by Lynda Renham
Henry took advantage of the open door and hurried into the house. Ray was giving Imogen his condolences yet again and Henry yawned in boredom. He wished Imogen would take down the sympathy cards. They gave the house a grim atmosphere. They made the room look untidy too. Sympathy cards were out of place in their living room. Imogen closed the door and took the milk into the kitchen. Henry rather fancied a breakfast tea but knew there was no way of getting one. Instead, he made his way to the bedroom where he sat on the bed and stared curiously at their wardrobe. It looked normal enough, just a simple pine wardrobe that Henry had put together. It had taken him all day. Imogen had brought him endless cups of tea and that evening they had eaten fish and chips as a treat.
The baby clothes were nowhere to be seen. Henry cocked his head and then stood to examine the wardrobe closer as if he were an audience participant at an illusionist show. Much to his amazement he was easily able to turn the handle.
‘Well, that’s it then,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m not at all dead.’
The shirts and ties he expected to see were nowhere in sight. Instead, like before, he found himself walking into a room. He recognised it immediately as their kitchen. It looked the same as it did today, except there were birthday cards fanned out on the kitchen counter. Sitting on the hob, as appetising as he remembered it, was Imogen’s birthday cake. I wouldn’t mind a slice of that with a breakfast tea, thought Henry hungrily. If there was one thing Henry couldn’t resist it was Imogen’s sponge cake. He looked at the card with white roses on the front and remembered when he’d bought it, just three months ago. It had been at the very front of the stand in Waitrose and he’d thought how much Imogen would like it. He’d bought a bunch of red roses too. No one could ever say Henry didn’t aspire to romanticism. It didn’t come easy to him, but Henry imagined it didn’t come easy to most men. Romance was for women. He looked at Imogen standing at the kitchen counter. She was dipping chicken thighs into a bowl of seasoned flour. That had been a good dinner, remembered Henry, licking his lips. Imogen had served it with green beans and purple sprouting broccoli along with lovely crispy roast potatoes. He’d bought a nice Chardonnay for them to have with it. He hoped he was still here when dinner was served.
‘They’re beautiful,’ she had said, arranging the roses carefully in the crystal vase that his parents had given them as a wedding present. ‘Fancy you thinking of buying roses,’ she’d added.
‘From Waitrose,’ Henry had informed her. He knew that some of the men at work bought their wives flowers from the garage near the office. Henry had never even considered that.
‘Thank you,’ she’d said, kissing him on the cheek.
He’d gone off to work feeling smug.
‘I’ll get a nice bottle of wine to go with dinner,’ he’d called out before slamming the front door.
He looked at Imogen now. There was a tiny white dusting of flour on her nose. At that moment, the doorbell rang and without thinking Henry went to answer it, but Imogen was already at the door and letting in a smiling, smarmy Jim.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Henry, surprised.
‘Hello dolls,’ Jim said, thrusting a huge bouquet of flowers into her hands. ‘Happy birthday.’
Henry stared aghast at the bouquet. He remembered those flowers. Imogen had said Alice had sent them.
‘That was kind of her, wasn’t it?’ Imogen had said.
Henry remembered being put out that Alice had upstaged him with a bigger bouquet, but all the time it hadn’t been Alice at all.
‘Huh,’ thought Henry, beginning to wonder how many other times his devoted wife had lied to him.
‘They’re beautiful,’ she gushed, her rosy red face looking up at Jim.
Jim grinned and wiped the flour from her nose.
Henry looked down at Jim’s tatty jeans and his scuffed trainers and felt sick. This was not the kind of man his wife should be having an affair with.
‘Give us a kiss on your birthday then,’ laughed Jim.
‘You get out of my house you no good bastard,’ said Henry, who rarely swore.
Henry believed bad language was unnecessary. It showed lack of education when people couldn’t express themselves without swearing. Jim, he felt sure had not had an education. The only education Jim had received was from the University of Hard Knocks.
Imogen turned back to the yellow and white bowl of seasoned flour. A fine white dust fell through her fingers.
