by Fiona Harper
Jennie held her tight and stroked her hair, something she remembered her own mother doing when she’d been a little girl.
She felt this… this… fierce sense of protectiveness towards her stepdaughter, and it scared her. She felt as if she would rip anybody limb from limb who wanted to hurt her, and she wished she could just open her heart and pour the contents inside Mollie, so desperate was she for her to know how much she was loved. Jennie’s eyes were sticky and her nose threatened to drip. She hadn’t even been aware she’d been crying, too.
Eventually the crushing desperation lifted and they relaxed against each other, just breathing.
Was this what mothers felt like? It was nothing like the warm, cosy feeling she’d thought it would be. It was overpowering. Overwhelming. And very, very scary to love something this much. The sort of thing you might be tempted to run away from if it all got too intense.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered into Mollie’s hair. ‘I didn’t meant to scare you. I was just…’
Running away from her problems.
Was that what she’d been about to do? She searched deep inside herself and realised that to be partly true. But she hadn’t been in the same kind of frenzy she’d been when she’d packed in Paris. This time it hadn’t been about wanting to be found, because she wasn’t even sure Alex would come. That kind of running away had been about hope. This time she’d been packing because she’d thought there was none.
She kissed the top of Mollie’s head again.
Well, she was staying, not leaving this time. Which meant she was in uncharted territory. And she was going to have to find a way to get through to Alex, because she’d been right about one thing: she couldn’t live like this any longer. She was going to have to fight for Alex. First things first, though.
She looked down at Mollie. ‘How about a picnic for lunch?’ The day had turned warm and sunny and it would be lovely to sit out in the garden and relax.
Mollie grinned at her. Her eyes were still pink and her face was still blotchy—hardcore crying really didn’t suit her pale colouring. ‘Can we have Marmite sandwiches?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘In the tree house?’
Jennie thought for a second, and then she shrugged. ‘Why not? It’ll be fun.’
Mollie cheered softly and clambered from her lap. ‘I’m going to tell Teddy!’ She ran across the room, but stopped at the threshold to look back. ‘Can Teddy have Marmite sandwiches, too?’ Before Jennie could agree, Mollie spoke from behind her hand in a loud stage whisper. ‘Teddy can’t really eat sandwiches. I have to help him.’
Jennie laughed. ‘Teddy can have a small one.’
Mollie ran off to break the good news to Teddy.
Jennie didn’t get up off the floor straight away. Instead, she hugged her knees to herself and rested her chin on them. She’d tried to fight for Alex already, she realised, but she’d used all the wrong weapons—the tried and trusted methods of her childhood. All that had done was leave a bitter taste in her mouth. It wasn’t about getting what she wanted any more, anyway. She needed to find a new way to fight for her marriage.
This was what people did when they’d made vows to each other—when one was weak and hurting, the other stepped in and was strong for them. And it felt good to be strong for Alex. Nobody had ever needed her to be the strong one before. She’d always been the one who ran to other people, begging them to bail her out of her latest mess.
Not fair, the child inside her screamed. Why should you have to be the one to make the first move, make all the sacrifices?
Because someone had to. Someone had to stop the slow drifting. Someone had to close the gap before it was too late. And, after watching Alex for the last few weeks, she realised he just wasn’t capable.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ALEX jerked awake. Another convoluted dream where he was chasing something. Or was it running from something? Or searching. Endlessly searching. The details were already muddled and fuzzy, retreating into his subconscious. He lay there in the dark, his breathing shallow.
He’d been having dreams like this for weeks now. Funnily enough, ever since that night when Mollie had found monsters in her cupboard. They hadn’t returned to bother her, and he had a hunch he knew why—they’d turned their attention to him.
Jennie was sleeping beside him. He could curl into her, leach some comfort from her warm, sleeping form, but he didn’t want to wake her. Not for any noble reason, merely because she’d want to know what was wrong, and he didn’t think he could handle any more of her kindness.
He knew he was failing her as a husband, but he couldn’t seem to do a damned thing about it. Maybe his brother Chris had been right. Maybe he had rushed headlong into another marriage before he’d been ready for it, but he didn’t want to think about that. He was scared enough of what he’d done to Jennie, what he was putting her through every day. He didn’t need any more guilt weighing him down.
He backed a little bit closer to her. She seemed a different person from the woman he’d met in Edward’s back garden. That was scaring him, too, not because he felt as if he didn’t know her any more, but because she was blooming on the outside into the wonderful woman he’d always known she was on the inside, whereas he was shrivelling into a dry husk.
Jennie rolled over and he held his breath, and then a long-fingered hand brushed his arm. His heart sank.
‘Hey,’ she said, her voice warm with sleep.
He couldn’t reply. He’d betray himself. So he just found her hand with his and squeezed it.
‘Dreaming again?’
How did she know? He hadn’t told her about his dreams. But she seemed to guess a lot of things about him these days. He didn’t want her seeing inside him like this. It was dark in there—and empty. It must be. Because nothing light or happy ever came out of him. All the patience and joy and life Jennie gave him just got sucked in and were never seen again.
He just grunted, hoping the non-committal noise would be enough.
