The Stepmother

by Carrie Adams

  James watched me closely.

  I knew the expression. I had looked at my mother in the same way. “He’s staying at home until tomorrow. Mum’s orders. He looks very peaceful.”

  “I’m so glad I’m here,” said James, hugging me again. “I’ll never let you go.”

  Standing on tiptoe in my socked feet, I found his lips, placed mine on them, and stayed there, breathing in his smell. I had lost one major ally but—and this was the bit I had yet to understand—I felt stronger than ever before.

  MUM, JAMES, AND I HAD a very late ploughman’s lunch at the kitchen table. Surely grief wasn’t supposed to make you ravenous. We drank a soft red wine and sawed chunks of cheddar off the block they always bought from a nearby dairy. I toasted Dad, then popped a pickled onion into my mouth.

  “I’d like to thank your father,” said Mum to James. “That fishing trip couldn’t have come at a better time.”

  “I…You are incredibly kind to say so, but—”

  “But nothing. Honestly, that trip seemed to give him time to put his life’s learnings in order. It was quite something.”

  “I thought you’d had a relapse because he wasn’t here with you. Tessa was worried from the start.”

  “Tessa worries too much,” she said. “Our biggest challenge now is going to be managing Tessa’s worry about me home alone.”

  “Right,” said James. He looked relieved he wouldn’t be shouldering the blame for his father taking Dad away from Mum days before his death, thereby robbing them of their last few moments together.

  “Wrong,” I said, “because that isn’t going to happen.”

  “Really?” said my mother. You could hear the steel in her voice.

  “The commute isn’t that bad. It focuses the mind when you know you’ve got a train to catch.”

  Mum chewed a bit of cucumber I had sliced for her.

  “Surely they’ve given you time off,” said James.

  “Not indefinitely,” I replied.

  “I have very good friends in the village,” said Mum to James. Well, in James’s direction. I knew who she was talking to. Me. And I knew what she meant. Back off, Tessa, I don’t need a nursemaid. “Now I feel a little tired, so I’m going upstairs for a lie-down. Will you wake me when the vicar gets here?”

  “Of course.”

  “Should I take something up for Dad?” said my mother, then put her hand on James’s shoulder and laughed. “Only kidding.”

  I shook my head.

  “Stop shaking your head, Tessa.”

  “How do you know I am?”

  “I told you, I know how you think.”

  “Ditto. And you’re not getting rid of me that easily. How are you going to do all the things Dad used to do for you?”

  “God, you are stubborn,” said Mum, wagging a finger at me.

  “Can’t imagine where I get it from,” I replied.

  “Have a nice nap,” said James merrily.

  I waited until Mum had left, then, annoyed, turned to James. “You’re going to have to back me up on this,” I said.

  “Of course I’ll back you up. On what?”

  Spell it out, said Dad. I pushed my plate to one side and stood up. “Fancy a walk?”

  “That would be nice. I haven’t walked anywhere, except inside an airport terminal, for days.”

  I took his arm. “Come on. We’ll clear up when we get back. There’s a place I want to show you.”

  AT THE END OF THE village, a bridle path rose up along a ridge. Another path sank low into a rocky ravine—largely ignored by the locals, since the route down was quite treacherous. I took James’s hand and we navigated the tangled roots and brambles until we were on the stream-bed. It was like a grotto down there: the air felt different; sunshine pierced the canopy of interlocking branches overhead and danced on the wet pebbles. You could walk for hours in the water—or until your feet started to freeze.

  “Perfect time of year for down here,” I said. “The nettles shut the place off in the summer and you can’t get through. Best thing Mum and Dad ever did was get out of London. I’m sure Mum’s long stay of execution has been down to this bucolic life. At first I thought they’d go stir-crazy, but it’s amazing how busy the country keeps you.”

  “Were you serious about commuting?” asked James.

  “She can’t live alone in her condition.”

