The Day My Husband Left: An absolutely gripping and emotional page-turner

by Amy Miller

  ‘You could never be a burden,’ Heidi said. ‘How could you ever even think that? And I’ll be alright. I’m made of strong stuff.’

  A memory from years ago, when she’d felt too weak to even get out of bed, flitted into her mind. In truth, she could only think of how horribly alone and frightened she felt. The one person she wanted to turn to – Johnny – was gone. But the sight of her daughters, pale and stricken with worry and shock, broke her heart.

  ‘We will get through this,’ she said. ‘Your dad would want us to get on with our lives. The future doesn’t end here, tonight, even if it feels like it.’

  Zoe and Scarlet rested their heads on each of Heidi’s shoulders. Despite her speech, she couldn’t see a future without Johnny. Their lives together had been cut brutally short. Her stomach cramped again as her eyes scanned the walls where photographs of their lives together were displayed. Sadness weighted her gut like a bag of cement, and she felt compelled to get up and do something. Anything.

  ‘I’m just going to charge up your dad’s phone,’ she said, getting up from the Chesterfield. ‘His charger’s in his drawer in the workshop. I’ll need to go through his contacts and everything.’

  With Johnny’s phone in her pocket, she went into the kitchen and stared at the packet of muesli on the shelf which Johnny always had for breakfast. He always cheered when a banana chip dropped into his bowl.

  ‘Mum?’ Zoe said. ‘Do you want me to come with you? It’ll be weird without Dad out there.’

  Zoe’s eyes shone out of her face like two blue moons. Heidi’s heart twisted in her chest. Zoe adored her dad. They were such similar people; gentle, sweet, big-hearted. What she said was true – the workshop was Johnny’s favourite place in the whole world.

  ‘No,’ Heidi said. ‘Why don’t you put more wood on the fire? I just want to sort a few things out. I need to find some paperwork. Our life insurance documents. There’s Simone’s footstool I need to work on.’

  Zoe glanced at the wall clock. It was 9 p.m.

  ‘Footstool?’ she said worriedly.

  She looked at her mother with big eyes, but Heidi gave her a small smile, pushed her feet into Johnny’s trainers and opened the back door, treading a path of size-eleven footprints through pouring rain to the workshop.

  Heidi opened the workshop door and turned on the light. Rain hammered noisily on the roof and windows. Despite the bright start to the day it had rained all afternoon, as if the clouds were mourning Johnny too. Heidi stared at Johnny’s leather work apron hanging on a hook near her sewing machine, before stepping over Simone’s blue velvet footstool that she’d abandoned in a panic. Poor Simone had wondered what on earth was going on when Heidi had hurried her out of the workshop earlier, with no explanation. She and Richard would be devastated by this news. She sighed, wondering if she’d ever be able to work again; continuing the business without Johnny seemed impossible. Was impossible. When he’d been ill before, she’d been unable to care for him and work. They’d had to close up for weeks until their friend Max came on board. Max would be heartbroken by Johnny’s death. The thought of telling Johnny’s friends and family, making the awful phone calls, made her feel utterly sick.

  Locating his charger, Heidi plugged in Johnny’s phone and had another look at the picture he’d taken, pinching the image to zoom in. Strangers on the pavement carried bags and umbrellas; there was a street lamp, a tree, bunting strung across the street, shops – including a shoe shop, an estate agent, an optician and a betting shop – and the Blackbird Café on the corner. A busker playing the guitar. She wondered if Johnny had been trying to call for help or had sent the image to her for a reason, or, knowing he was about to die, as a sort of goodbye. The thought made her cry in wretched, shuddering sobs.

  ‘Oh, Johnny,’ she mumbled tearfully. She was going to miss him so very much – there were things he knew, things they shared, that nobody else knew about. Her eyes travelled to the haberdashery unit where the musical trinket box he’d given her all those years ago was hidden, on a day when her life changed beyond measure.

  ‘I can’t do this without you,’ she said to the empty room. Thoughts of what she had to do snowballed in her mind. The funeral, the death notice, the life insurance – all that paperwork. The upholstery jobs booked in for the coming months. She felt so tired, she wanted to lie down and never get up. But she couldn’t because she had to be strong for the girls – they were her priority. In fact, she thought, glancing towards the house, she should go back inside to be with them, not leave them alone with their sorrow and fear.