She sighed, and for a while he thought she was drifting back to sleep, but then the mattress shifted as she repositioned herself. ‘You’re not happy,’ she said. It wasn’t a question.
He felt sick. He didn’t want to agree with her, didn’t want to hurt her that way. She shuffled closer, spooned in behind him, stroked his arm and then hugged him tight, her chin resting in the crook of his shoulder.
‘I wanted to run from this, ignore this—anything but face it,’ she said. ‘But we can’t go on like this. You’ve got to let it all out, Alex. It’s eating you alive.’
He closed his eyes and fervently wished he could rewind time to back before their wedding, when everything had been fresh and uncomplicated. But then he wouldn’t know her the way he knew her now, and he loved her so much more for giving him her strength and patience, her devotion—even when he didn’t deserve it.
‘I haven’t given up on you, Alex, but I need to know if you’ve given up on me.’
He opened his mouth, but she shushed him.
‘Let me finish… I know this is hard for you, but I need to tell you that I almost packed a bag and left you a couple of weeks ago.’
The cold dread he’d been trying to outrun suddenly turned into a brick wall. He smacked straight into it. She’d almost left him? And he hadn’t even guessed. Hadn’t seen it coming. He was failing another wife.
She waited for him while he processed this information and now she took his silence as he’d meant it—an invitation to continue.
‘We all have things we need to face,’ she whispered. ‘I decided it was time to stop running. Time to stick with what I’d started, no matter how hard it got.’
He should have felt grateful at that, should have felt his stomach thaw out, but it just got harder and colder and tighter. He blinked and stared at the wall. ‘I always thought you were a miracle of some kind, Jennie Hunter.’
She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. She was wrapped around him and he felt
her muscles lose that heavy, fluid feel. When she spoke again her voice was thick. ‘Dangerfield. My name is Jennie Dangerfield.’
And then she pulled away from him. He felt and heard her hit the mattress, and guessed she’d rolled onto her back.
Well done, Alex.
Minutes limped by and then Jennie said, ‘Chris phoned and asked you to go climbing in Scotland, didn’t he? Some annual trip you do. I think you should go.’
Why was she bringing this up? He’d done the right thing about that.
‘I told him I wasn’t going,’ he said, and heard the irritation in his own voice. ‘Work’s busy. I hardly get to spend any time with you and Mollie as it is.’
Jennie let out a sad, resigned breath. ‘Even when you’re here, you’re not really here. And the more time you spend…ghost walking around this house, the worse it gets. We need you, Alex—me and Mollie. We need you to be here with us, not just in body, but here…’
She reached out and placed a warm palm on his chest, left it there for a few seconds, then drew it away again. ‘You once told me I was like a roller coaster ride,’ she said, her voice bare. ‘I was flattered. But I’m not sure you want a roller coaster. I think you like the flat of the motorway better—even speed, no lumps and bumps, interchangeable scenery…’
‘That’s not true! I—’
‘We had a concentrated high at the beginning of our relationship, but it can’t always be like that, you realise that, don’t you? There are going to be low patches, tough times. We can’t shut our eyes and pretend they don’t exist.’
He folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’m not shutting my eyes against anything.’
Jennie seemed to know he was kidding himself because she carried on. ‘You can’t have the highs without the lows, you know. And if you want to iron it all flat and go without both…well…that’s not living. It’s existing. You need to decide what you want,’ she added, her voice cooler now. ‘The motorway or the roller coaster. And time away might help you do that.’
Alex rolled onto his back. ‘I know what I want.’
He’d always known what he wanted; he’d always had the whole of his life planned out, right from the age of fifteen, when he’d decided he was going to study law to help people, to protect people. But he realised now that Jennie had never really been part of his plans. She’d been an impulse, a wonderful, maddening, life-affirming impulse. What did that mean?
‘I’ll tell you what I want,’ she said, her voice heavy with sadness. ‘Having Mollie and I under the same roof as you isn’t the same as being a family, and I want to have the future we dreamed about, even if it looks a little different now we’re here.’
He couldn’t take it any more. He rolled over to face her. ‘I want that, too,’ he found himself saying. ‘But I don’t know how.’ And as the words left his mouth he felt raw and open, all his weakness on display.
She reached out and touched his cheek. Even when he was breaking her heart she was still generous to him.
‘If you want to, you’ll find a way.’ It wasn’t an accusation, but a fact, stated with love and tinged with fear. ‘But…’ her voice dried ‘…if it’s not happening, you have to ask yourself if this is what you really want. Am I what you really want, or was I just the best way to forget your problems, another way to distance yourself from your feelings when everything got too much?’
Shame washed over him. It was true what she’d said—partly. He’d used her, and he was an utter heel for doing it, but he loved her, too. At least, he had. He wasn’t sure of what he felt about anything any more. He just hoped he could untangle all of this and still find that love when he was free of it, that it wouldn’t disappear along with the knots.
He pulled her to him, kissed her cheek and tasted her quiet tears.
‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘To Scotland.’
She softened just a little in his arms, but he was terrified as he lay there very still, holding her. Terrified he’d find he was wrong. That he didn’t want her after all. How could he tell when he was this numb?
