by Lucy Diamond
She pulled the letter from the envelope and registered the council logo at the top of the sheet then read:
Dear Mr and Mrs Winter,
I am writing to inform you that Toby Winter and Samuel Winter have been allocated places at Redwood Primary School from September this year. The term dates are as follows:
She read it through again. Redwood! They’d got into Redwood! Only the best primary school in the area, the one that all the middle-class parents fought over! If your child got into Redwood, it meant the best teachers, the best facilities, an ASBO-free childhood practically guaranteed!
A few days ago, Josie would have been overjoyed, bounding around the room, cheering and phoning up the other mums she knew to see if they’d been so lucky. Now she just felt … sick.
Where might they be living in September now? Some crappy little plasterboard-walled box with no central heating and an infestation of cockroaches probably, miles from Redwood sodding Primary School. She’d have to get them into a different school, but only a crap one would have places left now. All the decent ones were oversubscribed every year.
She gulped back the rest of her coffee, barely noticing the way it scalded her throat on the way down. Shit. In a matter of hours, their whole future had been wrecked, as well as hers.
‘Mum,’ Toby asked, mouth full of bacon, ‘when are we going to Australia?’
She couldn’t speak suddenly, couldn’t get a single word out.
‘Mum,’ Sam asked, swivelling around on his chair to peer at her, ‘why are you crying?’
Somehow or other she managed to eat a slice of toast without throwing it all up again. Somehow or other she tidied the kitchen, threw away the cold, congealed Thai food, washed the breakfast things, mopped the floor and put on a load of clothes to wash. She hoovered the living room and stairs, and made the boys’ beds. She persuaded them to get dressed, then put on a Fireman Sam video for them to watch while she finally peeled off her seduction undies (might as well throw them in the bin now), had a long hot shower and scrubbed her body until it was bright red and tingling.
She had squeaky-clean hair and sweet-smelling skin and minty-brushed teeth, she had fresh underwear and clothes on, but she still felt awful. And it was only ten-thirty in the morning. Pete would be at work now, probably humming smirkily and sending rude texts to Sabine.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
Meanwhile, what else was she going to do today? She had to keep busy, had to keep moving. The minute she sat down, she knew that the reality would crush her to pulp. It would blitz her, destroy her. She’d never be able to get up again. So what else could she do?
She stared out of the window. Last week, she’d vaguely planned to take the boys out today, to a new farm that had opened nearby with a big play area and lots of animals. If she could muster up enough energy to drive them over there, it might be just the thing. Fresh air, loads of distractions, and a bit of space for her to sit and watch them enjoying themselves.
She stared at herself in the mirror. She looked broken and old. She looked miserable and kicked-in. She looked exactly like the sort of wife that got left.
Don’t you ever worry he’ll go off with someone else?
Lisa’s voice was a taunt in her head. The snidey bitch.
She swung away abruptly before she could see herself cry again. She had to keep going for the boys’ sake. She couldn’t just shut down completely, much as she wanted to. ‘Boys!’ she called. ‘Get your shoes! We’re going out.’
Was it possible to use up your entire reserve of tears? Josie wondered, clumsily backing the car into a space. Surely she couldn’t keep up this rate of fluid loss for ever. She felt dehydrated already, not even twenty-four hours after Pete had walked out. Christ alone knew how she’d managed the drive to Fulton’s Family Farm, whose slogan boasted Guaranteed fun for ALL the family! She’d barely had the brainpower to reverse the car out of their drive, let alone stay focused through the entire journey.
She pulled on the handbrake and wiped her eyes with a soggy bit of tissue. ‘Here we are!’ she cried brightly. Here they were for a morning of guaranteed fun, for ALL the family. Fat chance.
Josie shivered as she opened the car door and swung her feet down on to the grassy field that served as the farm’s car park. It had been a mild May morning when they left the house, weather that promised new blossom opening, tulips unfolding in the sunshine, maybe even jackets off and lunch outside. Now a battalion of threatening clouds scudded dully across the sky, and a low wind flattened the grass, bouncing a faded crisp packet along the ground. Great. And there she was in Capri trousers, sandals and a T-shirt. She rubbed her arms, feeling the goosebumps that were already prickling along them.
