by Carol Mason
PRAISE FOR CAROL MASON
‘Full of realistic emotional twists. The characters’ reactions to the challenges they face are frank and unmelodramatic; there is a refreshing honesty about the numbness that comes from discovering an infidelity, and the shame that comes with perpetrating one. Equally affecting are the counterpoised sources of sadness in Jill’s life. Her marriage has faltered because she and her husband can’t have children and yet she must be a mother to her own parents in their old age; it’s a poignant combination.’
Telegraph, UK
‘A sweet, sad tale of love, loss, and the crazy way the world works to reclaim love again.’
Cosmopolitan, Australia
‘What really goes on behind closed doors. Carol Mason unlocks life behind a marriage in this strong debut.’
Heat, UK
‘Mason’s writing is absorbing. While reading a spicy bit about Leigh’s affair while taking the bus to work, I rode past my stop.’
Rebecca Wigod, The Vancouver Sun
‘This poignant novel deals with honesty, forgiveness, love and the realities of modern-day marriage.’
Notebook, Australia
‘There is a fresh and vital edge to this superior debut novel. Mason has much to say about relationships. Her women have resonant characters and recognizable jobs, which give depth to their messy lives. A bittersweet narrative and ambiguous outcomes make this much grittier and more substantial than standard chick-lit fare.’
Financial Times, UK
‘It’s got the raw realism of someone writing about a world she knows. A grand little book for the festive fireside.’
Irish Evening Herald
ALSO BY CAROL MASON
After You Left
The Secrets of Married Women
The Last Time We Met
Send Me a Lover
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2019 by Carol Mason
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542041867
ISBN-10: 1542041864
Cover design by Rose Cooper
For Sadie
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
EPILOGUE
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ONE
When it happens, I am never doing anything out of the ordinary. Glancing in my car’s wing mirror, bending over to lace up my running shoes, noticing a woman’s billowy blonde hair. Suddenly, I will hear the distant rumble of a noise I can’t pinpoint. Colours flash before me – green shot through with blue – a bit like when you glimpse the sky or the ocean through a thicket of trees as you’re driving quickly past them. I will fill with debilitating dread. Disjointed scenes tumble into frame, scenes I want to make sense of but can’t. The mind when it relives things has a way of amplifying details, of adding new and surprising ones. I might taste the blood from where I must have bitten the inside of my cheek, feel the half-moon indentations of fingernails in my palm. All that stuff they tell you to do – breathe, reorientate to your immediate surroundings, home in on something tangible to ground you – is as useless as if I were drowning and someone were telling me to swim at an angle away from the rip current, pointing towards shore. Then comes that same hard landing, the moment when I realise what it is I’ve done. Then everything stops.
Other times, like now, it’s a shadow on the other side of the glass door, loose and amorphous, waiting for me to decipher it. This one is insidious and corporeal somehow. I will do anything to stop it fully forming – blast the house with CNN, fill my blender with handfuls of ice and hold down grind, pick up a cloth and begin a rampant cleaning jag. Keep on keeping on until I’ve managed to exorcise it, which leaves me with a frigid triumph. Or I’ll phone someone, latch on to the anchor of a familiar voice. Just the act of searching for a number and punching it in is often enough to take the peal of panic down a peg or two.
By the time Jessica’s phone has rung six times I know she’s not going to pick up. I picture her on the other end of this umbilical cord of technology staring coldly at my name; it feels oddly demeaning. I wonder where she is now? Rome still, or is it Turkey? I told her there were certain countries I didn’t want her visiting for safety reasons, but she just said, Shit happens everywhere, and she’s not wrong. After her sing-songy ‘leave a message!’ I say, ‘Hello, Jess. Look, it’s Mum again.’ Nerves have thickened my voice and I have to clear my throat. ‘I hoped you might be there this time. I really just wanted to wish you a happy birthday . . . Anyway, I hope that whatever you’re up to you’re having a good time.’ My cheeriness sounds put-on. I’m about to hang up then add, ‘Look, at least text me. I just want to know you’re OK . . . Love you.’
When she got it in her head to spend the summer waltzing around Europe we insisted she at least have a free international phone plan so she could keep in regular touch and we wouldn’t be beset with worry.
Yup. That worked.
But then a thought rushes in. What if she’s not answering because something’s happened? All those crazy motorbikes in Rome! You have to have eyes in the back of your head. What if she didn’t? If she’s lying in a hospital bed hooked up to drips and beeping technology? If we haven’t heard anything because she wasn’t carrying ID? My diaphragm clutches; I can’t let a breath out. The back of my neck prickles with cold sweat. Sometimes I get it from my groin to my knees and my clothes will be soaked in seconds.
Breathe. Sit down. Stop being so ridiculous. Of course she hasn’t had an accident. She’s just ignoring you because finally she can.
