by Vivien Brown
‘He did. But that’s not much good when someone is incapable of keeping their money where it belongs. In their pocket, in their wallet, in the bank. I’m afraid with your father that rarely happened. Come pay day, there would always be some dead cert running at Haydock, or a man down at the pub offering odds on the football. One way or another, there was never anything left. Sometimes it was just about all gone before he even made it home on a Friday night, and me trying to feed us all on last week’s shrivelled potatoes and a few tins of cheap beans.’
‘I don’t remember that. And I loved beans!’
‘Good job you did as you had so many of them! Thank God for your Gran and Granddad though, because I never could have managed without the few bits they’d bring with them every time they dropped by. A cake she’d baked, a bag of apples from their tree, a nice bit of shepherd’s pie when they’d had some left over. They were just bringing treats, but they didn’t know the half of it. Mainly because, like you, I didn’t tell them. Or anyone. But your dad … well, even when he won, he’d convince himself he was on a winning streak and put all his winnings on something else. Oh, I might get a bunch of flowers or a box of Milk Tray out of it, but they don’t pay the electric bill, do they?’
‘But Mum, you always seemed so close. Like you were glued together sometimes …’
‘Had to be, love. It was the only way to keep an eye on him, by meeting him from work and walking home together, going with him to the pub … It’s not that I didn’t love him, because I did. I really did. But it’s like trying to stop an alcoholic from drinking. When nothing else works, you just have to watch them like a hawk, throw every drop down the sink, try to take temptation out of the equation. And the person has to want to stop, of course.’
‘And did he? Stop gambling? Or want to?’
‘I’m afraid the cancer did the stopping for him in the end, love. He just got too ill to carry on, too ill to care. He left quite a lot of unpaid bills that I had no idea how I would deal with, but the life insurance money just about put things back on track for me after he’d gone. I was worried for a while that amongst all the debts we might have let the premiums slip but they were up to date, thank heavens. Oh, it wasn’t much, but I don’t know what might have happened without that to fall back on.’
I didn’t know what to say. My dad? Some sort of compulsive gambler, squandering the money away? How on earth had they hidden that from me?
‘So, you see, Kate, I do know what it’s like to have problems, secrets, and how much you might want to protect your children from the worst of it, but if you want my honest opinion …’
‘Which you are going to give me anyway!’
‘Of course. Well, it’s that these things have to be faced head-on and dealt with. Have it out with Dan. Tell him how you feel. Listen to how he feels. Try to put it behind you and move on. Together or apart, but don’t let it fester. It’s not good for any of you, the children especially.’
‘Okay. You’re probably right. And I will, I promise. When the time is right. But, for now, I don’t think I could talk about it without killing him. So it’s easier for now just to do nothing. Say nothing.’
I gazed out of the window, at the thick, thorny stems of the rose bush, clogged with weeds, as it twined its way haphazardly and flowerlessly over the fence. In memory of Rosie, we’d said, choosing it to match the flowers we’d carried the day she was cremated, but when had we had the time lately to even go outside and look at it, let alone look after it?
‘Well, I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to,’ Mum was saying as I dragged my thoughts back from the past. ‘But remember that iceberg. Only ten per cent is looking up into the light. That’s your little ray of hope. But the murky ninety per cent could very easily drag you down, if you’re not careful. Right down into the depths of darkness and despair. And then where will you be?’
Chapter 38
Beth, 2017
Sean Harper was coming for Christmas lunch! Beth looked at herself in the full-length mirror in her bedroom, turned from side to side and decided she was very much in need of a new dress. They didn’t usually bother dressing up on Christmas Day, not when it was just family slumming it in front of the TV. Thinking back, she couldn’t even remember what she had worn last year, although Jake turning up after tea, wearing jeans so old they had gaping holes in both knees, seemed to have left a lasting impression on her memory. And they weren’t the intentional designer kind of holes either!