‘Mum, the wheels are really wonky,’ was Toby’s critical assessment of her parking once he’d clambered down from his car seat. ‘Look!’ He kicked one of the tyres that was skewed out at an ungainly angle, and Josie flinched.
‘Who gives a toss?’ she replied tightly, gripping her cold arms and wishing she’d brought a cardigan. While she was at it, she wished too that her eldest son didn’t have to be such a Nazi about her driving. Today of all days she just wanted the world to be nice to her, for people to treat her gently, like a fragile ornament. Any more criticisms and she’d shatter into hundreds of pieces, impossible to glue back into any sort of useful shape.
‘Come on,’ she said, wincing at the startled look on Toby’s face as she zipped up his jacket. It’s started already, she thought glumly, following their racing figures towards the farm entrance. They’re going to notice something’s up any minute.
Fulton’s Family Farm was a rural pocket of child heaven. There were miniature goats to pet, a stamping carthorse, three fat saddleback pigs (one with a litter of piglets), harrumphing ruminative cows munching hay and completely ignoring all the children, ducks, chickens, sheep, guinea pigs, rabbits and even a mangy-looking, rather smelly donkey that gave rides (and flea-bites, no doubt). There was also an enormous field full of climbing frames, swings, sandpits, trampolines and slides.
Josie bought herself a coffee and sat down thankfully at a picnic bench as the boys careered off towards a scary-looking twisty slide.
OK. We’re here. The boys are happy. So far, so good. No need to do anything but sit here and drink coffee and let the time go by.
For some reason she was counting hours, as if that proved anything. It had been fifteen hours since Pete had walked out. Fifteen hours and she was carrying it off, putting on the performance of her life. You’re doing OK, she told herself, sipping coffee. You are doing absolutely fine. Fifteen hours in, and you’re keeping going.
But her fingers were trembling traitorously on the Styrofoam cup. For how long, though? a voice wailed in her head. How long would she be able to keep it up before the façade cracked and she revealed all the messiness and fear underneath to the world? Sixteen hours? Twenty hours? A whole day?
She was exhausted. She could feel the caffeine skidding through her bloodstream, attempting to give her a buzz, but it just made her feel even more sluggish. She wished she still smoked so she could chain her way through a packet of twenty, just for the comfort, just for something to do. She’d spent the whole night lying in bed running through her last conversation with Pete and rewriting it so that she got to say things like:
This is ridiculous. I refuse to let this happen. Call Sabine right now and tell her that it’s over. I mean it!
Or, when she was feeling less feisty: Let’s talk about where we went wrong, and try to fix things. We can make it work again, Pete. We owe it to each other. And to the boys.
Or sometimes, when the desolation and alcohol hit her in a particularly potent combination:
You scumbag liar! You are SO going to pay for what you’ve done to me!
She wished now that she’d slapped him. Hard, right across the face. Whack! Take that! How satisfying it would have been to have heard the crack of his nose, the ringing slap against h
is cheek! How gratifying it would have been to see the look of cold shock on his features! She had never hit him before – had never hit anybody in her whole life – but her palm smarted at the thought. If only she had sliced open his pink fleshy cheek with her wedding ring – the irony would have been supremely comforting.
She took another sip of coffee, vaguely registering the woman who was striding up towards her, face set, lips pinched in a tight line. A crying child was attached to one of her hands, snot running into her mouth, features crumpled.
‘Are those your boys over there?’ the woman said grimly as she swam up into Josie’s line of vision.
Josie blinked, then tried to focus on where the woman was pointing a chapped red finger. Toby was hanging upside-down from the climbing frame, arms dangling, face slack. Sam was astride one of the top bars, shouting something or other.
‘Yes,’ Josie replied. ‘Why?’