  Taking a deep breath, she turned out the light, left the workshop and headed towards the house. Johnny’s phone glowed from the corner of the workshop – a light in all the darkness.

  Three

  ‘We could send him up in a firework?’ said Scarlet, with a sad smile. ‘Or we could get his ashes made into a record, with his favourite song or a recording of his voice. I read about it on the Internet.’

  It was a month after Johnny’s death and Heidi, Scarlet, Zoe and Heidi’s mother, Rosalind, were at Rosalind’s beach hut on Southbourne beach. The hut had been in the family for decades and last year Johnny had painted it pale pink – a giant sugared almond. It was surprisingly warm, and they sat outside the hut on rainbow-striped deckchairs, a small round table between them with a pitcher of lemonade and a packet of shortbread on the top.

  ‘I like the idea of the firework,’ said Heidi.

  Scarlet sat on her hands, lifting her shoulders to her ears before dropping them down again. Dressed in a short green dress, with kitten-heel boots, she’d recently coloured her dark brown hair a shade of aubergine and cut a heavy fringe that hung just above her hazel eyes, outlined with her characteristic dramatic eye make-up. She looked every bit the arty university student she was – and Heidi had repeatedly told her she didn’t need to come home every weekend. Scarlet had her own life at college in Southampton. A graphic-design course she loved; a boyfriend, Charlie, who she was mad about; and a small business selling illustrated cards on Etsy.

  ‘I thought he said he wanted to be scattered here, into the sea?’ said Rosalind, lowering her sunglasses so that Heidi could see her pale-grey eyes. It was a habit of hers – she insisted she couldn’t hear properly with her sunglasses on. She was seventy-nine, after all.

  Heidi nodded in agreement. This was Johnny’s favourite beach. Sandy and unspoiled, it was nestled at the bottom of the cliff where a herd of wild goats chewed on shrubs – they’d been introduced to keep the shrubs down and therefore stop the cliff collapsing. Heidi glanced up at them now, happily chomping away, as if life hadn’t irrevocably changed.

  ‘Maybe we could scatter the ashes next month?’ said Heidi, wanting to keep hold of him for a bit longer.

  The day after Johnny’s private cremation, which Heidi couldn’t remember in any real detail (thanks to the sedative the doctor had prescribed) apart from the anonymous bouquet of white lilies that had turned up with ‘thank you’ written on the label, she had collected his ashes in the standard metal urn – like a trophy she’d won at school. At home, she’d transferred them into a stoneware glazed green pot with a frog painted on the side. He was currently on the shelf in the workshop, keeping her company. She’d found herself talking to him on more than one occasion and didn’t want to part with them.

  ‘I’ll be doing my exams then,’ said Zoe, tucking her hair behind her ears and pulling a frightened expression.

  Heidi leaned forward in her chair to squeeze Zoe’s hand. In her ‘boyfriend’ jeans and oversized jumper, she seemed tiny. She was studying A levels in Human Biology, Psychology and Health and Social Care, aiming to take up her conditional offer of a place at Plymouth University to study Paediatric Nursing the following year. Since Johnny’s death, Heidi had been giving Zoe motivational talks, making sure she knew how important it was that she stayed focused – even while she was grieving.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ said Heidi. ‘Just keep on studying h
ard. Nothing’s going to get in the way.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Zoe, helping herself to a piece of shortbread.

  Scarlet’s phone rang, and after checking the number, she turned it to silent, sighed and put the phone into her bag. Heidi looked at her questioningly but was ignored.

  ‘We could have a picnic or something and play that game Dad liked,’ Zoe said. ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘Boules,’ said Heidi, remembering Johnny’s excitement when she’d bought him a set for his birthday to encourage ‘gentle’ exercise during his cardiac rehab programme. ‘It’s French.’

  ‘And Grandma could make one of her famous pavlovas,’ Zoe said.

