The Man I Didn't Marry

by Anna Bell

  ‘What’s your golf handicap after your holiday?’ asks Max.

  Mick freezes in panic and I interrupt.

  ‘You know, I’m a bit hungry,’ I say.

  ‘Do you want me to make you another omelette?’ asks Max, looking up.

  ‘No, it’s not that kind of hunger. It’s a pregnancy craving. What I really fancy is pickles. Do you think you could run out to the little Sainsbury’s and pick me up some?’

  I do my best sweet smile.

  ‘Pregnancy cravings? Do you have them a lot?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I say, lying. Aside from my diet of ginger nuts in the first three months, the only cravings I’ve been having are for the things I’m not allowed to have, like gin.

  ‘OK, then,’ says Max.

  ‘Hang on, I’ve got some cornichons,’ says Judy, jumping up, ignoring the daggers I’m shooting her way. ‘I think I got some in for Christmas.’

  ‘Mum, it’s August,’ says Rach.

  ‘I know that,’ she says, getting up and digging through one of her cupboards. ‘But you have to get these things whilst you see them or else you’ll forget and they’ll sell out nearer the time.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure they sell them all year round,’ says Rach, shaking her head.

  ‘Aha! Here they are,’ she says, sliding the jar along to me, followed by a fork and a plate.

  I stare at it in horror. I hadn’t really thought this through at all. My stomach lurches at the thought. Cornichons are probably the last thing I want to be eating at nine o’clock in the morning.

  ‘Stroke of luck,’ says Mick, ‘now Max can stay right here.’

  ‘Yes, how lucky.’ I twist the lid off and try not to gag at the smell of vinegar. I stab one wrinkly little pickle with my fork; it looks so unappetising but I pop it in my mouth anyway. I’m chewing, chewing as quickly as I can, and I wash it down with some orange juice.

  ‘Did that hit the spot?’ asks Judy.

  ‘Almost, but now that you’ve mentioned Christmas, I fancy a cherry bakewell. Max, do you think that you could get me some?’

  ‘Yes, nothing screams Christmas like a cherry bakewell,’ says Rach.

  ‘What, they’re almondy; that’s festive!’ I say, throwing her a look and hoping she gets what I’m trying to do.

  ‘I might have some of those too,’ says Judy, about to get up.

  ‘No, Judy. I don’t think you do,’ I say. ‘I ate them on Wednesday afternoon when I came over.’

  ‘You were only here for a couple of hours,’ she says in shock. ‘I had two packets.’

  Judy had asked me to wait in for a parcel she was expecting, as she and Graham were off to their gardening club’s AGM and she knew I had Wednesdays off work. I’d been delighted to escape my tasteless house and hang out in a neutrally painted space for a few hours.

  ‘Sasha and I were hungry.’

  ‘You and a toddler ate twelve of them?’ she says, disbelieving.

  ‘Uh-huh and now I really want some more. Max, can you run up to Sainsbury’s. It’s still on the main road,’ I say, getting up and passing his wallet that is on the side. ‘I’d go myself, but I’m feeling a bit sluggish.’

  ‘Probably the twelve cakes you ate last week,’ says Judy, causing Rach and Gaby to giggle at my scolding.

  ‘I guess I can go,’ say Max standing up, looking unsure. ‘Do you need anything else, Mum?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ says Judy. ‘Unless Ellie’s raided anything else.’

  ‘No, that’s all.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ says Mick. ‘Might do me good to stretch my legs.’

  ‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘I think Gaby should go.’

  Both she and Rach look at me in confusion, before Gaby nods.

  ‘Come on, Max,’ she says firmly as she stands up, and Max has no choice but to follow her out of the kitchen. He hands Sasha over to me as he goes.

  ‘You know, you’ve got to watch your sugar intake,’ Judy says to me. ‘I’m surprised Gaby didn’t tell you off.’

  ‘I haven’t eaten all the bakewells; they’re still in the cupboard. I just needed to get him out of the house.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To discuss what we should do for his birthday… Why the bloody hell do you think?’ I say, letting Sasha wriggle off my lap. She heads straight for the corner where Judy has a box of toys she’s picked up from charity shops.