But Sean wasn’t Jake. Sean was one of those people she knew instinctively she could trust, and he was fast becoming a close friend. A very handsome and charming friend, she had to admit, but she also had to keep reminding herself that he would not be staying around for ever, and that any thoughts of things turning into a proper romance needed to be utterly squashed every time it raised their insistent little heads. Still, he was just what she needed to brighten the festivities, and definitely worth trying to impress.
Everyone had taken a few days off work to see Dad settled into the hospital and to get themselves ready for Natalie’s wedding, which was now only three days away. Everyone except Ollie, who wasn’t really allowed days off in termtime and was in any case oblivious to the need to prepare at all, beyond finally giving in to Natalie’s demand that he check his suit was actually clean and being persuaded to buy a new shirt for the occasion. And now Jenny was in the kitchen with her laptop, Nat had gone to meet Phil for a last-minute-check-list lunch, Mum had a headache, probably stress-induced, and was in her room having a nap, and everything was, temporarily at least, quiet again.
The house was awash with bags and boxes and bundles and, with so many women living together and all of them in a state of high excitement, the place was starting to feel like some kind of noisy and shockingly colourful Eastern harem. New underwear and sparkly jewellery, pairs of pink satin shoes, overflowing make-up bags, charging cameras, assorted hair curlers and straighteners (none of them being entirely satisfied with the hair nature had given them) and, of course, Natalie’s already packed holiday suitcases, were scattered at every turn, and everyone kept bumping into things that they were sure hadn’t been there the last time they passed along the hall or tried to find space at the table to sit down and eat.
Beth picked her way through and grabbed her handbag from the hall table. It was time to get out of the madhouse for a few hours and, despite the inevitable pre-Christmas crowds, hit the shops.
Outside, along the edges where the morning sun had failed to reach, the pavements were still frosted with white. Most of the trees lining the street were bare, their branches hanging overhead like skeleton arms, but the lawns were holding on, still providing little square pockets of faded green in the few front gardens that had not yet been concreted over to make extra parking spaces.
It was only a short walk to the high street. That was one of the better things about living where they did. The easy access to shops, offices, doctors, and all without having to take the bus. Within minutes she was passing the insurance building where Natalie worked, and then the hairdressing salon. She knew the place was short-staffed today, with two girls off sick with the flu, and right up to the previous afternoon it had been touch and go whether her boss would honour her request for leave, so she kept her head down and quickened her pace for fear of someone spotting her and calling her in to do a quick cut and blow dry.
There were only three or four shops likely to have anything to her liking, and she made straight for the first of them. Now, how should she play this? Casual and comfortable? That was probably the Ozzie way, what with them spending so much of their lives on the beach. But this wasn’t Australia. This was England, and here Christmas party clothes always involved at least a little bit of sparkle. Not that she was looking for something to wear to an actual party, but even so …
She picked a black dress off the rail and walked over to the nearest mirror, holding it up in front of her. Okay for a funeral maybe, if you ignored the silver glittery colla
r and the fact that it was quite shockingly short. Deciding she didn’t have the legs for it anyway, she quickly put it back. Red was very Christmassy, of course, but as the store’s Father Christmas strode past on his way to his grotto she couldn’t help remembering why they had so rapidly discounted it as a possible colour for the bridesmaids’ dresses. Maybe something silvery and shimmery, then? Or with a touch of gold?
She found a dress she was eighty per cent happy with in the last shop she tried. If she’d carried on looking for perfection she knew full well she was never going to find it and, besides, her legs were aching and she needed to sit down somewhere and treat herself to a coffee and a big fat chunk of cake.
The coffee shop was warm and crowded, but it smelt delicious. She found a space at a table in the window but had to share with a couple of older women who glared at her for a few seconds but then reluctantly moved their shopping from the empty chair to make room. They were talking non-stop about some friend called Alice who had run off and left her husband for a bloke half her age who she’d only known five minutes. The way they were slagging her off, it was hard to believe this poor Alice woman was actually a friend at all, and as they spoke about the man in question, all body and very little by way of brains, Beth was pretty sure she could detect more than a hint of jealousy.
