by Lucy Diamond
She closed the door, unable to keep her shoulders from slumping. It was something of an anti-climax, coming back to find nobody home. Her arms swung empty where she’d hoped they’d be full of her boys and man. Where were they?
Maybe they’d all gone out to pick up a Sunday paper and some milk. Or maybe, as it was sunny, Pete had taken them to the adventure playground, and any minute now they’d come belting back in for lunch. So in the meantime she should make the most of it, have a quiet coffee, sit in the garden on her own and enjoy the peace and quiet.
The answerphone was bleeping, she realized. Maybe Pete had left her a message telling her to come and meet them somewhere?
Beep! ‘Hi, it’s me, Lisa. I’ve been trying your mobile but couldn’t get through. Give me a ring when you get this, OK? Bye.’ Beep!
Josie pressed Delete. She was always doing that, leaving her mobile off. She’d call later – she’d probably just left a pair of dirty knickers under the bed or something equally classy. Now … coffee. A strong one was definitely in order. Her hangover was still thundering about in her head, stubbornly resisting the Nurofen she’d thrown at it back in London.
She walked into the kitchen – and groaned out loud. What a tip! The breakfast things were still all over the place, the washing machine had finished its run and needed emptying, and … Josie’s eyes locked on to it and she let out a moan of dismay. She could see a wet, beige mass through its door and knew straight away what it was. Her bloody Miss Hoolie coat, which she’d put in to wash yesterday morning!
She tutted in annoyance as she went to wrench the door open. Ugh! So the whole load of wet washing had been sat here all day yesterday, and overnight! It smelled damp and mouldy already, and would need rinsing all over again. Bloody hell! Couldn’t Pete have hung it out? Was he really that incapable of doing a bit of housework off his own bat? When she’d specifically phoned to remind him as well!
Sighing, she turned the dial to Rinse and switched it on. The machine hummed into life and water poured into its drum. Honestly! What a welcome home. No hugs, no ‘Missed you’s, just yesterday’s washing to redo. Great. Thanks for that, Pete. Missed you too, sweetie.
Josie filled the kettle and put it on to boil. Then she went to get her favourite mug out of the cupboard, the one the boys had decorated in red and khaki splodges at a pottery-painting shop last year. But it wasn’t there. She swivelled back towards the sink … to see it dumped on a toast plate, waiting to be washed.
Her eyes narrowed and she stormed over. The mug still had a lipstick print on one side, and a swirl of cold tea at the bottom. For goodness’ sake – it hadn’t been washed since she’d used it yesterday morning! What was Pete playing at? The breakfast things piled up at the sink were from yesterday – they’d obviously been left there all night!
Josie filled the washing-up bowl with hot water and squirted in some Fairy. Out of habit, she began sorting the glasses to go in first, then the plates …
Hold on. Something was wrong. The breakfast things were all here from yesterday, yes – but nothing else. No lunch plates with uneaten sandwich crusts, or empty yogurt pots. And no dinner plates either, smeared with sauce, or bedtime milk cups.
She ran to the fridge door and pulled it open. Three cartons of spaghetti bolognese stood exactly where she’d unpacked them, on the middle shelf. Josie stared at their cheerful packaging, taken aback. So … if Pete and the boys hadn’t eaten here since breakfast yesterday, where had they been? And where were they now?
Her mind in a whirl, she raced upstairs to the boys’ bedroom. Their beds hadn’t been slept in, and the bedtime teds were missing. Some of the drawers were pulled out at angles, as if clothes had been taken from them hastily.
What was going on? Where was everybody?
Horrible thoughts collided in Josie’s head, and she grabbed at the chest of drawers, feeling giddy. Oh Christ! The boys had been rushed into hospital after some horrible injury, and Pete hadn’t had time to leave her a note. He’d slept on the floor next to their hospital beds and—
No, stop. He’d sent her that text, hadn’t he? All fine.
Maybe Pete had run away with them. He’d taken them off to live somewhere else with him, because … Well, why? Why would he do that?
Oh, no – what if they had been abducted at gunpoint? What if someone had broken into the house yesterday, just after she’d left, and …
‘Hello? Josie? Are you back?’