  ‘Too right,’ says Rach. ‘Someone’s got to talk some sense into the two of you. I mean, what are you playing at, pretending you’re together?’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea,’ says Mick. ‘Your mother just bamboozled me into it.’

  ‘I didn’t bamboozle you into it. Ellie and I decided last night that it would upset Max to tell him about the break-up.’

  ‘Whoa, hang on, that was before Mick turned up,’ I protest. ‘You can’t just pretend you’re still a couple.’

  ‘Why not?’ says Judy.

  ‘Because Max thinks that Mick lives here and, if you don’t tell him, Mick is going to have to live with you until Max gets his memory back,’ I say.

  ‘Well, we can pretend when you come over, can’t we?’ says Mick. ‘I can stay in the spare room the rest of the time.’

  ‘That’s if Max wants to come home to our house,’ I say. ‘He hasn’t been that keen to leave here and I don’t think you can keep up the charade with us all living under one roof. And what if he doesn’t get his memory back for months? You can’t stay here indefinitely.’

  Judy flinches.

  ‘I’m sure it won’t be that long,’ says Mick. ‘We’ll cope. Won’t we, Judy?’

  I rub at my temples.

  ‘What about Ruby?’ Rach asks. ‘Surely she won’t be that understanding about you staying with your ex-wife.’

  ‘I’ll just have to tell her that I’m staying with Max and Ellie,’ he says.

  ‘Pah,’ says Judy. ‘What a surprise. You’re lying to her too.’

  ‘See, you’re bickering already,’ says Rach. ‘This is going to get out of hand. The sooner you tell Max, the easier it’ll be.’

  ‘But then he won’t speak to me all over again,’ says Mick. ‘Did you see how he hugged me?’

  ‘And it crushed him the first time, really crushed him,’ says Judy. ‘Rach, surely you remember. He went all out of control with his drinking and I can’t watch him go through that again. Not with Ellie pregnant, and having Sasha to look after; we want Max to be stable. Look, the doctor says that his memory is going to come back any day now. And we don’t want to give him any nasty shocks; we don’t want to make his memory loss any worse.’

  ‘Yes, but—’ I start.

  ‘It’s in his best interests,’ says Mick.

  For once they’re presenting a united front.

  ‘You know that when Max finds out – and let’s face it, he’s going to – he’s going to be even more hurt that you lied to him,’ I say.

  ‘No one wants to hurt him,’ says Mick, sighing. ‘I’ve hurt him enough for a lifetime.’

  ‘We haven’t got any other choice,’ says Judy.

  The front door goes again, Gaby and Max come walking back in, clutching boxes of cakes. Judy and Mick give Rach and me pleading looks.

  ‘Here you go,’ says Max, sliding the packet across to me.

  ‘Coffee?’ says Judy, touching the cafétière to make sure it’s still warm. ‘And then we can all have one of those cakes.’

  Sasha hears the sound of food packaging and cruises round the back of chairs to get to me – she truly is my daughter. I break her off a bit of pastry and hand them out to everyone, before digging into one myself. They’re so good that had I found them on Friday I probably would have eaten all twelve.

  ‘So,’ says Gaby, ‘are you any closer to working out what Max was doing in Chiswick in the first place?’

  We all look at Max and his blank face.

  ‘What, you haven’t worked that out?’ says Mick.

  ‘Of course not, or he’d probabl
y have his memory back already,’ says Judy.

  ‘What have you got so far?’ says Gaby, cutting through the tension.

  ‘Um, well, we haven’t exactly. We’ve been so busy catching Max up,’ I say.

  Mick sighs and rolls up his sleeves, revealing a deep dark tan that couldn’t possibly be the result of a two-week holiday. He stands up and walks over to the blackboard that Judy writes her shopping list on and wipes off her list, before taking it off the wall and propping it up on the work surface so that we can all see it.

  ‘Oi!’ says Judy.

  ‘I’ll remind you that you need washing powder,’ he says. ‘Let’s write down what you know so far.’

  Judy folds her arms.

  ‘Five minutes through the door and already taking charge of the situation,’ she says.

  ‘Well, darling,’ he says, giving her a big smile, ‘it’s what I always do, isn’t it?’

