The Dead Wife's Handbook

by Hannah Beckerman

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just after Mummy had managed to calm you, we were sitting on the grass under a tree in the gardens and we were trying to teach you how to kiss. Mummy kept saying, “Can you give me a kiss, Ellie?” and then she and I would kiss each other to show you how it was done. And on about the fifteenth time of Mummy asking you, all of a sudden you crawled over to her and planted the biggest, wettest kiss on her lips. It was the first time you’d ever done it. We were so happy, we kept asking you to do it again and again, and you were so pleased with yourself for learning something new and making us laugh so much that you carried on, kissing each of us in turn, for about five wonderful minutes. It was one of the sweetest things you’d ever done and Mummy and I were so excited.’

  He’s right. I’d forgotten but that’s exactly the story of Ellie’s first kisses. She was adorable that day. Every time she succeeded in another kiss we’d clap and she’d giggle infectiously and there was nothing but delight in that repetition for any of us. It made the whole humid trip worthwhile.

  Ellie is smiling now, her anxiety evaporating in the recounting of a single memory.

  ‘Is that true, Dad? Is that really what happened?’

  ‘As true as you and I standing here right now, making very little progress on seeing this humongous big palace.’

  Ellie giggles and the two of them resume their tour with a renewed sense of purpose.

  They’re in a dark, oak-panelled room now, where Max puts a hand on our daughter’s shoulder and stops her, literally, in her tracks.

  ‘Do you know the best method I have for remembering Mummy when I most want to?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Whenever I want to think about Mummy, all I have to do is look at you.’

  Max ushers Ellie over to the far side of the room where a large, ancient, gilt-framed mirror is hanging on the wall. He positions her in front of it and stands behind her, his hands on her shoulders, the two of them studying the pair of reflections staring back at them. I think of the centuries’ worth of people who’ve stood exactly there, examining their own image, and wonder what stories that mirror must hold.

  ‘Whenever you want to get a sense of Mummy in the world, all you have to do is look in the mirror, sweetheart. You’re the spitting image of her; you’ve got the same curly hair that bounces happily even when you’re sad, the same dark brown eyes that hold the promise of all the secrets of the world, the same warm smile that makes everyone want to be friends with you. You look just like her. And it’s more than that, it’s not just your looks. You have lots of her mannerisms too, and I don’t know if you learnt them from her when you were little or whether you’ve inherited them, but they always make me smile. Like the way you roll your eyes – without even being aware of it – when someone says something you think is silly. Or the way you flap your hands in the air when you’re really excited. And the frown your face gives off when you’re angry is exactly like Mummy’s, which is why I sometimes can’t help laughing when you’re cross.’

  I gaze at Ellie’s reflection and I see for the first time that Max is right. I don’t understand how I hadn’t noticed it before. Maybe it’s because she’s grown up so much over the past couple of years or perhaps it’s because we see ourselves so differently from how others see us. But studying Ellie’s face right now is like looking at a photograph of myself at that age. He’s right about the mannerisms too. Max used to laugh at my ‘flappy hand syndrome’ and was forever warning me to be careful of my uncontrollable eye-rolling for fear it would get me in trouble one day. I’d never recognized either trait in Ellie until this moment.

  Ellie is giggling at herself in the mirror now, possibly embarrassed by the scrutiny under which she’s been placed, possibly from the pleasure of this latest discovery.

  ‘Am I really like her, Dad?’

  ‘I promise you, munchkin. You’re like two very pretty peas in a pod.’

  Ellie’s grin widens, creating the faintest of dimples in her flushed cheeks.

  ‘What other ways am I like Mummy?’

