by Dani Atkins
There was a hint of a challenge in my eyes when I lifted them to gauge Ryan’s reaction, but his were warm in response, and his slight nod confirmed his unspoken agreement. I exhaled in relief, and braced myself for a totally different reaction from the woman he’d married. But surprisingly, Chloe too was nodding in agreement.
‘And could I bring Elsa with me when I come?’ Hope questioned.
I smiled, feeling the relief rush through me like adrenalin. Could it really be this simple? ‘Of course you can, honey. You can bring anything that you want.’
Hope seemed to consider this for a moment, and then nodded, a tiny six-year-old judge, who found the prosecution had put forward a reasonable suggestion. ‘Okay.’ She fidgeted on the pine chair, and I sensed this was probably as much ‘serious’ as she was capable of coping with right then. The fine details were something that her father and I needed to work out. And of course, Chloe. Always Chloe.
‘Can I go and play with Elsa now?’ she asked Chloe, already slithering off her seat.
Chloe nodded and smiled, and the two of them shared a special look which made me feel as if I was right back on the outside of their special circle again, despite Hope’s willingness to accept this new and dramatic change in her life. But we weren’t getting off quite that easily, for she paused at the door and looked back at all three of us for a long moment, before turning to Ryan.
‘Why did you say my mummy had died?’
It was the unseen right hook, the flying jab you hadn’t noticed your opponent was launching your way. To his credit, Ryan didn’t dress up his answer to paint himself in a better light. I had to admire him for that. ‘That was a big mistake, and I was the one who made it, not your mummy, or Maddie. The doctors said Maddie was in a sleep so deep that she couldn’t wake up from it, however much she wanted to; however much she wanted to come back to you.’
‘Like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty?’ Hope asked innocently.
‘Kind of,’ I said, smiling at the child I would happily surrender this new reclaimed life of mine for in a heartbeat. The depth of love I felt for her was like nothing I had ever experienced before. If Chloe felt just one hundredth of these emotions, no wonder she looked as if the foundations of her entire world were crumbling. Who could have something as precious as this in their life and bear to lose it?
‘So did a handsome prince come and kiss you and make you wake up?’ This time the smile I gave her was broad enough to make it all the way to my eyes. ‘Actually, Pumpkin, I didn’t need any dumb old prince. I woke up all by myself.’
Ryan’s eyes widened a fraction, but it was Chloe’s reaction that I found the most surprising, for her eyes met mine, and she nodded firmly in approval. And somehow that felt like a very small step on a long journey we would all be taking together.
Chapter 14
Chloe
I replaced the phone handset on its base, and gave a small disappointed sigh. I glanced at my watch, though I knew there was little point in trying to find a substitute babysitter at such short notice. And Megan was the only one I felt comfortable leaving Hope with anyway. Even if we miraculously managed to find a last-minute replacement, I probably wouldn’t be able to relax enough to enjoy the evening. Which was a shame, because I’d really been looking forward to it.
I thought of the expensive floor-length dress hanging up on the back of our bedroom door, and felt a small selfish pang of longing. Of course Megan couldn’t help coming down with a sickness bug, and I quite understood why she’d had to cancel, but with only half an hour until we were due to leave, there wasn’t any other option except for us to stay at home.
I climbed the staircase, catching a glimpse of my reflection in the hall mirror as I passed. I was looking far more glamorous than I usually did when clad in my towelling robe. Tonight long dangling earrings sparkled from my ears, and my hair was pinned into a complex and sophisticated up-do, courtesy of several hours spent at the hair salon that afternoon. The style was going to accentuate the low scooped-out back of my evening dress, but the effect didn’t work quite so well with dressing gown and slippers.
I crossed the upstairs hallway, automatically glancing through Hope’s open bedroom door, where I could see her sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the pumpkin house. It looked as if she might be trying to persuade her new kitten to climb inside. It was a plan that I suspected wouldn’t end well.