  Judy looks like a pressure cooker about to explode, and, for a minute, I think the truth is all going to come tumbling out.

  ‘Hmm, what would we do without you?’ she mutters, digging deep in her acting skills and smiling back.

  Mick starts writing and I squint to see that he’s written the word ‘Chisick’.

  ‘There’s a silent “w” in it, after the “s”,’ says Judy.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ says Mick, correcting it with such force that I’m worried the chalk’s going to snap.

  ‘Ooh, this is just like Line of Duty,’ I say, my eyes lighting up.

  ‘What’s Line of Duty?’ says Max.

  The hours that we’ve spent at this very kitchen table discussing plot twists and joking in acronyms as a piss-take of the show’s verbal diarrhoea of OCGs, UCOs and AFOs.

  ‘It’s a TV programme, and it’s brilliant,’ says Rach, and Max gives an apologetic shrug.

  ‘Max found himself wandering in Chiswick with a “w”,’ Mick carries on. ‘And then he travelled to Brixton. I take it that I’ve spelt that right?’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ says Judy.

  ‘Then he phoned me before travelling to Fleet. He’s lost five years of his life.’

  He underlines the year three times and then turns to look at us.

  ‘What else have we got?’ he says, raising an eyebrow in hope.

  Judy, Rach and I exchange glances.

  ‘We haven’t got anything else,’ I say.

  ‘Nothing else? What about his phone? Have you been through the records, text messages, WhatsApp, Facebook?’

  Max shakes his head.

  ‘I’ve had a quick look and couldn’t see anything,’ he says. ‘There’s only really messages from Ellie, which don’t make a whole lot of sense. Stuff about caterpillars.’

  He picks his phone up from the table and I’m worried he’s going to read them out loud, and I put my hand over to cover his screen. Since the night of the Hungry Caterpillar costume it’s become our codeword if either of us is feeling a bit horny.

  ‘We don’t need to go into those,’ I say dismissively. ‘What about a work calendar? Or work emails? That’s where you were headed yesterday morning when this all happened.’

  ‘I like your thinking, Ellie,’ says Mick, pointing at me with the chalk.

  Judy purses her lips.

  ‘I’ve been trying to find my work emails,’ Max says.

  ‘Here, I can do it,’ I say, reaching out for his phone.

  He pulls it closer to him.

  ‘Or Rach could look; she’s good with tech,’ I say, hurt that he doesn’t trust me enough to be let loose on it.

  Max unlocks the phone with his thumbprint – still in awe of the technology – before he hands it to her.

  Mick is poised with the chalk waiting for any new information.

  ‘Nope,’ says Rach, wrinkling her nose up. ‘Nothing on here about a meeting or anything about heading into work on Saturday.’

  ‘There has to be,’ I say. ‘Max told me that he’d found out late Friday night that he had to sort something out in the office.’

  ‘I can’t see it in the inbox,’ says Rachel. ‘What about your personal email?’

  ‘I don’t usually mix the two,’ says Max, ‘although who knows about future me. Maybe he does.’

  I shake my head. ‘You barely use your personal email; usually you chat to everyone via WhatsApp.’

  ‘Does your office use Slack or anything?’ asks Rachel, swiping around the phone.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says, shrugging. ‘We didn’t, but I guess things can change.’

  ‘You don’t have any apps on your phone,’ she says, shaking her head.

  ‘What about Owen? Did you call him?’ I say, realising that he hasn’t returned my call.

  Rach taps around.

  ‘Looks like you haven’t spoken to him for a few weeks.’

  ‘That’s weird,’ I say. ‘You always speak to Owen.’

  ‘Did he call you back last night, Ellie?’ asks Judy.

  ‘No, but it went straight to voicemail so maybe his battery was flat and he hasn’t charged it yet.’

  ‘Have you tried ringing Sarah?’ asks Max.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, closing my eyes again at yet another thing he doesn’t know. ‘Sarah and Owen split up last year.’

  ‘What? As in they’re taking a break?’

  ‘No, they’re getting a divorce. It was all pretty amicable,’ I add quickly.

  ‘What? No, not Owen and Sarah, they’re like… they’re like,’ says Max, clearly struggling, ‘one of those couples that are inseparable.’