She sipped at her coffee, which, as usual, was much too hot, tore big mouth-sized pieces off her chocolate fudge cake with a fork, and watched the world go by.
It would seem strange at home when Natalie was gone. More changes to get used to. When they were all about eight or nine, Mum and Dad, with a lot of help from Granddad Trevor, had converted the garage into a bedroom for Natalie, with its own small en-suite shower and loo, so she no longer had to worry about using the stairs. It had given her so much more independence and had made more room upstairs for the rest of them too. When Ollie left a couple of years back, the girls had all finally had a room each for the first time, but Beth couldn’t help feeling that something had been lost because of it.
She gazed out at the crowds bustling up and down the high street, bulging shopping bags bumping into each other, scarves wrapped around necks and coat collars turned up against the chill wind, and wished, just for a few moments, that time could go backwards, that they could all be together again, small and happy and untroubled by all the bad stuff in the world. Back to before Natalie’s accident, before it had all started to go wrong …
But change had to happen, didn’t it? And not all of it was bad. By Saturday, Natalie would be glowing with happiness, married, and soon to be setting off for her surprise honeymoon destination. Mum would be weeping with joy as only mothers of the bride knew how, Ollie would probably be drunk, and she and Jenny would be sitting at the side of the reception hall like a pair of old maids – unless the mysterious James turned up – bemoaning the lack of boyfriends and knocking back the wine and handfuls of crisps like there was no tomorrow. It was what happened at weddings, so why should this one be any different?
The only person not featuring in her imagined scenario was her dad. Because he wouldn’t be there. He’d be in his hospital bed, hopefully the operation behind him, and on the way to recovery. And maybe, once the ceremony was over and the meal eaten, they might be able to go down there, even if it was late, with phones full of photos and a piece of snaffled wedding cake, and the nurses would let them sneak in to see him before he went to sleep.
She hadn’t spent nearly enough time with her dad as she should recently. Well, what with work and everything else, it wasn’t always easy to find the time, or make the effort. But she would change that from now on. Much as they had all let the ties between them and their dad loosen and drift further apart in the years since he’d left home, it was time to tighten them again. They were still a family, and who knew how long they might have left?
She finished her coffee and wiped the crumbs of cake from her mouth. The dress she had bought was blue, with a narrow band of sequins around the neck. Now all she needed were shoes to match. At home she usually just walked about barefoot or, if it was especially cold, wore the old tartan slippers she had had for years. But Sean was coming and somehow that made everything different. There was no point in thinking too hard about her dad, worrying about things she couldn’t change. They were all going to have a fantastic wedding, the school nativity play would be a roaring success, and then …
Then it would be Christmas.
Chapter 39
Kate, 1993
I always find it hard to believe those women who discover their husbands have been playing away yet say they knew nothing about it, didn’t have a clue. Really? What about when he came home late, smelling of a perfume you didn’t recognise? What about the whispered phone calls that ended abruptly when you came into the room? The lipstick on the collar, or the restaurant and hotel bills that turned up in pockets when you were taking his jacket to the cleaners? That’s what always seemed to happen in books and in films. The clues, the give-aways, the sneaky suspicions that creep into the back of a woman’s mind and lurk there, until they turn into cold hard truths she’d rather not have to face. But real life isn’t quite like that.
In real life, the clues slip by unnoticed as you battle with kids and work and tiredness, and an almost don’t-want-to-know kind of apathy. The changes happen slowly. So slowly you hardly notice them. The brand-new underwear that appears in the wash, the aftershave he’s taken to wearing every morning, the important business meetings after work that bring him home later and later, the creeping up the stairs without his shoes on, hoping you will be already asleep and will stay that way, and the late-night shower that follows.
