The Alone Alternative

by Linda MacDonald

  Marianne …

  How wonderful it would be to hear her voice again, her laugh again. She might hate him for leaving as he did. She might not forgive him. Not this time. Not like after the Taryn incident. And that took a while. Much may have changed in the five years since he’s seen her. They are both drifting into the late summer of their lives: the September, the chill of the approaching autumn, the nuts and berries on the trees.

  ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,’ he thinks. It could be bountiful. A last chance to gather provisions before the winter cold sets in.

  He could phone her – assuming she is at the same number. But that would be such an intrusion, such a shock after all this time. An email would give her the choice of whether or not to reply, but might still be unwelcome. He wonders whether she is on Twitter or Facebook. He is on neither, averse to social-networking since his first forays with Friends Reunited. Once bitten … And he can’t see the point of spending so much time idly talking about nothing in particular. He is too busy with work.

  Yet it might be a door to Marianne again; to friendship again. He would settle for that now. And Twitter is less intrusive than email. He can imagine her tweeting. She likes to converse in pithy one-liners, linking to a blog, perhaps. She loved to write. He wonders if she ever finished her novel. He has been advised by his publisher to set up a Twitter account to use as a marketing tool to help spread the word about his books and guest lectures, but he has never got round to it.

  After the walk, he lets the three buff Orpington hens out of their palatial night-time accommodation in the paddock, collects a couple of eggs and loads the dishwasher.

  ‘Let me know if you can find Marianne Hayward on Twitter,’ he says to Harriet before she leaves for work. It’s a move in a direction that he never thought he would make. It is words that set his heart beating like the wings of a yellowhammer.

  2

  March 2012 Beckenham, Kent

  Johnny

  Through the window Marianne sees police uniforms: a man and a woman coming down the path to the door. It is late afternoon and she is wearing a blue dress patterned with pink roses, and a pink cardigan. Johnny likes this dress. Says it is his favourite; says it makes her look young – sure to bring a smile now she is fifty-four. He will be home soon, won’t he? They will be able to have a cosy Sunday night in front of the TV after they’ve eaten the roasted free-range organic chicken. He has been away since the previous morning, walking part of the Jurassic coast in Dorset, as he often does. He will be hungry.

  Police? Why? An anxious tremor. The bell rings and she opens the door, knowing straight away; knowing it isn’t daughter Holly because they were speaking on the phone only minutes earlier. And it isn’t her parents because they are already dead; her dad the year before, and her mum the year before that. If it was her brother Louis, the message would come via his wife or grown-up children. Even the one remaining tabby cat is on the rug in front of the electric fire. So it has to be Johnny.

  A silent scream; a prickling of the skin.

  The police follow her inside, suggest she sits down, say that they have bad news. It is the woman who speaks, small of stature, hard face, brassy blonde hair screwed into a tight bun below her hat.

  Marianne perches on the edge of an armchair, her stomach already churning, her throat tightening, preparing for the worst.

  They say it was a massive heart attack and by the time Johnny was found, all attempts at resuscitation failed. She looks at them with unbelieving eyes. It can’t be true. Not Johnny who is fit and healthy and an expert on diet. But somewhere she remembers him saying that his family didn’t make old bones. His parents died when Holly was small, when in their fifties. And there have been years of him drinking too much when he was young, and again when they had their crisis.

  *

  And that was a year ago. She can still hear the sound of her anguish after the police had gone. It has been a year of numbness and tears and waking up wondering how she could face another day without him. At first it was as if a cannon ball was lodged underneath her ribcage and she went through the motions of day-to-day existence, her spirit disconnected on another plane. She stayed off work only long enough to deal with practical issues.

  ‘Take more time,’ said the Principal.

  But she didn’t want more time, she wanted distraction. She was claustrophobic in the house, staring at the walls all day. Going back to work was the best thing. No time to brood when there’s teaching to be done.