  ‘I hope it’s famous for the right reasons,’ said Rosalind, with a small laugh, pulling her floaty jacket tighter over her shoulders.

  Always well dressed, Rosalind put Heidi to shame. Glancing at her work dungarees, which she’d worn almost every day since Johnny died, she sighed and closed her eyes. With the sun warming her face, she felt absolutely exhausted. She’d found it hard to sleep these last few weeks, without Johnny in the bed, but also because she couldn’t forget about the photograph Johnny had taken before he died. When she closed her eyes at night, it was glued to the back of her eyelids in little rectangles, like postcards from beyond the grave.

  ‘Zoe, shall we go for a walk?’ asked Scarlet, grabbing her sister’s hand and pulling her up out of the deckchair. There was only two years between them, and with their willowy, slim frames, they were definitely cut from the same family cloth. Zoe grabbed another piece of shortbread and they walked to the water’s edge arm in arm, locked in deep conversation. They both had boyfriends, each other and close friends, but Heidi worried she wasn’t supporting them enough.

  ‘I think I’ll go in for a quick dip,’ she told Rosalind. ‘I’ll just get changed.’

  She went inside the beach hut, pulled the curtain across the door and changed into her swimsuit. Fishing her neoprene socks, swimming hat, goggles and earplugs from her bag, she pulled on her swimming robe and went back outside to join Rosalind, who shook her head and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I don’t know how you can go in at this time of year in just your swimsuit!’ Rosalind said. ‘You’ve a screw loose.’

  Heidi smiled at her mother. She’d been going into the sea all year round, at least twice a week – even on Christmas Day. The cold water was a tonic against the anxiety she felt about Johnny’s health. He had thought she was crazy too, but often came down and sat on the beach to watch her, giving her a clap when she came out. Her eyes pricked with tears at the memory.

  ‘It’s good for me,’ she said to Rosalind. ‘There’s nothing like it.’

  While Heidi put on her swimming cap and goggles, Rosalind nodded.

  ‘How’s the workshop?’ she asked, pulling down her sunglasses to the tip of her nose again. ‘Are you managing okay without Johnny?’

  Heidi’s stomach plummeted. She’d had to put some bigger projects on hold for the time being and thoughts of Annie’s ‘Barry’ chair, Simone’s footstool and a vintage tub chair waiting for attention spun through her head. Though she spent hours in the workshop, knowing that she needed to be busy to stay sane, she achieved comparatively little. The work felt overwhelming, suffocating and exhausting when she felt so utterly broken herself.

  ‘I’m behind, but Max is helping,’ she said. ‘The life insurance will help and I’m going to look into taking on an apprentice eventually. I’ll get there.’

  ‘You will,’ said Rosalind encouragingly. ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going. You always get there in the end. Even in difficult times.’

  Heidi knew what Rosalind was referring to, but some subjects were locked away and buried in the past, never to be dragged up through the decades and forced under the spotlight.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about that photograph Johnny sent me though,’ said Heidi, her eyes pinned to Scarlet and Zoe as she pulled on her swimming socks. ‘What if it means something? And what about those flowers? Isn’t that weird that they didn’t have a name on them?’

  Rosalind pulled her glasses right off and put them on the table by the lemonade.

  ‘Those flowers could have been from one of the customers who simply forgot to add their name,’ said Rosalind in a firm voice. ‘And the photo was probably just a mistake. I often ring the wrong person because I accidentally press a button on my phone. They’re so fiddly! Put it out of your mind now, Heidi, or you’ll drive yourself mad. You have to be strong.’

  Heidi closed her eyes for a moment. The postcards immediately appeared on the back of her eyelids again, like a filmstrip. She had a thought: I can’t put it out of my mind. I just can’t.

  ‘Okay, I’m going in,’ she said. ‘I won’t be long. I’ll swim to the buoy and back.’

  ‘All the way out there?’ said Rosalind, peering out to sea. ‘I’ll be here watching. Ready to call the coastguard.’

  Heidi grinned at Rosalind before crossing the sand to the sea. Wading into the water, pausing to acclimatise to the cold, she splashed her face and arms and gradually entered the sea until her shoulders were submerged. Skin tingling, she pulled down her goggles, lifted her feet from the seabed and started to swim, front crawl, towards the yellow buoy in the distance.