  He shrugged. “How long do you think her eyes will stay like that?”

  “They say three weeks, but an event like this could delay any improvement. I don’t care what the doctors say, stress is a major player.”

  “She seems incredibly calm,” said James.

  I stopped walking. “Worrying, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. You said yourself it didn’t come as a shock.”

  “No, but I’ve had an old father for a long time. I haven’t just lost my life partner. Mum has been with Dad since her early twenties. Her whole life was wrapped up in him. I think there’s a difference.”

  James came back to where I stood. The icy water pressed against my boots as it flowed around my ankles. “Of course there is. And of course you have to keep an eye—sorry, bad choice of words—look after her until her sight improves.”

  He still wasn’t reading me. I carried on walking. “But then what, James? She has MS permanently. It just hides itself. Stress is bad, so is doing too much. She may think she can go on by herself, but Dad carried a lot of the everyday burden of life. She did the sedentary things, he did everything else. Getting down on her knees to light a fire won’t be easy. My worry is that she’ll realize all this and then go rapidly downhill.”

  “She said you’d worry too much.”

  “Not too much.” Spell it out. “James, I’m telling you, I can’t leave her on her own.”

  I knew his brain was interpreting my words. It left two options. I move to Oxfordshire. She moves to London to live with…Hang on, we only have three bedrooms. I have three children who stay regularly, so we’ll have to move to a bigger place, preferably one with a granny flat. Well, that sort of property doesn’t come cheap, which means moving away from the area, the school, the girls…He looked at me. I waited.

  “Liz should be allowed to decide what she wants to do,” said James.

  “Every time there’s a relapse, you don’t bounce back quite so high. It’s gradual, so the casual observer would probably miss it. It happened with her legs, so now she needs a stick all the time, and it will happen with her eyes. My point is, I’m not sure if she’s allowed to decide.”

  “She’s a very independent woman.”

  “I didn’t say it was going to be easy.” I laid a hand on his cheek. What I had taken for a wonderfully positive nature was actually a refusal to see the ugly side of life. It was admirable, in the right circumstances, but sometimes life got ugly, and turning a blind eye wasn’t just unimpressive, it was complicit. And that was exactly what he’d done when Bea had started to put on weight.

  “You think I’m just saying this because your mother’s illness is an inconvenience to me?”

  “No.” Yes. Wasn’t that exactly what you were thinking?

  “Yes, you do.”

  It was my turn to duck. “What worries me is that we’re perfect in a bubble, James, absolutely perfect, but look what happens when it bursts. We fight. It’s terrible. My mother is as important to me as your children are to you. We need to find room for everyone. Me included. I’m not like Bea. I’m not going to disappear to the bottom of the list and be grateful when you remember my birthday.”

  “It wasn’t like that. Everything I did was for her.” James was stricken. “Sorry.”

  “No. It’s okay. But if that’s true why didn’t it work out?”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “The one thing she wanted was to get out of her mother’s financial grip. The only thing that has ever upset Bea is her mother’s snobbery. I worked like a dog to give Bea her freedom, then got blamed for being away.”

 
; “You said you stayed away.”

  “I don’t think a man can be blamed for not rushing home for the babies’ bath time every night after another god-awful day in the office,” he said crossly. “We’re not saints. We need a moment, too, you know. And when all you get is a frosty reception, it’s even harder. I’m not saying these things about your mother because it doesn’t suit me that she’s ill. If it was my parents, we’d be having the same conversation. I’m thinking about her. She is an independent woman. And the last thing in the world she’d want is you giving up your life to nanny her. Don’t patronize her. Ask her what she wants to do.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Just because I don’t automatically agree with you, it doesn’t mean I’m some selfish, dumb wanker who just wants an easy life.”

  “I’m sorry.” I stood on tiptoes and kissed him.

  He opened his mouth.

  “No, you’re right,” I said, before he could speak. “I’m sorry. Mum needs our support, not me riding roughshod over her.”