  ‘Okay, let me think. There’s the fact that you’re both incredibly impatient and can’t understand why you ever have to wait for anything. There’s the way you both walk – I always loved Mummy’s walk, the way she sort of jiggled her hips as she moved, and you do exactly the same thing. Even the way you scoop all the icing off the top of a cup-cake and eat that first before devouring the rest – that’s exactly what Mummy used to do too. And there are loads of other similarities as well. You love cooking, just like Mummy, but you hate Maths and so did she. You like lakes and mountains and big open spaces which Mummy always loved too. And you’re really interested in talking to people and they like talking to you as well, which is a very special quality that you definitely get from Mummy. Honestly, angel, there are a million ways you’re like her.’

  Ellie slips her hand into Max’s as they continue their immersive tour of the past.

  It’s funny how I’d never seen those parts of myself in Ellie before. I’d thought the imprint I left on Ellie was purely genetic, an invisible code which, when mixed with Max’s, would produce an entirely unique formula. I’d thought that mannerisms couldn’t be inherited and that she and I hadn’t been given long enough together for anything like that to be learnt. I’d thought that tastes and aversions were individual, not preferences to be bestowed through the generations. I’d thought that there was no trace of me left, not of my personality nor my idiosyncrasies nor even my foibles. But now I can see that there are vestiges of me alive in Ellie and perhaps they’ll be alive in her children too and perhaps that, after all, is one of the great gifts of parenthood.

  Max and Ellie have moved into the Tudor kitchens now, Ellie marvelling at the enormous fireplace and the antiquated utensils.

  ‘Dad, if Eve moved in wouldn’t it mean that you and her would be together all the time and I’d be on my own?’

  Max gazes at her intently as though he can’t imagine why she’d ever even suggest it.

  ‘Angel, I’ll never leave you by yourself – not even for an evening – unless you’re okay with it. The only change that would happen if Eve moved in is that she’d be there to help with your Maths homework every night and the three of us could watch TV together whenever we wanted and you really could have French toast for breakfast every weekend. I think it might be quite cosy, don’t you?’

  Ellie’s eyes narrow in contemplation.

  ‘But you and I would still get to play MasterChef and we’d still sometimes just snuggle on the sofa on our own with a movie and you’d still let me stay up late at the weekends, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Absolutely, angel. Nothing at all between you and I would change.’

  Ellie looks up at Max with an intensity that seems to contain so much of her own turbulent history.

  ‘Okay, Dad. I don’t think I mind if Eve wants to come and live with us, as long as you promise we can still do stuff on our own together, just the two of us.’

  Max raises Ellie into his arms and kisses the top of her nose.

  ‘Sweetheart, there’ll always be time for you and I to have fun on our own together. You’re my super-special girl and I wouldn’t want anything or anyone to come in between us, ever.’

  They hug one another, as oblivious to the other visitors wandering around them as those strangers are to the momentous decision that’s just been made.

  ‘So when will she move in? Will it be next weekend?’

  ‘No, not quite so soon I don’t think, angel. I thought it would be nice for you and me to have a bit more time by ourselves first and Eve will have lots to organize at her own house. So how about we ask her if she wants to come in a couple of months’ time, at the beginning of December? That way we could all be together for Christmas, if you think you might like that?’

  ‘Okay, Dad. ’Cos we wouldn’t want her to be all by herself at Christmas, would we?’

  My husband and daughter embrace one another in a centuries-old kitch
en, and as I watch them I think about the decision Max and Ellie have reached today and the conversation by which they’ve journeyed there. I wonder whether the greatest test going forward is not whether I can bear the torment of Eve taking my place at home but whether the existing memories, the inherited characteristics, the shared experiences of a different cast can survive such a fundamental change in personnel.

  As Max and Ellie leave the ancient kitchens and head down a passageway to wherever their odyssey will take them next, a door swings shut behind them and the clouds rapidly accumulate underneath me. In a matter of seconds, both the present and the past have vanished and I’m back alone in the whiteness.

  I’m not lonely though. I’m not distraught or depressed or indignant as I so often am when my access ends. Today I think of Ellie and her flapping hands and her rolling eyes and her fingers swiping the chocolate icing from the top of a cupcake and I know, for the first time, that even though I’m here a little part of me remains down there, with her.