‘I’ve got to finish this,’ she said, and Henry saw her eyes were bright and her cheeks pink.
‘Forget that,’ laughed Jim, encircling her waist with his arms.
Henry felt an ache in his chest and an urgent need to be alone. This had been going on under his nose for months. He wanted to close off the sordid thoughts that entered his mind. Humiliation washed over him and he found himself wishing to be really dead, so the emotional pain would stop ripping his insides out. He watched, his eyes hot with tears as Imogen reached up on tiptoe, her hands resting on Jim’s broad shoulders. Laughingly, Jim pulled her into a passionate embrace. Henry shook with a rage he didn’t know he could possess. He wasn’t sure who he was angry with the most, Jim or Imogen. It wasn’t just anger he felt but an indescribable pain; the pain of abandonment and betrayal. The knife of lies and deceit cut through him like he was the sponge cake. Blood the colour of strawberry jam dripping down his shirt, the blood of betrayal.
‘You can finish that later,’ said Jim huskily. ‘Old Henry won’t mind if his dinner’s late on your birthday. He should be taking you out, anyway.’
‘How dare you,’ bellowed Henry, lifting his fist. He had offered to take Imogen out. She’d refused, claiming she preferred to make them a nice dinner.
‘I can’t,’ protested Imogen, pretending to pull out of his arms. ‘My mum’s coming to take me out for lunch.’
‘Lucky mum,’ said smarmy Jim.
‘I hope you crash your stupid van,’ cried Henry childishly.
He looked for the wardrobe door and saw it now standing next to the fridge as though it had come to Henry’s aid when he needed it the most. Without a second glance, Henry angrily strode through it. This is a nightmare of sorts, thought Henry, more vicious than most, more lucid. Henry saw a chink of light and made toward it. His heart was pounding fit to burst, and his fists were clenched. He punched at the walls of the wardrobe wanting his hand to hurt but his hand went straight through the wood as though it were paper. This reality isn’t real, he told himself. He walked into his bedroom, down the stairs and straight through the front door.
Ah, that’s how you do it, he thought proudly.
A dark cloud of misery hung over him. His reality was no longer a certainty. The perfect life he’d led with such precision was flawed beyond recognition. Everything he’d known to be true had been a lie. The woman he hoped could save him was now beyond his reach.
A car pulled into the driveway and Henry saw it was Imogen’s parents. Henry’s curiosity led him back into the house.
Journal entry
Imogen
It had started innocently enough one Tuesday morning. I’d been cleaning the house, not that it needed cleaning in the slightest. The two days I wasn’t at the grocer’s I’d clean the house thoroughly. I’ve got nothing else to do. Henry doesn’t like me to fiddle in the garden. I’d been hanging out washing when Lilian Ambrose from next door had appeared at the garden wall.
She wanted to show off her newly knitted cardigan which, quite frankly, was ghastly, far too many colours. I told her it was lovely. She offered to make me one.
She was proud as a peacock and quite honestly, in that hideous cardigan she could easily have been one. Henry and I once had a discussion as to how old we thought Lilian Ambrose was. Henry thought about fifty, but I’d said no way. That boat had sailed a long time ago. She was nearer sixty. Henry could never guess ages. She must think I’m always washing. Henry doesn’t like dirty clothes ‘stewing’ as he put it, in the wash basket. Of course
, if I worked full-time it would have to stew and that’s that. Other people’s washing must stew. It would have been nice to work full-time, to have had a position of responsibility instead of just being a shop assistant. It sounded much better to say, ‘I’m the manager.’
She’d lit up a Bensons and Hedges and it had been all I could do not to rush to the back door and close it. Smoke drifts in quickly and Henry hates that. After several coughing fits she asked if I was still looking for a roofer. She had a guy named Jim doing some work for her.
‘He’s got references and everything,’ she said. ‘Likes cash in hand if that’s alright.’
I keep telling myself it happened because I was lonely. I’d lost my way. Lost my identity somewhere between my wedding and the greengrocer’s. I should have talked to Henry but there was never a slot in his routine. I did try.