  “Look, Tessa, I realize now that I’ve sometimes been too quick to abdicate responsibility, but sometimes you’re too slow to. Bringing up children is easier on everyone if you don’t worry about all the little details. I’d never notice if my daughters went to school wearing mismatching socks. I don’t mean color. I mean pattern. And if that evokes a patronizing laugh from you, then you’re right, we’re probably heading to a bad place. I’m sorry, but those details go over my head.”

  I put my hand to my heart. “I promise not to care about mismatched socks too.”

  “Thank you.” He pulled me toward him. “There’s something else you have to do for me.”

  I thought he was going to suggest something smutty, since my loins were already waking to the look in his eye. But he surprised me. “You have to want to be happy,” he said.

  Sometimes “I love you” isn’t enough. I pulled James to me and kissed his mouth. It opened and his tongue felt hot against my cold lips. I wanted more. More heat. More softness. More hardness. Leaves lay where they’d fallen the previous winter, preserved in the still, cool air under the trees. The recent sun had dried the upper layers, and when I lay down, the ground was soft under my back. James lay on top of me. I could hear the leaves crackling and breaking under my weight. I combed my fingers through his gorgeous salt-and-pepper hair and pressed his face harder to mine.

  I opened my eyes and looked at the bright sky through the black silhouette of a thousand branches. Heaven, I thought. It was too cold to lie like a starfish naked on the ground, but I was pretty sure I knew another way to feel boundless. I reached down and unbuckled James’s belt without taking my mouth away from his. By the feel of him, the cold wasn’t going to put him off. I lifted my hips and we pulled down my jeans and pants. Not far, but far enough. We barely moved as he pushed inside me. Couldn’t. The clothes stopped any large gestures. I groaned as I filled up with him, love, lust. I arched and rocked against him, slow, slight movements. We rubbed away the sadness and got lost in the incredible power you feel when you stare into the eyes of someone you love who loves you back.

  My parents’ relationship had begun on the bank of a river. Now so would ours. But this time it would be a real one. With ups and downs, crevasses and peaks, and somehow we would find the equipment we needed to climb out of the lows and come down safely from the highs. My whole body shuddered and I cried out. We lay there, panting, among the fallen leaves. James stroked my hair and continued to stare at me and I thought how lucky I was to know how this felt. How very lucky. And it made me cry. James brushed away the rogue tears.

  “Your dad had a wonderful life,” he said, smiling down at me. I put my hand to his cheek. I wasn’t crying about my father. “And we’ll work something out with your mum.” I wasn’t crying about her either. “I love you,” he said. I had a sudden, terrible moment of clarity. The secret that had destroyed James’s first marriage could destroy his second, since in these moments of near-bliss I would always have to ask myself, would we be here if he knew? James helped me up and with our arms wrapped around each other we made our way home. I couldn’t speak. James, I am sure, believed he knew why I kept my own counsel, but, of course, he didn’t. Only I knew, and that was no way to walk into marriage.

  I STOOD FOR A LONG time on the threshold of the slightly moldy guest bathroom, catching the odd word between my mother and the vicar downstairs and listening to James slosh water over himself. Twice I walked to the top of the staircase, but stopped. Going downstairs wasn’t going to make this go away, so, with a gentle knock, I turned the handle of the bathroom door and went in.

  “Hey gorgeous,” he said. James’s knees stuck out through the bubbles, as did his chest. He was too big for the bath.

  “Hey,” I closed the door behind me.

  “No tea?”

  “The vicar’s drunk it all.” He smiled at me. “James, I need to talk to you.”

  He pointed to the loo. “Take a seat.”

  I pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting up. I could preamble for hours, I could lay cushions all around him, but nothing would lessen the blow.

  “Bea didn’t have an affair.”

  James cocked his head to one side. “Why are we talking about her again?”