  Chapter 29

  Pulp’s ‘Disco 2000’ is blasting from oversized speakers. The room – a plain, 1960s, square brick hall – is decorated with balloons and streamers and banners. People are dancing but there’s no one I recognize. For a second I fear there’s been a mistake in my access, that I’ve been delivered to the wrong event, that I’m gatecrashing a stranger’s party from beyond the grave. I spin round, hoping to see at least one familiar face, but this group looks significantly younger than my peers.

  I’m about to take myself off to hover in the corner in the hope that something or someone will clock the mistake and get me out of here when I notice the banner above the door: ‘Happy 40th Max’.

  This is Max’s fortieth birthday party? But Max doesn’t even like parties. At least, the Max I was married to didn’t. And who are all these people who look like they’ve yet to reach their fourth decade let alone their fifth? Old friends of Max or young friends of Eve?

  It’s a reminder, as if I needed one, of just how much has changed in my absence. I remember Max and I discussing our fortieth birthdays when they still felt sufficiently distant to joke about. He had said he’d like us to return to New York for his, to take Ellie back to the city in which she first came into being. I’d wanted to head to Iceland for mine, to explore somewhere new together, to discover it from the very beginning with Ellie. It looks like Max may have changed his mind about a lot of things since I’ve been gone.

  I finally spy Max, Eve and Ellie in one corner of the room, where Ellie is arranging presents on a table and Max is chatting to Eve, his arm protectively encasing her tiny waist. She looks amazing. She’s wearing a gold sequinned shift dress and satin three-inch heels, a combination which should, if there were any justice in the world, make her look like she’s walked straight out of the WAGs’ enclosure at a premiership football match. Instead she looks elegant and stylish, her golden hair luminescent next to the sequins, her slender frame proving the perfect hanger for the simplest cut of dress.

  I make my way over to them, arriving just in time to witness, up close and much too personally, Max kiss Eve passionately and lingeringly on the lips.

  ‘Thank you, baby – it’s a fantastic party. I love it. Although I can’t imagine how you managed to organize all of this, and invite all these people, without me suspecting a thing. I clearly need to watch out for your devious streak.’

  So this was all Eve’s doing. I might have guessed. I can’t imagine Max arranging something like this for himself.

  ‘Well, I did have a lot of help from my fabulous party co-planner, didn’t I, Ellie?’

  ‘Dad, you have no idea how hard it’s been to keep this a secret. I had to go through the entire address book on your mobile phone while you were in the shower every day for about a week to find all the phone numbers for your friends. Then, do you remember the other week when I said I really needed my old PE kit from the loft for a fancy dress thing at school? Well, that was a total fib – sorry. I wanted to get on your computer and find all those old songs you like, from the 1990s and everything, so Eve could give a list to the DJ. And this morning, when you went out for your bike ride, me and Eve and Granny and Grandpa sneaked over here and decorated the whole place.’

  Ellie’s eyes sparkle with the pleasure of being released from a secret that’s been a challenge to keep.

  ‘Clearly I’m going to need to be careful of your scheming side too, young lady. I can’t believe you managed to snoop through all my things without me knowing.’

  ‘Eve said it was for your own good. And it wasn’t like I did it without permission.’

  Ellie and Eve nod at one another in mutual acknowledgement of their success.

  ‘And when on earth were you having all these surreptitious conversations? I can’t think when you’ve had the opportunity without me being around.’

  ‘Oh, Ellie and I can be very efficient party planners when we need to be. There were the Saturday morning planning sessions in the changing room at the swimming pool and the two nights you were out at parents’ evenings. And you don’t really think that Ellie and I have been shopping three consecutive Saturdays while you’ve been at the football, do you? Honestly, Ellie, what does your dad take us for?’

  Ellie giggles while I try to absorb the extensive inventory of the life that Eve now shares with my daughter.

  ‘Well, you should both be very proud. You did brilliantly at keeping it all a secret and this party – well, I think it’s the best party I’ve ever been to.’