  And she worked as she had always worked: efficiently. She was still at North Kent Sixth-Form College on the edge of Beckenham, still teaching psychology. There, she had the support of friends and colleagues and files of well-prepared resources, and although her students mentioned that she had lost something of her humour, she delivered the lessons with professional skill. She coped.

  Coped. Such a loaded word. Coped … managed … survived. But it wasn’t life. She didn’t live. And at the end of most days, after the students had left, she worked on at the college until the premises officer came jangling his keys a few minutes before six. The longer she stayed away from home, the longer she could pretend that everything was as it always had been and that Johnny would be waiting for her, supper started, an evening of togetherness in prospect. Then she came back to Beechview Close and to emptiness and memories. She closed her door on the world, collapsing into self-pity and grief, tears flowing. She willed herself to prepare food and then had to force herself to eat it.

  Sometimes she sat at the kitchen table looking at the empty chair, Johnny’s chair, and the vacant space which she frequently laid because she wasn’t thinking. And she would tell this vacant space about her day, talking out loud as if to Johnny, hearing his answers, his advice, knowing him so well. Occasionally she even had a heated discussion on an educational matter about which she knew they would have divergent opinions, imagining his attempts to convince with rational, logical, research-based arguments: Mari, periods of exposition should not exceed fifteen to twenty minutes for sixteen to eighteen year olds. You know they have limited concentration span. She always argued that if the exposition was interactive, with plenty of student input, this rule could be broken.

  At other times she would sit in his place instead of hers, looking at the emptiness of her chair and wondering how he would have managed if the positions had been reversed. And when she couldn’t stand it any longer, she took her meal into the living room and collapsed into the armchair in front of the television: Johnny’s chair. It was easier sitting in it than staring at it, empty. And she would watch some mid-evening mindless rubbish on the TV, and hear his voice, castigating. He had been like that over some of her reading choices too. At the time, his intellectual snobbery infuriated her but now she would give anything to have him cast a disapproving glance at one of her paperbacks. She used to hide them under the sofa or behind cushions – like Lydia Languish in The Rivals.

  Lydia …

  As always when she thinks of Lydia, she remembers Edward … Edward Harvey. If he were here, still lodging, she would at least be less lonely during the working week. But he isn’t here and it is no use wishing. In any case, if he had still been lodging when it happened, he might have left due to matters of propriety: a married man alone with a grieving widow. His wife probably would have objected.

  After he left, the past few years battered her with one personal tragedy after another like a ten-pin bowl let rip among skittles. Her mother broke her hip in a fall and, disinclined to bear the pain and the rehabilitation, gave up the will to carry on. Her father’s pleas were unable to bring back the light to her eyes and she faded away, weeks after the operation. Afterwards he told Marianne that he suspected the beginnings of dementia; that Daphine knew the future was an ever-darkening tunnel towards confusion. And Daphine had always been full of anecdote and conversation. To lose her mind had been one of her greatest fears. Perhaps she saw the hip problem as a way out before the inevitable decline.

>   And after she died, her father was grief-stricken. Marianne and Johnny suggested he came down to live with them. With Holly gone and Edward no longer lodging, there was plenty of space.

  Her father said, ‘I don’t know anyone in Beckenham and I’m too old to start again. I love Cumbria and Allonby and the sea. The community will keep an eye on me.’

  But as often happens with men, he was a lost soul and a year later, he had a fatal stroke. Marianne had been stoical, knowing that her father was cast adrift without his lifetime anchor.

  So in many ways she was stronger for these difficulties, but those who knew her well detected brittleness in her emotional responses that had not been there before. Losing Johnny almost took her over the edge. She was unprepared. You don’t expect to say goodbye to someone in the morning and then find they don’t come home, that you never see them again, never hear their voice, or feel their touch or see their smile.

  He was close to Lulworth Cove when it happened, such a beautiful spot, high on the edge of the cliff. She wondered if he had time or capability to shout to anyone who might have been sightseeing. He hadn’t used his phone. If it had happened closer to home, things could have been done.