  “She was never unfaithful to you, James. She didn’t fall out of love with you and run off with someone else. She always loved you. She just got very, very confused for a while. I’m fairly sure it was some long-term postnatal depression, but who knows?”

  He squinted at me. “Affair, one-night stand, what’s the difference? I lost her long before she had the abortion…” He closed his eyes for a second and rubbed his forehead.

  Women are not alone in thinking up scenarios that have never happened or are unlikely ever to happen. James must have tortured himself with images of his wife with another man, but he had never considered the possibility that the child had been his.

  “No. I mean she never slept with another man. Ever. There was only you.” My words floated over the bathroom and settled around him.

  He sat in them. Motionless, for a moment. Then he looked at me again, to check that it was me, to check the words, to try to understand their meaning. He saw in my face the confirmation he wanted to shy away from. “No,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “It’s been killing her ever since.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Women talk.”

  “Faith? She knew and didn’t—”

  “No, James. Bea told me. Here. The night I caught her trying to steal the sherry.”

  “What?”

  I hadn’t got around to telling him that bit. So much had happened. “You’ve always told me your wife left you because she didn’t love you anymore. I don’t think that’s true. But you need to hear it from her.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?”

  I looked at him sitting in the bath, hugging his knees, his hair swept back off his high forehead. “Because I love you.” His face creased, and I stood up. “I’ll give you a moment,” I said, and closed the door behind me.

  JAMES WAS DRESSED, CLEAN-SHAVEN, AND smelling of limes when he walked into the sitting room. I put down the book I was pretending to read.

  “Thank you,” he said. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

  I smiled at him. “It’s not supposed to be easy.”

  He brushed an imaginary bit of fluff off his nose. “Amazing how one piece of information can make sense of so much chaos.”

  “You need to see her,” I said.

  “What about you?”

  “You can’t do anything here.”

  “But Tessa—”

  I didn’t want him to beg me to let him stay, because I’d give in too easily. Today I felt I had my father’s support. Tomorrow I might not. I was really trying to do the right thing here. But it wasn’t easy.

  “You think
the eating and drinking hinge on her mother,” I said. “I’m not so sure. She needs to get better for everybody’s sake, and she can’t do that without your forgiveness.”

  He swallowed. Maybe it was too soon to ask him to forgive. I reached up and took his hand. I could see the muscle in his jaw and squeezed hard.

  “Was I such a bad husband?”

  I didn’t try to answer. “I know you want to stay here for me, but I think you should go.” There was a lump in my throat.

  “Your dad taught you how to slay the dragon, didn’t he?”

  “Yes he did,” I answered. “I was very lucky.”

  “Tessa King, you’re an amazing woman.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then come back to me.”

  “I will.”

  I walked him to the front door. We kissed good-bye and I felt sadness well up inside me.

  He held me hard, his chin resting on my head. “One day we’ll laugh about all of this,” he said.

  “I sure hope so.”

  “We will.”

  “Go, before I start crying.”

  “Too late,” he said, wiping away a tear. He held my face in his hands and kissed me again. “I love you so much,” he said.

  “I know,” I said sadly. I knew, too, that James had always loved Bea. Back in another time. But I had thrown open the doorway to the past, and now that time was here again. Loving me might not be enough.

  My mother joined me as I waved him off. “I know it’s a cliché but sometimes you have to love people enough to let them go.”

  I put my head on her shoulder. “And hope they love you enough to come back?”

  “Yes.”

  “High risk,” I said.

  “Most things worth fighting for are.”

  It was then that the tears came. Tears for my father, for my mother, for James and Bea and the son they might have had, and for myself. And when I had finished, I sat down to wait.

  Nineteen

  Reentry

  I DROVE PAST THE BAR THREE TIMES BEFORE I PLUCKED UP THE COURAGE to park. I sat quietly behind the steering wheel and counted to ten. My grand total is a hundred and seventy. But it never seems so desperate in factors of ten.