‘Why?’ the woman repeated. ‘They’ve just pushed my Shannon off that climbing frame, that’s why! Don’t you think you should be keeping an eye on them?’
Josie opened and shut her mouth a few times. Shannon scuffed a trainer along the ground, red lights flashing on the side panel of her shoe as her foot moved. The girl was smaller than the boys, long hair tangled by the wind, and her eyes were red from crying, but Josie could muster up no feeling towards her. She was numb inside.
Shannon wiped her nose on a bare goosepimpled arm, and Josie stared mindlessly at the shining snail trails she left behind.
‘Sorry,’ Josie muttered, more to Shannon than Shannon’s mother.
The girl turned her eyes down to the ground, pressed herself into her mum’s side, sniffed again.
‘I’m really, really sorry,’ Josie said, and then the wretched tears were back, spilling out of her. She dashed them away, but her eyes felt so sore, so gritty and tired and tender, that more tears just leaked down in their place.
There was an awkward pause. ‘Um … Is everything OK?’ the woman asked, her tone reduced from bollocking mode to merely gruff and embarrassed-sounding.
‘No,’ Josie replied. It was a relief to be honest at last, to let the truth tumble out of her. ‘No, everything is awful. Everything’s gone wrong. My husband—’
She stopped. What the hell was she doing? What was she saying?
Sam’s waving arm caught her eye and she pushed a smile on to her face automatically, felt her own arm lifting itself from the table to wave back. A pink, cold limb moving back and forth like a windscreen wiper. How odd to feel so completely detached from one’s own body, she found herself thinking. How peculiar that my arm knows what to do when the rest of me doesn’t.
‘Look at me, Mum!’ she heard his thin voice call, carried by the wind.
‘Well done, love!’ she bellowed back. She blew her nose, and glanced up cautiously to Shannon and her mum. ‘Sorry,’ she said again, and wiped her eyes. ‘I’m fine, honestly.’ Her voice was wobbling, and she drew breath and said it again, a little louder. ‘I am absolutely fine.’
Cornwall had been one of Josie’s best ever holidays. Forget the five-star luxury the other mums she knew yearned for. Forget the far-flung adventures she’d so recently been craving. Pure happiness for Josie had been that fortnight last July when the four of them had rented a little cottage in St Ives. It had been the first summer that the boys had been old enough to truly appreciate digging moats in the wet sand, squealing in excitement as the sea curled in ever nearer at the end of the day and dissolved their castle walls. It was the first time the boys and their armbands had been in the sea, too – and they’d loved it. Pete had bought a junior surfboard and spent ages teaching them to float on it, pushed along by the waves. Josie had watched them from the warmth of the beach, a fat sand-sprinkled novel in her hands, and had been filled to the brim with love and joy. This is as good as it gets, she had told herself. My husband, tanned and gorgeous in his trunks, making our boys shriek with laughter in the sea. Yes. As good as it gets.
The sun had shone down every day. They’d eaten out most evenings all together, before shoulder-riding the boys back up the hill to the cottage. And then she and Pete had drunk wine in the tiny, fragrant back garden as the sky reddened, their skin tingling from the day’s sunshine, crickets chirruping from the undergrowth.
They’d held hands over the wonky-legged white metal table, whose top was patterned like a doily, and had talked, really talked. They’d set the world to rights. They’d made plans. And they’d decided that they’d try for another baby.
Josie had fingered the petals of the cream shrub roses near her seat. ‘Do you like the name Rose, if it’s a girl?’ she’d asked.
‘Yes,’ Pete had replied.
And Josie had breathed in the perfume of the roses, and smiled across at her husband. ‘Let’s have us a Rose,’ she’d said.
The phone was ringing as they pulled into the drive later that afternoon. Josie was quite sure of it, could hear it over the dying mumble of the engine. She jerked on the handbrake, pushed the car door open and sprinted into the house. The hall was still as she rushed in, and something about the stillness forced her to stop dead. The air rearranged itself around her shape while the slow sliding tick of the grandmother clock cut into the quiet. She felt cheated, tricked. She could have sworn she’d heard the phone; had been positive Pete was trying to get through.
