the mix might be the thing that tipped them over the edge.

  Still, it had been a shock to see Angie so vulnerable, so unsure of herself. It was a side of her that Sophie hadn’t seen before and she had immediately gone into mother-hen mode, taking control of the situation and clucking over her like she did with her own children. Under normal circumstances, Angie probably would have got irritated with her but she’d actually seemed relieved that Sophie was ordering her about. It had all been quite strange.

  And after all the drama, the test had been negative anyway. Sophie was relieved for Angie but the whole experience had left her feeling low. Her own period had arrived that day with a vengeance, bringing with it the monthly wave of disappointment and feelings of failure. She wanted to curl up on the sofa and feel sorry for herself. What was she any good at, really, she wondered. She had no career to speak of; she couldn’t make babies. Was she e
ven a good mother? Tom and Katie were happy children, she knew that, but she looked at Angie’s big, bustling, unique family and felt that there was something wonderfully special about them.

  Perhaps that was why she’d got a bee in her bonnet about having a third child. When she had first broached the idea with Alan, he’d looked at her in surprise.

  ‘Another Brennan baby, huh? What’s brought this on?’

  ‘I don’t know. The kids are growing up so fast, both of them are at school now, they don’t need me in the way they used to. Maybe it’s empty nest syndrome but I’m feeling broody.’

  ‘Another baby is a big thing though, Soph. We’ve finally said goodbye to years of sleepless nights, nappies, toddler tantrums. Do we really want to go back to the beginning and start all over again? And we’re no spring chickens anymore either. I’m not saying no, I’m just saying let’s not rush into anything, we should think about it for a while.’

  She agreed but the idea had lingered, a feeling of need – or at least want – that she couldn’t shake off and a few weeks later she brought it up again.

  ‘I know it might not happen for us, Alan. It wasn’t plain sailing getting pregnant with Tom and Katie, but can we give it a go? Just let fate take its course?’

  Alan had agreed, as she knew he would, but fate seemed to have decided that another baby wasn’t in their future after all. And with two happy, healthy children she wasn’t prepared to put them through the emotional and financial turmoil of fertility treatment. She simply had to accept that it wasn’t meant to be, that she had so much in her life already to be thankful for, and most of the time she was okay with that. But today had hit her hard.

  It’s just a blip, she told herself, a perfectly natural reaction to Angie’s situation, and I’ll get over it soon enough. Alan would be back with the kids any minute now and perhaps they could all go out for lunch together, or maybe get last-minute tickets to the cinema. There was a new Disney film out that Katie had been wanting to see. Once she was distracted, she’d be absolutely fine again. But just for a little while longer, she sat alone on the sofa, drinking her tea, and allowed herself to imagine what could have been.