The air up here was so clean, so pure. Alex stopped walking up the rock-strewn ridge and turned to look around him. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing man-made. He couldn’t even spot a crofter’s cottage or a road. No power lines. Not even an aeroplane in the sky. Just craggy mountains, mists of purple heather, rough grass and swathes of bracken. And the clear, bright sky.
He could almost imagine he was the only living soul on the planet. No other people meant no relationships to mess up. He was sure this soaring solitary feeling would eventually ground itself and become crushing loneliness, but at the moment he felt wonderfully free.
‘Hey, slowcoach! If you don’t get a move on, we won’t reach the summit by lunchtime and I’m hungry.’
Alex turned his head and found his brother grinning at him.
Well, he was almost the last soul on the planet.
Thankfully, Chris, while good-natured and cheerful, knew when to leave Alex to his own thoughts. He didn’t bombard him with chatter as they climbed. He didn’t sing stupid songs at the top of his voice. Alex loved his brother.
To ensure Chris’s continuing silence, he stopped admiring the view and started putting one foot in front of the other again.
Jennie had been right. He’d needed this.
He was five hundred miles away from his problems, and from this distance he hoped he might find some perspective.
So, for the next few days, whether he tramped through springy glens in the rain, or pushed his way through mist on a hillside, or stood on a summit in a rare moment of sunshine, he let the solitude and the quiet—the soft healing colours—soak into him.
He realised that after Becky had deserted him his mission to protect the world had silently changed into protecting himself. He’d believed he could make himself invincible, believed he could get away with ignoring it all.
So as he climbed he opened the door in the back of his head and looked for monsters. They were real, all right, but not nearly as big and scary as he’d thought they’d be—anger at Becky for leaving him, rage because she’d never told him about Mollie. She’d stolen three years of his daughter’s life from him and he couldn’t even shout at her for it! Just this thought had left him silent with fury for hours. But there was also guilt, sadness, fear. And, as he took them out, one by one, and shone his torch on them, they all vanished into monster dust.
So, while Alex was physically always on the move, inside he found the stillness he’d been searching for. Alex wasn’t a man who needed to weep or shout or punch things to access his emotions. All he needed to do was to stay still long enough for them to catch up with him.
Jennie hated the silence in the house. Mollie had gone to visit Alex’s parents for the weekend, and she’d been here alone too many hours. Alex had been gone for six days and was due home tomorrow afternoon, not long before Mollie’s grandparents returned her. She knew it had been her idea to set her husband free and send him off to the Highlands for a week, but she hadn’t factored in how difficult it would be to be left behind. Waiting. Wondering. Endlessly dissecting every conversation they’d ever had. It was driving her nuts.
She threw down the magazine she’d been reading and hauled herself out of her bubble bath. Even this hadn’t managed to calm her down. It was odd. Although she was a city girl, more used to heels than green wellies, what she really wanted to do was go for a bracing walk in the fresh country air. She wrapped a towel around herself and peeked out of the window.
It was overcast, and they’d had nothing but rain for the last few days, but the weather lady on the breakfast news had said it was going to brighten up later.
She got dressed and then went downstairs and grabbed her cardigan off the hook by the back door and plunged her feet into her bright pink flowery wellington boots. Boring old goose-poop green? Not on your life. She might be adapting to life in a village, but she wasn’t ready for ugly footwear just yet.
There
were plenty of other walkers out this fine Saturday afternoon, but it wasn’t long before Jennie lost her sense of camaraderie and got irritated with them. What had happened? Had the whole of south-east London decided to leave suburban bliss to tramp down country lanes? The footpath was heaving with them—muddy dogs bounding backwards and forward, children screaming in delight or whining about how far they were walking. Parents who just didn’t seem to care about either. And she could tell they weren’t locals because their wellies were just as garish as hers.
Of course, the pub was packed with them, too. Not a table to be had, unless she wanted to wait forty minutes. Which she didn’t. So she gave up on the idea of a Caesar salad and a nice glass of wine and headed for home, but on her way she passed the little church on the edge of the Elmhurst estate. She stopped outside the lychgate and looked up the path to the carved oak doors. They were closed, and she had no idea if they’d be locked on a Saturday, but she’d felt strangely serene last time she’d sat on one of those pews. Perhaps it would work again, and at least she’d be alone in there.
The vicar must be a trusting sort because she found the heavy doors swung open when she pushed them. She closed them behind her, not wanting to give any of the tourists any ideas, and then slowly walked down the aisle, careful not to let her boots squeak too loudly on the flagstones, and chose a pew not far from the back. One with a pillar to lean against.
It was cool but not chilly inside the church. Jennie rested against the pillar, listening to her own breath. The gap between in and out became longer and longer, and soon she felt better, slightly less frazzled. They should bottle the air in this place. It was good stuff.
After a while she decided it might be rude to sit here in complete silence.
I’m back again. Nice place you’ve got here…
Small talk? Surely she could do better than that. She was famed across London for her witty banter. Only…being cheeky didn’t seem right either. She sat still for a moment.
Honesty. Now she remembered. This was the place for that.