  ‘He told us they’d married too young, that they decided they wanted different things,’ I say, feeling awful that I’m the one to tell him.

  ‘Wow,’ says Max, shaking his head.

  Mick writes Owen on the board. ‘OK, so we will need to follow up with him just to double-check that he doesn’t know anything.’

  ‘Is he still in Dalston?’ Max asks.

  ‘He lives in Surbiton now.’

  ‘Surbiton? Bloody hell. Why have we all moved out to the sticks?’

  ‘Um, it’s hardly the sticks. It’s Zone 6,’ I say, laughing.

  Sasha starts to get a bit restless and Gaby goes down onto the floor to play with her. I shoot her a grateful smile.

  ‘What if I was meeting Rodge or Jez?’ he asks.

  ‘You don’t really see them that often these days.’

  ‘I don’t?’

  ‘No, we only tend to meet up with them if it’s someone’s birthday.’

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘So, who do I hang out with now?’

  ‘You still do your five-a-side footie thing when you’re not too busy at work. We were really good friends with a couple we knew from my work, Howard and Keely, but they moved to Edinburgh a few months ago. To be honest, you mainly just spend your time with me and Sasha.’

  He gives me a long lingering look as if it’s dawning on him how much of his life has changed and how much I’m a pivotal part of it.

  ‘It’s just so hard to get my head around,’ he says, for the first time addressing the elephant in the room.

  ‘I know, for me too,’ I say, and he smiles at me. There’s a flash of solidarity between us that gives me a little bit of hope that my Max is still in there somewhere.

  ‘Shit,’ he says, exhaling loudly. ‘OK, so if I wasn’t meeting any of my non-existent friends, and I was supposed to be doing work, then maybe I was meeting a client?’

  ‘On a Saturday?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, that does seem odd,’ he says.

  I stare hard at the board, trying to see a connection. I’m usually good at spotting patterns for work, but there’s not enough to go on.

  ‘So,’ says Mick.

  ‘Looks like we’re no further forward,’ I say, thinking what a mess everything is.

  ‘Don’t look so disheartened,’ says Gaby. ‘Your type of amnesia doesn’t last long, and I bet you’ll go home and something will trigger your memory and suddenly it’ll all come flooding back.
’

  ‘Back home?’ says Max, looking at his parents. ‘I thought I’d just stay here.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ says Judy, jumping up. I’m guessing she and Mick will need respite from their acting. ‘I mean, Gaby is right, being with your family, it will jog your memory quicker, I’m sure. Plus, you and Ellie need to be on your own to work things out, spend time together.’

  ‘But what about… sleeping arrangements,’ says Max, looking flustered.

  ‘We’ve got a spare room,’ I say. ‘It’s filled with boxes, but underneath them somewhere is a mattress.’

  He looks relieved and it stabs at my heart. I’m dreading us being alone without his family to hide behind. With other people around I’m just about holding it together, but Max treating me like a stranger in our own home is going to be a whole other level of heartbreak.

  Chapter 7

  The rest of the morning and the afternoon pass in a bit of a blur. As my brain finally started to process everything, I took a step back and let Max’s family rally around him, filling him in with heavily edited versions of the last five years.

  They showed him photos of our wedding and of when Sasha was born. They pulled up news clips online of Donald Trump that Max thought were parodies. They explained to him in basic terms what Brexit was and the shambles it had become. They told him of the war on plastics and how we’ve moved to reusable items where possible. It was hard to tell what he was thinking; he sat there nodding, taking it all in, but not saying much.

  You don’t see the world changing when you’re living it every day; it’s only when we stop and reflect that you realise how much can change in five years.

  ‘Here we are,’ says Judy, pulling up on the street outside our house, in the early evening. Neither Max nor I are relishing the idea of playing happy families, but we know Gaby is only echoing what the doctor had said last night about living our normal life.

  Max, Sasha and I are wedged into the backseat of the car and I struggle to bend down to retrieve my handbag and the keys.

  ‘Home sweet home,’ I mutter, unclicking my seatbelt and opening the door.

  Max looks at the house with trepidation. I don’t know whether it’s the thought of seeing where he now lives or being alone with me.