I opened our bedroom door and slipped into the room. Ryan must have only just got out of the shower, for he was wearing nothing more than a small towel, knotted low on his hips. Even after two years of marriage, I still found myself deeply affected by the sight of him semi-naked. Droplets of water that he hadn’t bothered to dry off glinted like tiny jewels over his chest and shoulders, but it was the taut muscles of his stomach which drew my gaze, and the vague shadowy trail of hair that speared downwards. The trail which I knew grew darker and denser beneath the towel.
Ryan smiled as I entered the room and crossed to our queen-size bed, where his white evening shirt was lying in readiness.
‘There’s no need for you to wear that,’ I said matter-of-factly. ‘Or your dinner suit, come to that.’
He paused with his arm outstretched to grab the shirt and raised one eyebrow in humour. ‘I don’t think my company are hosting that kind of party tonight, hon. They normally ask us to at least arrive fully clothed for the Christmas bash.’
Despite my feelings of disappointment, I laughed. Ryan’s employers hosted amazing parties, and this year’s venue for their Christmas ball was the British Library, which I’d been excited about for months. My librarian’s heart had been understandably giddy at the prospect of vintage champagne and every book ever published in the UK, all in one place. And they would both be there tonight. But sadly it looked as if Ryan and I wouldn’t be.
‘That was Megan on the phone. She’s sick and can’t babysit for us tonight.’
Ryan’s forehead creased, and he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. The towel gaped slightly, which was a distraction I refused to succumb to, not with our daughter just down the hall.
‘Bugger. That’s a shame. I don’t suppose she has any friends who’d be willing to step in at short notice?’ He saw the way my eyebrows rose, and shot down his own suggestion before I had a chance to. ‘But you wouldn’t want anyone we hadn’t used before, would you?’
I shook my head and felt the dangling earrings swing and brush my cheek like diamanté chandeliers. Ryan reached for my hand and pulled me down to sit beside him. ‘I’m sorry, my love. I know how much you were looking forward to this.’ I gave a c’est la vie shrug, but he wasn’t fooled. ‘What about one of the mums from school?’
I shook my head once again. Although I knew them well enough for conversations at the school gates, I’d never got into the coffee morning or ladies-who-lunch crowd, and I wasn’t comfortable phoning up and asking a cheeky favour just because we were in a fix.
Ryan traced his finger down the curve of my cheek, his gaze taking in the hair, the carefully applied make-up and also the disappointment in my eyes. ‘Got it!’ he said, getting to his feet and looking around the room for his phone. ‘You will go to the ball,’ he said with a cheerful grin as he began scrolling through his directory. He looked so pleased with his idea, I tried very hard not to reveal my true feelings as he pressed the green button on his phone, so obviously delighted that he’d found a solution. A solution I’d already considered and rejected.
‘Maddie, it’s Ryan. Do you happen to have any plans for this evening? No? That’s great, because I have a big favour to ask . . .’
With hindsight, I’d much rather have asked one of the school-gate mums.
Maddie
‘Tonight? Oh, right now? Oh, okay, er . . . yes. That’s fine. I’ll call a cab.’ I hung up the phone with his offer not to bother, and that he was on his way to collect me, ringing in my ears.
Ryan had been so delighted that I’d said yes, it had taken me right back to the first
time he’d ever asked me out. For reasons I’d never fully understood, I hadn’t given him my number on the night we’d first met, forcing him to track it down through various industry colleagues. Perhaps I was testing him; trying to see just how motivated he was to see me again. The answer had been: extremely motivated. He’d utilised some pretty impressive detective skills to get hold of my number, and when he’d called to ask me out, I already knew I was going to say yes, and keep on saying yes to this man whatever he suggested, before he’d even asked me the question. I’d been that sure of him.
I shook off the memory, like an annoying buzzing insect, and dashed into my bedroom to pull on boots and grab my bag. I was standing there wondering if I should have changed out of my old but comfortable pre-coma jeans and jumper, when the buzzer on my front door made the decision for me. So, he could be on time, when he wanted to be.