  Keeping her eyes open underwater, she was acutely aware of the sound of her heartbeat, still drumming its regular rhythm, while Johnny’s had fallen silent. She forced her mind to empty and swam.

  Four

  ‘I just know your photo means something,’ Heidi whispered to nobody as she stood on Main Street in Poole. The thought of Johnny dying there was so awful, Heidi wanted to scream. She couldn’t bear it. But she tried her hardest to focus on the reason she’d come. Convinced that Johnny had tried to send her the photo for a reason, that it was a key to something, she planned to go into all the shops and wait for something significant to present itself to her.

  One idea she’d had was that perhaps Johnny had been into the travel agency to book something for her birthday and that he was trying to tell her about it with the photo. So, with a sigh, she decided to go there first. Trembling, she pushed open the door and went inside, waiting awkwardly for an assistant to acknowledge her.

  ‘Can I help you?’ a young woman dressed in a blue-and-red uniform finally asked. Her name label told Heidi that she was called Carolyn.

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a strange request about my late husband,’ said Heidi quickly, taking a seat opposite Carolyn. Every other travel agent in the shop stopped what they were doing and listened in while Heidi explained that she had reason to believe he might have booked a surprise holiday for her birthday, but that he’d sadly died and there was no way of telling if he had or hadn’t. When she finished talking Heidi congratulated herself for not crying – a struggle with her throat threatening to close at any moment.

  Carolyn checked the records – clearly thrilled to be part of the mystery – but after a few minutes, she sighed and shook her head.

  ‘There’s no record of any booking under either of your names,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Eagle. I’m sorry for your loss.’

  Heidi felt winded. She sat for a moment, then gathered up her bag and coat, thanked Carolyn and headed out into the street. Moving next door to the optician, she stared through the window. It was completely empty apart from one member of staff who was trying on sunglasses in front of a mirror. How could the optician be relevant in any way? It couldn’t be.

  The betting shop was next. She poked her head into the dingy premises and blinked at the numerous screens on one side of the wall. A man wearing a cap turned to look at her, didn’t smile, then returned his gaze to the screens. She left the shop and moved to the shoe shop, staring blankly at the rows of shoes on display in the window. There was a pair of desert boots, a bit like the ones Johnny wore – but besides that, there was absolutely no connection.

  ‘This is silly,’ she said, feeling despondent. She thought about the times
she and Johnny had been to this street before, to go shopping. They hadn’t bought anything unusual; sportswear, medicines from Boots, nothing much else. Standing still for a moment, crushing disappointment washed over her. Rosalind was right – the photograph meant nothing. Poor Johnny had simply pressed the wrong buttons when trying to call for help. Her throat ached.

  ‘A complete waste of time,’ she said in her head. ‘Stupid woman.’

  Feeling hollow and lost, she wondered if she should somehow mark the spot where Johnny had spent his final moments. But tying a bunch of flowers to the railings wouldn’t do – they would be brown and wilted in a couple of days. It always made her feel sad to see dried-up, dead flowers on the road where people had died, or tied to the back of benches, wishing they could remain fresh – alive. She remembered once being frozen to the spot when she saw a young woman – possibly a mother – furiously wrenching dead flowers and a soggy teddy bear from railings on a road near a school and hurling them into a bin bag. Heidi wished that someone else had got there first.

  ‘I need to sit down,’ she said, glancing over at the Blackbird Café – the café in the photograph. She’d been there once before with Johnny.

  Feeling dazed, she took a few steps forward and tripped over the kerb, falling forward and landing heavily on her hands, grazing her palms.

  ‘Careful now,’ she thought she heard Johnny say.

  Standing up, blinking, she picked gravel from her palms and suppressed the urge to cry. She’d heard Johnny’s voice a few times lately; during the night when she couldn’t sleep and once in the workshop, when she’d been concentrating on sanding down a chair frame. Simone, who had called her regularly since Johnny died, had told her it was normal to hear voices after suffering a bereavement – but it made her feel like she was losing her mind.