Josie thought she might pass out in relief at Pete’s voice calling up the stairs. ‘Yes – where have you been?’ she cried, stumbling out of the room. ‘I was starting to worry, I was …’
‘Mum!’
‘Mummy!’
And there they were, shock-headed and grinning, her sons, her darlings. She raced down the stairs as they scrambled up, meeting them in the middle in a tangle of hugs.
‘Oh, I’ve missed you!’ she cried, sitting on a step and kissing them in turn, her arms tight around them. Their hot breath on her neck, their pulses against her skin, their soft hair on her cheek … it was heaven. And to think that for a moment she’d been imagining …
‘So where were you?’ she asked, looking up at last.
‘We went to Nanny’s,’ Toby told her, bouncing on her leg. ‘And she gave us sweeties!’
‘To Nanny’s?’ Josie echoed in surprise. ‘Did you really?’
‘And we helped her make biscuits,’ Sam said, pressing himself into her side. ‘I made a specially nice one for you, Mum. Only I ate a little bit in the car because I was hungry. One teeny nibble.’
‘No, it wasn’t! It was two nibbles. It was seven nibbles,’ Toby said.
‘Well, thanks anyway, sweetheart,’ Josie replied automatically, but she was hardly listening. Since when had Pete been planning to take them to Barbara’s anyway? Why hadn’t he said anything?
She got to her feet, unwinding herself from the boys after a last squeeze, and stepped down towards Pete. ‘Hiya,’ she said, hugging him. ‘I thought you were going to do stuff here this weekend?’
He held her for a moment. ‘The car packed up,’ he said. She could feel his throat vibrate as he spoke into her hair. ‘And rather than have the boys hanging around with me in the garage while I waited for it to be fixed, I thought they’d have more fun at my mum’s, so I took them there, and …’
‘Oh, right,’ Josie said. ‘What’s wrong with the car?’
Pete launched into a long description of something technical that went straight over Josie’s head, as he steered her into the kitchen. ‘Anyway, enough about that boring stuff,’ he said. ‘Sorry it’s a mess in here, by the way, I wasn’t expecting you back yet.’ He flashed her a smile. ‘But how was your weekend? Did you do anything outrageous?’
Josie smiled faintly. ‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘It was great. It was just a bit weird, coming back to …’ She waved a hand over the dirty dishes, and the spinning washing machine. ‘Well, this lot. I was getting panicked, thinking you’d all run off together or something.’
He was still smiling at her, but she didn’t feel reassured. In fact, if she was honest, there was a small part of her that felt let down. She’d been really looking forward to Pete experiencing boy-care single-handedly for a day, just so that he’d realize it wasn’t quite as easy as he thought. She’d been half hoping to come back to him groaning and saying, How do you do it, every day of the week? Looking after them for just twenty-four hours has brought me to my knees! You are a saint! A goddess among mothers!, etc. Obviously not.
The boys galloped into the kitchen at that moment and insisted on unpacking their overnight bags to show her the biscuits they’d made and the drawings they’d done and …
Something was bothering Josie. Something was nagging away at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t quite reach it. And then, before she could even properly try, she was having to admire the drawings and biscuits and everything else, and lunch was demanded as they were starving, THIS hungry, and then the thought was gone, sp
un away from her in the whirlwind of everything else.
It wasn’t until that evening, when the boys were in bed cosy and kissed, both still clutching their new dinosaurs as they drifted into sleep, that Josie’s thoughts turned, with a shiver of excitement, to Rose. She’d already done the maths. If Rose were to be conceived sometime over the next few days, she’d be born in February next year. Lovely. Not too close to Christmas, not too near the boys’ birthday (April) either, not too late in the school year to be the youngest in the class …
And oh, she and Rose would be able to snuggle up and see the winter out together, warm at home for a while, before spring burst into bloom. Josie could imagine herself pushing along one of those Silver Cross Mary Poppins prams with a darling dimpled face peeping out at her from the pink blankets. And there she’d be, showing Rose the daffodils and spring lambs, lying her on a blanket in the back garden when it was warmer, watching her bend and kick those gorgeous chubby thighs under the apple tree …
But she was running ahead of herself as usual. Mustn’t get her hopes up. She had to get pregnant first, and that was taking long enough …
Josie undressed quickly, swapping her plain cotton knickers and bra for a pretty pink matching set, all lace and ribbons to undo – Pete could never resist those – before dressing again, with a little smile on her face. She squirted some perfume into her cleavage, and tried to muss up her hair into a sexy, tousled look.