To distract myself I put the kettle on but I still feel discomfort prowling about inside my head. I stand there tap-tapping my fingernails on the fake granite. How many hours until bedtime? I used to do this with wine: wait until four o’clock, then I could sink the bottle. Now it’s sleep, those magical nine or ten hours where I manage to give life the slip. At first I figured if I got up early I could call it a day early because evenings are always the hardest for me to be alone. It’s after about 7 p.m. when I recognise I’m not quite the lover of my own company I always thought. But now I go to bed early and get up late because – who cares? There’s no one around to see me anyway
. From my half-open window I watch the rain as it bounces off the ground. Port Townsend is supposed to be in the Olympic Rain Shadow and get dryer, brighter weather than Seattle, but so far you wouldn’t know it. All it’s done is rain since I got here. I regret not packing more sweaters the day I walked out of my door, so certain of what I was doing, and yet at the same time not having a bloody clue. In the distance I can see the virtually uninterrupted expanse of cold, steel sea. The downpour has awakened the mature lavender and rosemary bushes, though. I can smell them in every room, which is nice: calming.
I look in the cupboard but there aren’t any clean cups. I haven’t washed dishes in days. I’ve never been much of a hausfrau. My modus operandi tends to be, watch the place become an utter disaster then wait one more week. I can’t shake off the awful emptiness that’s come over me since hearing Jessica’s voice. When did this wedge come between us? Would it have happened to anyone in our circumstances? Did I allow it to occur in the slow, grey aftermath, because I was so into my own head that I almost forgot I even had a daughter? In my mind’s eye I can see her lurking behind Mark as he poked his head around our bedroom door when I was pretending to read. ‘We’re going for a walk. Come with us. You’ve got to get some air.’ Jessica standing there so still, her eyes monitoring every beat of my reaction, brimming with apprehension and the tiniest bit of hope. She doesn’t know who I am any more. I am too many moving parts. Me saying, ‘Leave me alone! Just go!’ Then I heard the front door close and I was left with the low, steady hammer of my guilt. Why am I being so unfair to them? Why can’t I make an effort?
The kettle whistles me back to life. I switch off the gas and continue to stand there, bewildered. I am in this familiar place again. The grabbing hands of depression. But as though the weather is trying to tell me something, there’s a sudden break in the rain. I decide to put on my waterproof Barbour jacket, routing swiftly to the hall cupboard before I can talk myself out of it.
I have always liked the Pacific Northwest, in particular Port Townsend. For no sensible reason – because it’s rainy, green, historic and on the water? – it reminds me of England, even though I grew up in the countryside, not on the coast. Mark and I came here once or twice when Jessica was a baby. I have retraced the gritty path of that happiness so many times lately. When I boarded the flight from Heathrow to Seattle, not much older than Jessica, off for a summer adventure after three years of uni, the last thing I imagined was that I’d meet an American the day I arrived and be pregnant six months later. Definitely not my big life plan, yet, oddly, everything felt like it was happening exactly as it was meant to. My baby rarely cried and was a remarkably good sleeper. Mark was a doting father, five years older than me, juggling his first promotion at Microsoft plus night school to get his patent engineer qualification. We were hopelessly unprepared and fudging it. Yet I was aware of being blessed, which must be the surest sign of having grown up. I can still see myself sitting on the top deck of that gently rocking ferry, eyes closed to the sun, my head tipped on to Mark’s shoulder . . .
My rental house is way up the hill so it takes about twenty minutes to meander to Fort Worden State Park. I pass the same pretty houses as always, a mix of colourful A-frame, art deco, colonial and Cape Cod, making sure to look the other way if someone is out checking their mail and happens to glance up. With only just over nine thousand people living here, you have to make a rigorous effort not to get to know any of them.
Once I get down to the beach path I’m relieved to see there’s not a soul out walking, not a single car in the parking area in front of the lighthouse that sits out on the nose of the beach. I stroll over the dunes towards the water’s edge, welcoming the slap of waves and the salt-spiked air, then dig in my pocket for my phone. If I don’t ring him I’m going to be plagued with images of him lying under a bus too, because, lately, if there’s a worst-case scenario I’ll find it.
‘Liv!’ he says.
It’s funny, but with this single optimistic utterance of my name my eyes prick with tears.
‘How are you?’ He’s slightly breathless. ‘I’ve been thinking about you. I was going to call tonight when there was time to talk. It’s been such a crazy busy day.’ Mark has a certain mellow, artless, babe-in-the-woods way of speaking that might make you think he’s not as bright as he actually is. Especially when he up-talks at the end of his sentences so his statements are like questions, making him sound like a teenager. He’s also one of these rare people who can diffuse a crisis with his unexcitability, who can manage to good-humour his way out of any taut situation. Someone once told me they sensed Mark would cope with whatever you handed him. Little did they know.
‘I’m not bad,’ I say after a beat, buffered by the familiarity of his voice. ‘Everything’s fine.’
‘Can you wait a minute. Let me . . . Give me two seconds, OK? I just got out of the shower.’