That afternoon I sat with a cup of tea and daydreamed about our son. He would have been about sixteen. It had been a boy; I’d been sure of that. In my dreams he was perfection. His hair and eyes were the colour of dark coffee beans, but his skin was all latte. He had that shy look about him that teens often get when they've grown too much too fast, like they aren't really sure about being a man just yet. He would have been the joy of my soul.
Jim was full of jokes and had a throaty laugh and I suddenly felt alive again. Nothing would happen but it’ll be nice having him around the house, laughing and whistling. It always felt so dead in the house.
He’s so different to Henry. Not sweet smelling and crisp but earthy and rough around the edges. Not perfect and that really makes a change in this house.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘It’s not the thing these days,’ said Cynthia placing our white bone-china teapot onto the table. Cynthia doesn’t believe in teabags in a mug. ‘People don’t feel the need. It won’t help you. Henry wouldn’t expect it, you know.’
Henry wondered what it was he wouldn’t expect and how on earth his mother-in-law could know. Cynthia had no idea what he would or wouldn’t expect. Imogen’s mother had barely known him. In fact, she’d never really bothered to get to know him. Maybe, if she had, thought Henry, just maybe, things would have been different, but then again, maybe not. Henry had never been what they would have chosen for their daughter. If asked, Cynthia would have said that she had tried very hard to get on with Henry. She’d had her reservations about him, which she would insist had been quite valid. He’d been brash, selfish, and self-opinionated. Of course, she’d never stopped telling him that he’d stolen her opportunity to become a grandmother and that she could never forgive him for that. How Imogen would have made a wonderful mother. Cynthia had envisioned Imogen giving her many grandchildren. It seemed everyone she knew had them, except her, and whenever possible she would point out that Imogen’s hips were perfect for childbearing.
‘Children would be a blemish on our idyllic lifestyle,’ Henry had said.
‘Children aren’t a blemish,’ Cynthia had argued. ‘They’re a blessing.’
She turned now to her daughter and said,
‘Hardly anyone wears black these days.’
‘I want to wear it,’ Imogen told her mother firmly. ‘It seems only right.’
Cynthia sighed.
‘It doesn’t become you,’ she said.
Henry thought that black didn’t really become anyone, but, of course, he couldn’t say so. At least, he could, but no one would hear him.
‘Widowhood or black,’ snapped Imogen.
Her mother pursed her lips.
‘We’re only trying to help darling.’
‘I know,’ said Imogen, softening, taking the steaming tea cup from her mother. Cynthia didn’t believe in mugs. Mugs were for builders, she’d insist.
Imogen’s mouth opened as though she was about to speak but instead she bit her lower lip.
‘Why don’t you come for lunch tomorrow?’ said her father, John. ‘Take your mind off things.’
Take her mind off my death, you mean, thought Henry.
‘That would be nice. I’ve decided to go back to work next week.’
‘So soon,’ said her mother, surprised. ‘Everything seems to be happening very quickly.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Imogen defensively.
‘Well, the funeral was very quick and …’
‘I didn’t see the point in dragging things on,’ Imogen sighed.
‘No, of course not,’ agreed her father.
‘I think it best,’ said Imogen. ‘I need to get my mind off things. I’ll go stark raving mad if I don’t.’
Tears rushed to her eyes and Cynthia hurried to embrace her.
‘Oh, darling,’ she murmured.
John grabbed some kitchen towel.
‘Here,’ he said.
‘I’m alright,’ said Imogen, snatching the piece of kitchen towel and turning her head away.
‘We should look at this insurance you know,’ said her father, pushing the documents across the table.
‘Not again,’ muttered Henry.
‘I know, but, not yet,’ said Imogen, her eyes avoiding the papers.
Cynthia looked despairingly at John Wiseman who simply shrugged. He didn’t like to get involved in other people’s business. Not even his daughter’s.
‘Strange things have been happening in the house,’ said Imogen suddenly.