She hummed to herself as she went downstairs. The weekend now felt like the best kind of catalyst for their new improved lives. She’d broached the subject of taking a trip abroad, all together, while the boys had been having tea, and they’d been wildly excited, even if Pete had seemed more reluctant.
‘Well … I’m not sure if, financially …’
‘We can borrow some money,’ Josie had interjected. ‘Let’s just go and have some fun, and pay it back later! Australia would be amazing, wouldn’t it? What do you reckon, boys, fancy seeing some kangaroos bouncing about?’
‘Yeah! Cool!’ the boys had shouted. ‘And polar bears!’
‘They don’t live in Australia,’ Josie had laughed. ‘Polar bears live in the Arctic.’
Pete was tight-mouthed. ‘Australia? That would cost a fortune! There’s no way we could afford that, Josie, absolutely no way!’
‘Well, somewhere nearer then. Thailand sounds exciting. Or South Africa.’
‘Disneyland!’ Toby put in at once.
‘Or India …’ Josie suggested, imagining the four of them riding a bejewelled elephant.
‘You know what my stomach’s like,’ Pete had moaned. ‘I’ll have the trots the whole time if we go to Asia. And what about all the gun crime in South Africa? It’s far too dangerous. What’s got into you, Josie?’
What had got into her? A reality check, that’s what. A wake-up call, loud and clear. Attention, Josie Winter! Your life is passing you by. Do something with it!
Anyway, one thing at a time, eh? She had Rose to think about tonight. Maybe she could bring up the subject of foreign expeditions again when they were snuggled up in bed later, post-coital and lovey-dovey …
Now. What to eat, to get them in the mood? The boys had had scrambled eggs for tea earlier, but Pete had claimed not to be hungry after the huge lunch at Barbara’s.
‘Great,’ Josie had said brightly, ‘you and I can eat together later. It’s a date!’
She didn’t fancy the spag bol she’d bought them for yesterday – not romantic enough – so she grabbed the sheaf of takeaway menus. There was wine in the fridge, they could share some nice Indian or Chinese food, then get down to business. Rose – prepare to leave that limbo of unborn souls! You are on the verge of being created, my little darling!
She went into the living room, where Pete was sitting staring into space, and spread the menus in front of him like a fan.
‘Pick a card, any card,’ she said. ‘You choose.’ As long as it’s prawns, she thought. She knew, from devouring every article ever printed about getting pregnant, that zinc was good for men’s sperm count. She’d already bought in the supplements, and had cooked up enough eggs and shellfish in the last few months to send his zinc levels sky-rocketing, but a last top-up tonight wouldn’t hurt. In fact, would it be too deceitful if she secretly ordered everything to have prawns in? She could pretend the restaurant had cocked up the order so that when his beef in black bean sauce turned out to be prawn chow mein, she’d—
He was sighing and shifting around in his armchair. ‘Josie … um … I’m not that hungry. Sorry.’
She stared at him in surprise. ‘What’s wrong? It’s not like you to turn down a takeaway. There’s some wine in the fridge, I thought we could …’
He still hadn’t looked at her properly. Now he was fiddling with his wedding ring. ‘Josie,’ he started, then put his head in his hands.
‘What?’ she asked. I’ll order him something anyway, she thought distractedly. He was bound to be hungry when the food arrived. Chinese would be nice. And she knew from her pregnancy-magazine addiction that if a woman wanted to conceive a girl, she should eat calcium-rich food, green vegetables and fish. Let’s see, maybe she could start with …
‘Josie,’ he said again, then cleared his throat. ‘Josie, I can hardly bear to do this to you, but …’
It wasn’t exactly the best way to start a sentence to your wife, Josie thought, turning sharply towards him. Not the most cheering words to hear at any given point. Zinc and spring rolls disappeared from her mind at once, and a creeping horror spread through her at his pale face, the way his eyes were so dark and haunted-looking. And what was going on with the wedding-ring thing?