I flicked off the light switches behind me as I went through the flat to the front door, so that when I opened it and saw Ryan silhouetted in the soft light of the hallway table lamp, he was backlit by an amber glow, which made him look devastatingly attractive. Like someone in a TV advert for expensive male cologne, I thought. The dinner suit and bow tie look was unfamiliar, but it suited him enough for me to feel all kinds of things that should have been dead and buried a very long time ago.
‘Not just a night out at the cinema then?’ I said lightly, my eyes on the perfectly fitting suit.
‘Company Christmas ball,’ he said succinctly, waiting as I double-locked my front door.
‘Do you still work at the same place?’ I asked, wondering how we’d never covered this kind of small talk up until now. Probably because we’d been occupied with far more pressing big talk, I imagined.
‘Yes. They’ve been pretty good to me over the years since—’ He looked as if he was about to say something else then, and some sixth sense told me it was probably about my accident or the early years of my hospital stay. ‘They throw pretty impressive parties for their staff each year,’ he added instead.
‘I remember,’ I said quietly. And suddenly, in a way I don’t believe either of us intended, we were both back at the last black-tie event we’d attended together, the Christmas party organised by his company seven years earlier. The party itself was a blur of expensive caviar and the kind of champagne they haul out of dusty crates, and not down off the supermarket shelves. While the first part of the evening might have faded away in both of our minds, I could see that we were both suddenly remembering the cab drive home from the fancy venue. I could almost feel the warm touch of his hand sliding up my leg, his fingers dipping dangerously beneath the thigh-length split on my tight sequinned sheath dress. And the kiss that started as we pulled away from the party and only broke off when a slightly embarrassed cab driver had cleared his throat meaningfully and announced that we had got to our destination. ‘And not a minute too soon,’ he’d added. Did Ryan remember how we’d still been laughing about that as he’d pushed the front door shut and we stumbled back against it, taking up where we’d left off in the cab?
There was a look in his eyes now, and his pupils looked larger, almost swallowing up the colour of his irises. Oh yes. He was remembering it every bit as clearly as I was, and I don’t think either of us knew what to do about that.
Chloe looked pretty, and I silently congratulated myself for managing to tell her so without sounding the smallest bit insincere. It was probably because I was still feeling the shock waves of guilt from the memory I had no business recalling. I had absolutely no idea what was going on in Ryan’s head, because he’d spent the entire drive talking about a recent news story that I think we both knew was only a smokescreen.
‘It’s a lovely dress,’ I said, and I wasn’t lying, because it was. The deep aquamarine colour suited her blond hair, and she was wearing more make-up than I’d ever seen her use before.
‘Mummy looks so beautiful,’ said Hope, coming down the stairs one careful step at a time, cradling the kitten in her arms.
‘She certainly does, Pumpkin,’ replied Ryan from his position on the other side of the hall. He was looking at Chloe, not me, I had to keep reminding myself as I stood right beside her.
Perhaps Chloe sensed the sudden awkwardness of the moment. ‘I need to sort out a couple of things in the kitchen, then we ought to be on our way,’ she declared. She disappeared down the hallway, her recently applied perfume leaving an intriguing aroma jet trail in the air behind her. It was so elusively familiar. Perhaps someone I’d once known had worn that same fragrance?
I was just asking Hope what she’d like to do for the rest of the evening, when a sudden crash and a loud cry came from the room Chloe had disappeared into. Ryan was gone in a blur of expensive dinner suit as he ran into the kitchen. Hope and I weren’t far behind him.
Chloe was crouched on the floor, on the edge of a pool of spreading water, which was strewn with large jagged shards of crystal and floating long-stemmed red roses.
What happened? seemed a stupid question, but Ryan asked it anyway.
‘I was moving the flowers you bought me, and then . . . I don’t know, perhaps my hand was slippery or something, because for no reason at all I lost my grip on it and the vase slipped out of my hand.’