Henry’s head snapped up.
‘I need to tell someone,’ said Imogen. ‘It’s making me quite jittery. I’m sure it’s all in my mind but …’
Cynthia cocked her head, her eyes curious.
‘What do you mean strange things?’ she asked, a small tremor of excitement in her voice.
‘I sensed something. It happened yesterday and again today.’
The hairs on the back of Henry’s neck bristled. Imogen had sensed him.
‘What kind of strange things do you mean?’ Cynthia asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Imogen, wishing that she hadn’t brought it up. ‘It happened after you left yesterday. I felt something when I was in the bedroom.’
‘Felt what? I don’t understand.’
Henry saw John shiver.
‘It felt like someone was in the bedroom with me.’
Cynthia gasped.
‘I was,’ cried Henry excitedly. ‘I was right beside you.’
‘Oh, my goodness,’ said Cynthia.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said John, putting a dampener on the affair.
‘Then again, before you arrived, I thought I heard something upstairs but …’
They all lifted their heads to look at the ceiling as though they expected something to be hanging from it.
‘You’re very low, that’s all it is,’ said John, who didn’t believe in such nonsense.
‘Yes,’ said Imogen. ‘You’re right.’
Cynthia Wiseman, who found all things psychic fascinating, wasn’t going to let it go that easily.
‘Perhaps Henry is trying to make contact,’ she blurted, without thinking.
‘Got it in one,’ said Henry. Now they were making progress.
‘For goodness’ sake Cynthia,’ said John, shocked. ‘She’s just lost her husband.’
Imogen wiped tears from her eyes.
‘It’s alright,’ she said.
‘For pity’s sake,’ he groaned.
‘Maybe you should visit a psychic?’ said Cynthia.
John raised his eyebrows.
‘I don’t know,’ said Imogen doubtfully.
‘Been there, done that, got the T-shirt,’ said Henry.
‘We could ask Faye,’ Cynthia said eagerly.
‘Well …’
‘I don’t think so,’ said John, feeling for once that he should intervene.
‘What harm can it do?’ said Cynthia.
‘Maybe Dad’s right,’ said Imogen, her lips quivering. ‘I don’t want to raise bad spirits or anything.’
‘Quite right,’ agreed John. ‘Best not to meddle with things you don’t
understand.’
‘I’ll speak to Faye,’ said Cynthia. ‘She understands.’
Imogen’s hands shook as she pulled on her gloves.
‘I’m meeting a friend for lunch,’ she said.
‘We’ll give you a lift,’ said John, clearly relieved to be leaving. He doesn’t fancy staying here, thought Henry. Not if I’m mooching around.
Cynthia looked behind her. She seemed to sense Henry’s presence. If only she could hear him.
‘I’ll talk to Faye as soon as I get home,’ she assured Imogen.
Henry wondered who Faye was and then figured he would find out soon enough.
Chapter Thirty
Henry sat on a bench that was dedicated to Maurice Shirl ‘because he loved this view so much’ and watched the ducks swimming among the reeds. He could understand why Maurice had liked it so much and couldn’t help wondering how Maurice had died. Funny, thought Henry. Dying is a bit like buying a new car. Suddenly everywhere you look there’s the same car as your new one and yet you could have sworn never to have seen many before. It’s like being dead. You become more aware of all the others that have gone before you. People who’d had busy lives, jobs in offices, sheds nurturing seeds ready to be planted and a house overflowing with family on a Sunday. Then, suddenly gone, just like Henry, with no warning and no time to prepare. Sheds left, seeds uncared for, family in tatters and an empty office desk. It shouldn’t be allowed, thought Henry. This dying business is a tragedy all round. No one wins.
Tied up boats swayed in the breeze and Henry sniffed at the air, the peaty smell of algae reaching his nostrils. He looked at the boats and found himself transported back to several years earlier, when he and Imogen had gone boating with Jack and his girlfriend. He closed his eyes and remembered a time when his wife hadn’t been a liar and an adulterer.