  She tormented herself with alternative outcomes. Had he been aware of something wrong during the preceding weeks? She doesn’t remember him mentioning any unfamiliar pains. If only he’d been to the doctor for a check-up. Thinking back, he had been stressed at work, a colleague unable to control classes, complaints from parents. ‘She called my son stupid. He is not stupid. Naughty sometimes, but not stupid.’ A misplaced word and a heap of trouble. Johnny was a diplomat – he saw both sides and tried to diffuse the situation. It played on his mind.

  And there was the never-ending string of new initiatives from the senior management team in preparation for a looming Ofsted inspection. Document upon document, sheet upon sheet, to read and attempt to implement. Every time Ofsted came the goalposts moved. She knew what it was like. What had once been Good was now Satisfactory. To achieve Outstanding seemed almost impossible. Even thinking about it brought her out in a sweat. She wondered how much sickness, how many deaths, were directly or indirectly the result of Ofsted inspections. As if teaching wasn’t stressful enough. But Johnny hadn’t looked ill. A bit tired, perhaps, but not so ill as to have a fatal heart attack. Marianne picked over the possibilities, trying to find an explanation, analysing the minutiae like she always did about everything. She tried to rationalise, but it wouldn’t change the outcome. He wasn’t coming home.

  She hadn’t said all the things you would like to say to someone if you knew they were going to die. She hadn’t told him enough of her love, her gratitude, her delight in sharing her adult life with him. So the guilt set in and she tells him now, hoping he can hear; that he knows. She isn’t sure; she has uncertain faith.

  She and Holly had visited the spot in the summer holidays. They agreed that it was a most beautiful place for it to happen with the horseshoe cove below and Durdle Door not far beyond. It had been his favourite walk, monitoring the annual changes to the geology as the tide battered and encroached and reclaimed. They came down from the cliff top and threw white lilies in the foaming blue sea. They sat on rocks and stared out into the Channel. They wept and then laughed, sharing memories of the handsome Johnny with his sweet smile and luxuriant hair.

  Her friends said she would come to appreciate the fact that it was quick and that watching someone suffer was never preferable. She knew they were right, but it wasn’t something she wanted to be told.

  She hasn’t reached that stage, even yet, one year on. The little quirks are what she misses most, the things she knew so well. He was a creature of habit, was Johnny.

  She went to identify the body.

  The body. Not his body.

  No longer Johnny. No longer a laughing animated soul. She had looked around, expecting him to be at her shoulder, wanting to feel his presence; something to help her through the next few weeks. But she felt nothing. It was as if she were surrounded by a vacuum. Indeed, she was puzzled to feel less of a presence than when he was at work or away. Perhaps that in itself should have been significant.

  She was too shocked to cry much during the first few days. She operated like an automaton, following instructions, accepting help, busy making arrangements, keeping strong for Holly who was more resilient than expected.

  Jeff Grimwade from work had been attentive, but she was uncomfortable in spending too much time with him or letting him see her complete vulnerability. She knew he liked her, maybe even fancied her, but she didn’t want him to hold out any hope that she might one day feel the same.

  She wished it had been Edward. If Edward had still been at Beechview Close, he would have been the supporting rock she needed. After three years of living with them midweek, he had seen her at her worst when she was ill. He had seen her underwear on the washing line and her just-risen face, devoid of make-up. She had nothing to hide from him. With Jeff, she had to tidy up before he arrived, not because she was trying to impress him, but because she didn’t want him gossiping to their colleagues that she was in a complete mess.

  She often wonders what Edward is doing now. Whether he and Felicity are properly reconciled and living the Good Life as a harmonious team. She never thought to tell him about Johnny, deducing that as it had been his decision to break contact, it would be inappropriate to intrude again, and unfair to invade his life at such an emotional time. It would have been like blackmailing him to get in touch, knowing he couldn’t ignore her in grief.