  Eve and Ellie share a mutually congratulatory hug and I can almost feel the warmth emanating from their embrace. They seem genuinely fond of one another, I can’t deny it. Children are no good at faking that kind of attachment. I can’t deny, either, the sheer pleasure of seeing Ellie happy, contented, relaxed. And, by the look of it, loved.

  ‘Max, I’m going to pop to the kitchen and get the last of the food out. I think people are going to need to start soaking up alcohol soon.’

  ‘I’ll come with you and give you a hand. Ellie, why don’t you go over and talk to Grandpa – it looks like he’d appreciate the company.’

  I look over to where Max is pointing and see Ralph sitting on his own by a depleted tray of sandwiches. I spy Joan now, too, following Max and Eve into the hall’s small kitchenette, where Eve busies herself unwrapping mini bagels and focaccias on to large china plates, and decanting bumper bags of crisps into mahogany bowls.

  ‘It’s such a lovely party, you two. The music’s a bit loud but I suspect that’s just me showing my age. You are clever, Eve, arranging all this without him ever guessing.’

  ‘You’re not wrong there, Mum. It’s a fantastic surprise. To be fair, Eve, you probably knew I’d never have agreed if you’d asked me, didn’t you?’

  Eve bows her head and arches an eyebrow in mock guilty fashion, before they erupt into an explosion of laughter and he kisses her in a way I’m sure he never kissed me in front of his mum.

  Joan is laughing too, her back against the open kitchen door, where I can see Mum and Harriet approaching. I hoped they’d be here too, but I hadn’t dared assume it after some of the conflict I’ve witnessed recently. I just wish Mum wasn’t about to enter the kitchen at the very moment Max and Eve are engaged in yet another public display of affection. I don’t know what it is about the combination of my husband, his new girlfriend, my mum and kitchens, but it seems to be the perfect recipe for emotional upset.

  ‘So have you two settled on a date for Eve to move in yet?’

  As Joan waits expectantly for an answer, Mum and Harriet stop in their tracks, out of Joan’s sight but within earshot, and exchange a mutually perplexed look. Max and Eve, with a view behind Joan that Joan can’t see, stand mute, their mouths slightly ajar, as if on the verge of replying but having lost the words somewhere between their brains and their mouths.

  ‘There’s no need to look at me like that, with your mouths open like a couple of gawping fish. It’s a perfectly sensible questio
n isn’t it? I was wondering if your dad and I could help in any way, maybe picking up your things, Eve, or are you getting removal men for that?’

  Max and Eve remained glued to the spot, each wearing the expression of a teenager caught smoking behind the bike shed. It’s Mum, eventually, who finds a voice for all of them.

  ‘So, were you going to tell me yourselves, or were you just going to let me find out next time I come to collect Ellie for the weekend?’

  Joan spins round like a startled bird that’s just discovered someone else has been pecking at her nest. Instead, she finds my mum and my best friend standing inches behind her, Mum glaring with humiliated rage and Harriet fixed with the look of someone who knows they’re about to bear witness to an unmissable showdown.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Celia. We only decided very recently and I just haven’t had a chance to tell you.’

  ‘Well, you can tell me now.’

  ‘Perhaps now’s not the best time to talk about it. Maybe Max can tell you tomorrow? We don’t want to spoil the party after all, do we?’

  It’s Joan’s attempt at diplomacy, but a true diplomat would have recognized that of the five people squeezed into a kitchen well beyond capacity, she’s the least suited to staging an intervention.

  ‘That’s all very well for you to say, Joan. You’re not the one who’s been kept in the dark, are you?’

  ‘We weren’t keeping you in the dark, honestly, Celia. We’re actually very excited about it. Eve’s coming to live with us in about six weeks’ time, at the beginning of December, so the three of us can be settled for Christmas.’

  Max delivers a placatory smile, but I’m not sure he’s going to be able to charm his way out of this one.