‘Mum!’ she heard the boys chorus from the car. ‘MU-U-U-UM!’
Josie cocked an ear and glanced up at the stairway. Had that been a creaking floorboard she’d heard up there? ‘Pete?’ she called breathlessly, head tilted towards the ceiling. ‘Is that you?’
She struggled to remember if the door had been double-locked when she’d opened it. She’d been in such a hurry to get to the phone, she couldn’t think clearly. Or had she left the mortice unlocked herself? Probably. She’d been in such a daze that morning, it was surprising she hadn’t left the bacon pan on the stove, smoking away over the cheerful blue flame.
Josie put her arms around herself and shivered. Pete’s car wasn’t in the driveway so of course he wasn’t here. He’d still be at work, remember, stupid? It was Monday afternoon. Life was going on everywhere else in the world, children traipsing home from school, office workers surreptitiously looking at their watches and sighing, babies being born, husbands cheating on wives …
Wake up, Josie! Just because she was out of sync with the world didn’t mean that everyone else was too.
‘Mu-um! Mu-um!’
‘In a minute,’ she called tonelessly without moving. ‘Just coming.’
The house seemed dead, a mere receptacle of dust motes and static objects, with no life or movement, just the creeping of time. Just the slow withering and dying of plants, the desiccation to brown husks of flowers in their vases, just the leftover food slowly growing mould in the fridge to show that hours and days were passing by.
‘MUM! Let us out!’
Josie turned and went to unstrap her children, both straining wildly against their seatbelts, red-faced and indignant at being left. The house needed them more than ever, running through its rooms, stirring up the stale air, knocking and dislodging things in their rushing wake.
She locked the car, double-checking all the windows were shut. She hadn’t even switched the headlights on, but she checked that they were off anyway. Handbrake on? Check. Was the boot locked? Emptied of all valuables? Yes. Keep it together, keep it together, she told herself. If the car was safe, that was one less thing to worry about. It was the kind of comfort she needed right now.
While the boys embarked on a noisy game downstairs, Josie went up to her bedroom, just to make sure that everything was the same as she’d left it. She was pretty sure Pete wouldn’t do anything as cowardly as sneak into the house when it was empty to collect his things without contacting her first, but who could say what he’d do now? She’d never dreamed that he could even give the eye to somebody else, let alone sleep with them, become so bewitched by them that he left her
, his wife of seven years, and their children. Nothing would ever surprise her again, she thought, tramping heavily up the stairs. Nothing.
She pushed open their bedroom door. It only took a cursory glance to take in his half-read thriller still by the bedside table, the alarm clock turned towards his side of the bed, for her to realize he hadn’t been. She sank down into the softness of their quilt, relieved that she hadn’t missed him.
Then relief became doubt. So if he hadn’t come by today, when would he? What did it mean, him not coming to collect more of his things? Maybe he’d had second thoughts, and was planning to come home that evening. Or maybe he and Sabine were joking about him having to borrow pairs of her knickers, her dressing gown, her toiletries. Was it more of a thrill, casting off his possessions temporarily? Casting off his whole life?
Josie sank backwards on to the bed. Calm down, she told herself. He was at work, that was all. Pete wouldn’t take time off for something so trivial as his marriage breaking down. She should have known that.
She rolled on to her front so she could smell him on the covers. Pete. There was just a trace of his aftershave lingering on his pillow, and she wrapped her arms around it tightly. Come home, she urged him. Come back.
Josie swallowed hard – and there it was. The metallic taste in her mouth that only meant one thing. She was ovulating. She imagined her milky white egg faithfully rolling along its path where it would lie and wait for fertilization …
Right. Like that was going to happen now.
‘Three more to go and we’ve got a five-a-side team,’ Pete had joked the day the boys had been born. He’d been crouching low to look at her, a proud protective arm – a dad’s arm! – laid across her in the operating theatre.
‘Three more, eh?’ she’d laughed. ‘I think these two will be enough to get on with for now.’