She had gathered up a handful of broken pieces of glass which glittered like a tiny dangerous mountain on her open palm.
‘Hope, stay back,’ Chloe said firmly, as her daughter inched further into the room to see what had happened. ‘There’s glass everywhere.’
‘There is,’ said Ryan firmly, lifting the pieces from Chloe’s hand with no regard for his own safety. ‘So step back before you cut yourself, or ruin that pretty dress. I’ll do this.’
Chloe straightened, but her eyes were on the broken vase, which somehow seemed to have virtually exploded across her tiled kitchen floor. ‘That vase was my mother’s. She got it as a wedding gift. I can’t believe I’ve broken it.’ She looked so close to tears that I found my own eyes welling up. I suppose when you’ve lost both parents, the mementos you have from them became that much more precious. I was lucky, I thought, I still had both of mine, even if one of them was permanently confused about my identity. Perhaps that was why I found myself unexpectedly stepping up to the plate.
‘Tell you what, why don’t you both just get out of here, and leave me to clear up this mess?’
‘Maddie, we couldn’t do that,’ said Ryan, bending down to resume picking up the shards of glass.
I crouched down beside him and reached for one of the broken pieces. ‘I don’t mind. Honestly. And I’m more suitably dressed for domestic stuff than either of you. So why don’t you both get out of here, or you’re going to be late for your party.’
‘The cab is waiting outside,’ Ryan conceded, still looking troubled. Another cab, seven years after the one he and I had shared. For a moment the memory was back; I saw it in his eyes, and he saw it in mine.
‘Okay then. Let’s go,’ he said, taking Chloe’s hand and leading her away from her mother’s shattered vase.
‘You have both of our numbers if you need them,’ Chloe couldn’t help adding as Ryan ushered her hastily away. As I carefully cleaned up their kitchen, swabbing every last inch of the floor for any stray shards, I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been hurrying her away for her protection, or his own.
So this is what it feels like to be a mother, I thought exhaustedly. I collapsed onto the lounge sofa that in a different life, with a different turn of the dice, could have been mine.
Hope and I had played an extensive game with the pumpkin house, which I’d like to think wasn’t just because I happened to be the one who’d given it to her. Every last penny I’d spent on the gift was entirely justified, I thought, as I watched her happily position the tiny carved woodland creatures in the miniature furnished rooms.
Hope had eaten before I arrived, but persuaded me that her mummy often let her have a bedtime snack of milk and biscuits. I knew I was being played, but the nov
elty of sitting at the table across from her, enjoying her big milky smiles and chocolate-smeared lips was so rewarding I was happy to be hoodwinked.
I’m sure I allowed her to stay up later than her usual bedtime, which she solemnly told me was ‘fourteen o’clock’. I grinned at that, admiring this small replica of me for her cheek and ingenuity. We compromised in the end when I persuaded her we could read twice as many bedtime stories if she went upstairs without argument.
Standing in the bathroom, watching Hope’s look of deep concentration as she brushed her teeth, I was struck by a feeling of aching poignancy. I looked around the family bathroom, and everywhere there were small sharp darts waiting to wound me. There was the brand of shampoo and deodorant I remembered Ryan favoured, only now they stood on a shelf next to products I neither recognised nor used. On the unit beside the basin was a glass tumbler that held two adult-size toothbrushes, and for some reason they had the power to cut me deepest of all. I tried to focus on my daughter diligently brushing away, but my eyes kept going back to the pink and blue toothbrushes, their bristles touching intimately in the glass. It was strange: I could see the gold ring on her finger; I could watch them disappear out of the house, his arm around her waist, and tell myself that I was fine, I’d moved on. But those two damn toothbrushes had the power to undo me.
Hope raced ahead to her room and I followed, keeping my gaze firmly fixed on the pile of the carpet and away from the adjacent room, whose door was slightly ajar. Stepping over the threshold into the room which the man I was going to marry now shared with his wife crossed a very dangerous line from curious to creepy.