A slow withdrawal, a sullen unwillingness to take part in family life. Or a renewed energy and eagerness that comes out of nowhere, as he tries to overcompensate for the guilt. Maybe even, in a moment of thoughtlessness, being called by someone else’s name.
For me, it was none of those things.
***
Dan was home from work on time for a change, and on a day he knew the kids were having their tea at my mum’s, so it was just us. He came in, took a deep breath and sat me down on the sofa.
‘Kate, I’ve been seeing someone,’ he said. Just like that. He hadn’t even taken off his coat.
‘Seeing?’ I didn’t want it to be true but I knew instinctively that it was. All the clues I’d been carefully ignoring came crashing down around me in one great big blindingly obvious heap. ‘You mean, seeing as in …’
‘Sleeping with. Yes.’
My God, why did he have to be so blunt? So matter of fact about it? And why did what he was saying, confessing, leave me feeling so utterly cold? It should have hurt. Like a knife to the gut. I should have cried, shouted, screamed. But I didn’t.
‘Who is it? Is it anyone I know?’ Stupid questions. As if it mattered. But it’s the first thing you ask, isn’t it? Closely followed by ‘How long, how often, when, where? Not in our bed? Please not in our bed.’ And the inevitable gut-wrenching ‘Do you love her?’
Dan stayed remarkably calm. And so did I, despite the rushing noises in my head and the hard knot that had formed somewhere deep in my chest and was making it almost impossible to breathe.
‘I’m sorry, Kate. But things have been … well, difficult, for a long time. You know that. We don’t talk. We don’t share things any more. Not the way we used to.’
‘And whose fault is that?’ I didn’t wait for a reply. ‘And we don’t have much in the way of sex, of course. Don’t forget that one, will you?’
‘That’s true, but it isn’t the reason. Well, not the only one.’
I stared at him, finding it hard to take it all in. Dan and some faceless woman, humping away like rabbits. A woman who was, quite possibly, about to steal my husband. I didn’t really want to know, but I had to ask. ‘Better than me, is she? In bed?’
‘Kate …’
‘Prettier? Takes better care of herself? And of you? Ah, but then, I don’t suppose she has three
kids to contend with, does she? Oh, for God’s sake, Dan, I trusted you. I may not have been the perfect wife lately. I hold my hands up to that, and you’re not exactly the perfect husband either, but we have children together. I thought we owed each other at least some loyalty.’
‘You’re right. Of course you’re right. And being parents means more than anything, but …’
‘But she flashed a bit of cleavage and dropped her knickers, and you just couldn’t say no?’ I knew I was shouting now, at last, but this wasn’t a conversation I could contemplate having quietly. ‘So, what happens now? You want to split up? Leave? Get a divorce? Do you know what that will cost? We hardly have enough money to keep one household, let alone two. And the kids, and me … I’m telling you now, we’re not going anywhere. This is our home and I’ll happily bleed you dry rather than be forced to leave it.’
He reached across and took hold of my hand. ‘No, Kate. I don’t want a divorce. I don’t want to leave. I love the kids. I love you. Oh, don’t give me that look. I have a funny way of showing it, I know. Look, I don’t even know what it is I do want. I just thought it was time to stop sneaking around behind your back. To try to talk things through. To be honest …’
‘Honest? God, Dan, how many times have I tried to be honest with you? About my feelings, about the state of our so-called marriage? But what did you do? Did you listen? No, you did not. You just turned your back, buried yourself in bloody work, spent longer and longer away from the house. Well, I know why now, don’t I? Some bitch had got her claws into you and you were loving it. Made you feel the big man, did it? Juggling two women at once. Climbing out of her bed and back into ours.’ I glared at him, pulled my hand out of his grasp and swiped it across his face, my knuckles connecting with the side of his nose. It was the second time, ever, that I had done that, but there are some things …
‘And you still haven’t told me her name, by the way. I think I’d like to know that much at least.’