  Lydia … The name still haunts her as it always did.

  After she and Holly had been to Lulworth Cove, she had a strong, almost insistent feeling that she should do something with the novel she had written about meeting Lydia. It was as if Johnny was telling her to dust off the pages and make things happen. He gave good advice, did Johnny. She listened. She called an independent publishing company and set the wheels in motion. There was much editing and then copy-editing before she was satisfied. She bought in some outside help. After the typesetting, there were the proofs to check. She hasn’t wasted the year. Not at a professional level. But her heart and soul have existed, not thrived, and only now, soon after the anniversary, has she decided it is time to stop the crying and move on.

  3

  Jessica

  Two weeks after Felicity departed for Italy, Edward arrives home from work and wonders what he is going to eat. It’s not as if he can’t cook, but mostly he doesn’t. For virtually all of the past seven years, he has been fed when in Broadclyst with Felicity’s and Gianni’s restaurant menu experiments or leftovers. When he came home after a busy day at the university, or returned late at night from a visiting lecture, there was nearly always something waiting in the fridge or in the oven. He may not have had his own choices catered for, but the food was interesting, varied and effortless, often with an accompanying sauce or jus or reduction that dazzled his taste buds. At most he had to turn on the microwave to have a hot meal, or at worst put together a sandwich from the mini delicatessen in their enormous fridge. And he did the shopping only under sufferance when Felicity was dealing with some animal crisis.

  When he lodged with Marianne, it was a similar picture: either she or Johnny would cook and all he had to do was turn up, eat and look appreciative, even if it was one of Marianne’s disasters.

  So it is with some helplessness that he has been operating these past fourteen days since Felicity left, especially on the nights when Harriet is late or out and he is left to his own devices.

  While he is looking in the fridge and contemplating that an aubergine and some mince might make moussaka – but he can’t remember how and Felicity has taken all the cookery books – there is a knock at the door. Imagine the delight of the hungry archaeologist when he spies his nearest neighbour Jessica Hennessy, holding a casserole dish covered with a blue checked tea towel.

  ‘It’s just as easy cooking for two as one,’ she says. ‘I know how
busy you are. I know Harriet goes to her evening class on Thursdays. I thought you might like some Lancashire hotpot.’

  ‘I certainly do like,’ says Edward, beaming gratefully. ‘An answer to a prayer.’ It does not cross his mind that in order to know about Harriet’s manoeuvres Jessica has acquired a somewhat intimate knowledge of his family circumstances, especially considering she is a person on whom he has hardly bestowed more than a nod and a greeting since she moved to the village a few years earlier.

  *

  The hotpot was delicious. Edward left the washed dish on her doorstep with a message of thanks and since then, most term-time Thursdays, he finds a pie or a stew in one of the outbuildings and a Post-it note of instructions through the letterbox. Occasionally she calls with something when he is at home but he rarely invites her in. Considering his experience in dealing with the wiles of women at work, it is surprising he doesn’t suspect her of ulterior motives. He hasn’t yet internalised his new status of ‘available man’ and is unaware that the barrier that has protected him for thirty years has now been removed. Of course, vixen Taryn found a way through the barrier, but it was his choice at the time: his one and only transgression. He could have said no on the grounds of unavailability – as he subsequently did.

  So now he finds himself in a pickle. He says it is a meeting about sustainable energy devices and planning regulations. Harriet says it is a date. Either way he is taking a woman to a restaurant for the first time in quite a while and he is distinctly anxious.

  Jessica is one of two women in the village whom Harriet refers to as The Witches of Broadclyst. The other is Felicity’s friend Olivia, now ex-wife of Alexander, since he finally came clean about his dalliance with one of the women working at Killerton House and is now exiled to Silverton, where he lives with his mistress in her small wisteria-covered cottage. Jessica and Olivia frequent the local eateries where they are known to bitch about their exes, and any single woman who might bar the way to them finding a replacement.