There’s a clatter as he drops the phone then quietly curses. I imagine him hanging on to a white bath towel, dirty blonde hair limp on his brow. If he worked from home today, he’ll have probably been out for a run – his latest fitness kick. Like many of his fads and fancies, he’ll go at it with admirable zeal for about two weeks until he packs it in abruptly, never to be spoken of again. Mark has changed little over the years except for the bedazzling white smile. ‘It’s just a little bleaching,’ he’d protested, coyly, when I’d gawked at him and said, ‘What the heck?’ He’d only gone in for a root canal. I couldn’t help but wonder what was happening; we’d only been living in our new house for a short time and he’d already come home with the Mercedes SUV and a fitness membership at Orange Theory. I had a horrible sense he was morphing into one of our middle-aged neighbours – the very ones we liked to disparage when they’d pedal up their drives, beet red and panting in their Lycra that left nothing to the imagination. He later let it slip that his assistant had said, ‘Too much coffee stains your teeth!’ when he’d walked past her desk with his Starbucks grande Americano.
‘I’m back,’ he says. ‘Sorry. Where were we?’ More muffled sounds. He’s probably struggling into a T-shirt. Mark isn’t fond of being in the buff even if no one’s looking. He once said that not having a great deal of manly body hair was something he’d been self-conscious about since he was sixteen.
‘I rang Jessica,’ I say. We always used to call her ‘the wayward one’, not because she really is – I don’t even remember why we started it. But that was before all the humour had been wrung out of our lives, before making light of anything just felt wrong. ‘All I wanted was to wish her happy birthday.’
Everything’s gone quiet: whatever he’s doing, he’s stopped.
‘Have you spoken to her?’ I shouldn’t be petty but I can’t resist. Mark hates any implication he’s the preferred parent, like it’s some sort of contest. He hadn’t approved of this travelling Europe lark. Not when she let it drop that instead of it just being for two months, she might delay her place at WSU if she was having a good time. ‘It would only be for a year!’ she’d argued, when he’d said, ‘Of course you’re going to have a good time! Who wouldn’t? But you can do all that when you finish your education!’ Mark is big on doing things in his idea of the proper order. He thinks we have all our lives to travel. Mark isn’t always right.
Just when I wonder if he’s gone, he says, ‘Liv, look . . . can we not talk about Jess right this second? I’d like to talk about you. How you are. Really are.’
Something falters, like a small shifting of the earth underfoot. These days I can conquer the urge to break down when people are being tender to me, but it’s still hard. After a moment or two I say, ‘As I told you, I’m all right . . . I’m just out getting some air, you know . . . doing something with the day.’ Two bald eagles pirouette overhead in perfect sync, emitting their high-pitched trill, and I watch them, envying them flight.
‘The line’s not very clear. It sounds like you’re on a boat or something? Where are you?’
‘Just down by
the water. It’s freezing. Blowing a gale, actually.’ I’m aware of what it used to be like to talk to him. That constancy of sharing everything from the monumental to the trivial, the immunity you enjoy by having another person who is so wholly on your side, rare as a blue diamond.
‘Can’t you go back to the car? It’d be easier to have a conversation.’
‘No, like I said, I walked.’
‘Ah. Yes. So you did . . .’
It’s just like we always were. I could be phoning him to ask what he thinks we should do for dinner, or to see if he remembered the 4.30 p.m. car service. Our life was a functioning hierarchy of work interspersed with weekends that mostly consisted of errands, take-out and the grand evening reward of Netflix, and I once had the luxury of thinking that it was mundane. Suddenly I fill with everything I have lost.
‘I – I just needed to get out . . . It’s been an endless day.’
‘I know,’ he says.
And for a second I could almost believe him. I want to hold it there – this idea of Mark knowing – like it’s a fragile firefly and I’m getting to bask in its fleeting light. There is a long silence that I almost can’t take. ‘Say something,’ I tell him. The eagles are keeping in step with me and now they’re joined by a baby one. They’re flying so low, I can hear the breathy waft of their wings.
‘I don’t know what to say . . .’ he says, after a further hesitation. ‘How will it change anything?’
The memory is there again, a shadow out at sea. Staring at it is dangerous because staring makes it take form, and all day I’ve said, I will not think about this. If I can manage to not think about this, today of all days, then I’ll have it under my control – instead of it having me.
‘Are you still there?’ he asks. ‘Liv?’
‘Yeah, I’m here.’ I am aware of a gentle sea spray on my face and I try to just focus on feeling it, letting it awaken nerve endings.
‘Come home,’ he says.
It slips out so quietly. With the weather wrapping around my ears I have to say, ‘What?’ But he doesn’t repeat it. We hang there in suspenseful silence – me, bone still, windblown and confused – while the prospect of us being OK again flutters there like those birds. But then the birds disappear behind a cloud. Mark goes to say something else but I hang up.