‘But what?’ she prompted hoarsely.
‘There’s somebody else,’ he said. ‘I’ve met somebody.’
Josie’s mouth moved but her brain seemed to have jammed with some kind of mechanical fault. ‘Well …’ she heard herself saying, ‘well, everybody meets new people all the time! I mean, I met the new woman from number twenty-three the other day, Joanne, she’s called, and …’
She wasn’t being deliberately obtuse, she just couldn’t equate Pete’s words with the truth. He hadn’t really said that, surely? Slip of the tongue, it had to be. He hadn’t meant to say that. The somebody-else thing.
He couldn’t have said that.
‘Josie!’ He sat up, a flash of irritation crossing his face, then seemed to think better of it, and bit his lip. ‘I’m trying to tell you – I’m trying to say that I’ve met someone else. I’ve fallen in love with someone else. And I’m …’ He looked at the floor for a second, then full in her eyes. ‘I’m leaving you.’
Chapter Six
It had been a gorgeous wedding. Absolutely gorgeous. Gold September sun beaming through the windows as she teetered up the aisle of the seventeenth-century stone chapel. Her killer-heel shoes, the pinching corset, the tightness of her hairstyle were temporarily forgotten as she saw him there in his tails, a single white rose on the lapel. Those brown eyes on hers – slightly anxious at first, then, as she got nearer to him, a wink and a grin.
On the video you could hear a low, sighing chorus of oohs and ahhs as she walked up – not to mention her nan exclaiming loudly, ‘Well! What a beauty!’ in a particularly surprised sort of way – but Josie wasn’t aware of any of that at the time. She didn’t hear a note of ‘Here Comes the Bride’. She didn’t smell the perfumed lily-of-the-valley tied in little posies by each row of seats. Pete was all she could see, dear, kind, lovely Pete, with his one white rose and his brown eyes.
‘Do you, Josie Catherine Bell, take this man, Peter David Winter, to be your lawful wedded husband?’
‘I do.’ Damn bloody right I do! she’d thought, shocked that there could be any doubt. Who in her right mind wouldn’t take Peter David Winter to be her lawful wedded husband, with his low chuckle, his saucy cocked eyebrow and his penchant for sex in public places?
‘You may now kiss the bride.’
Josie had never particu
larly liked that line. What about the bride? Didn’t she get a say in it? Today, feminist annoyance was put to one side.
You may now kiss the groom, she told herself as Pete’s mouth came towards hers. My husband!
On the video, her eyes were shut. She was smiling as she kissed him. He had a hand on her back, as if he was steadying himself. Or was he steadying her? Pete had never been nervous in his life. Confidence ran through him like blood.
One kiss, and they were married. It was perfect. Perfect.
Josie often thought about their wedding day. Dusting the framed photos always made her smile. Driving past the old rectory where it had all happened, remembering the marquee on the grass, friends in colourful dresses and hats gathered in clusters on the lawn like late-summer flowers … she could conjure up the memories in a flash, and they always left a melting warmth inside her.
Often, when Pete was away at a business conference or a stag weekend, she sat down with a glass of wine, put the video on and watched herself marry him all over again. It gave her the most delicious shiver, seeing them so young and happy on her own TV screen. So in love.
And now …
Now …
‘It’s Lisa, isn’t it?’ she said. It all clicked into place in a second. Josie felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach as the images crashed into her mind. The photo under Lisa’s bed, the flash of guilt in Lisa’s eyes, the message on the answerphone. It was meant for Pete, surely, to warn him that …
‘Lisa?’ Pete repeated. He was staring at her, with a look of fear. ‘What did she … ? I mean, why do you … ?’
She gulped. So it was true. It was really true. It was written all over his face.
‘I’m not stupid!’ she snapped. ‘I worked it out all by myself. And you just confirmed it, looking at me like that.’ Tears sprang to her eyes, and her fingers trembled uncontrollably. She had spent twenty-four hours with her friend – her so-called friend – Lisa, and all the while this had been on the cards. It was breathtaking! ‘So … what are you saying?’ she managed to get out. ‘That you’re leaving me for her? That you’re leaving me for Lisa?’