The Other Us

by Fiona Harper

  I may not have made wedding vows out loud to Jude. I know we haven’t stood in front of God and our family and friends and made promises about our life together, but in my heart I have. If I love this bit of him, the bit that drew me to him in the first place, then I have to love all of it, don’t I? I suddenly understand where Becca was coming from, even if I can’t quite accept this kind of love applies to a monster like Grant.

  I walk behind him and drape my arms around his shoulders, put my face next to his. ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘I get it. I get all of it. You can’t stop being who you are …’

  But neither can I, I add silently. Can you understand that too?

  Jude swings the swivel chair round unexpectedly and it catches me off balance. I fall neatly into his lap – just, I suspect, as he planned – and he buries his face in my neck, kisses it. ‘What would I do without you, Meg?’

  ‘I don’t know …’ I try to imagine it. Life without Jude. I think I’d be devastated. I try to picture how he’d handle our break up, but I can’t see him crumbling like I would. I can just see him taking the pain and using it to push himself forward, even higher, even harder. ‘Just promise me we’ll talk about it.’

  He looks up at me and every doubt I’ve ever felt about him is erased from my mind. It’s all there, everything I’ve ever wanted to see. I know he loves me the way I’ve always wanted to be loved. ‘You know I want whatever you want,’ he says. ‘But I’ll tell you what …’

  Here it comes. The deal.

  I’m not cross, though. I was secretly hoping he’d do this, because then we’ll come to terms. I’ll have something concrete to pin him down with.

  ‘This year is going to be crazy. I’ve got sell those ten apartments in the Knightsbridge development and you’ve got that house, your first million-pound budget ... Once they’re all wrapped up … later in the year. How about that?’

  ‘In the summer?’

  He nods.

  ‘We start trying then?’ I ask. ‘Or we talk then?’

  Jude’s lip twitches. He knows I’m messing with him. ‘We talk,’ he says as he drops a gentle kiss on my collarbone, slips my cardigan off my shoulder and then the spaghetti strap of the dress underneath, ‘but we can do as much practising as you like until then …’ I laugh and then, as his mouth continues its downward journey, I stop laughing and let my head drop back.

  *

  The next morning I’m feeling more philosophical about it, less like everything has to happen right this very second. I’m sure if I just give Jude the space to come round to the idea, he will.

  I remember how freaked out I was when I found out I was pregnant with Sophie. Although I was over the moon, I was scared out of my wits by the feeling everything had changed forever. I have to remember that Jude’s never done this before. For him, it’s still as nerve-wracking as the first rollercoaster ride of the day at a theme park.

  When I get downstairs and fetch the milk from the front step, I find a thick, cream envelope on the mat. After putting the milk away, I stand in the kitchen and slide my nail under the flap, then ease out the thick card with embossed gold lettering tucked inside:

  Dan and Becca’s wedding invitation.

  Together with the envelope, I press it to my chest, smiling. Hopefully, by the time it comes around, I’ll have some happy news of my own to share.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  On a sunny July afternoon, we gather outside Swanham Baptist Church for Dan and Becca’s wedding. I stand beside the bride in a floor-length lilac dress with thin straps and a cowl neckline. My stomach is depressingly flat. I know logically, of course, that even if I was expecting it probably wouldn’t be affecting my waistline yet, but the fact it definitely isn’t has put a dampener on my mood. Or it could be the fact that I’m just about to watch my other husband marry my best friend. That’d do it too.

  I’m trying not to be let anything show, though, trying to smile and be happy and ignore the weird knotting sense in my stomach of too many lives twisted up and tangled together. I fuss around Becca with the other bridesmaids, making sure her veil is hanging right, that she’s not holding her flowers wonky. One thing at a time. That’s the way to handle this.

  As we stand there in formation at the top of the aisle, listening to the beginning of Handel’s ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’, I can’t help thinking about a conversation I had with Jude a couple of weeks ago, the one he’d promised we’d have. The one I’d been waiting for. He’d taken me out to a really nice restaurant for our ‘chat’ about babies. Afterwards, I wondered if that was an exercise in containment.

  He asked for another year. Just to get the business really established, he’d said, then he wouldn’t have to work so hard, he’d have more free time, be able to be around at weekends and evenings more. He’d taken my hand and looked into my eyes and said he didn’t want me feeling like a single parent. His mum had always complained about that with his dad. I agreed, of course. What else could I do? It’s supposed to be give and take, this thing, and he’s listened, he’s willing to compromise.

  As we start walking down the aisle, I realise tonight would be the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the flowing booze and the fact Jude’s laptop is back in London while we’re here. I’m ovulating. I’ve been learning how to keep track of these things recently. In readiness.

  I start imagining how I’m going to find Jude with his tie undone, looking weary but happy at the end of the reception, how I’m going to sit on his lap and kiss him slowly and how, after the bride and groom have driven off and all my maid-of-honour duties have been dispensed with, I can drag him back to the hotel and see if we can’t jumpstart the baby-making process a little.

  Not that I’m intending to be backhanded and avoid contraception or anything like that, but you never know what might happen in the heat of the moment, even if we’re sensible. No form of protection is one hundred per cent effective, is it?

  By the time I’ve finished thinking all this I’m shocked to discover we’re at the front of the church. Becca practically has to shove her bouquet at me and I realise it’s time to step aside, to slide away from Dan so she can stand beside him instead of me.

  I feel as if I’m watching myself watch the ceremony as it progresses. It’s weird. On one hand I feel disconnected, as if it’s someone else standing here holding Becca’s bouquet, but on the other hand it all seems too close. Like that feeling you get when someone holds something too near to your face and you just can’t focus on it. I have to keep stopping myself taking a step back.

  I turn to look at the happy couple when it’s time for the vows. As Dan begins to speak the first bit, his voice low and deliberate, I see tiny flurries of movement in the congregation. Husbands and wives squeezing each other’s hands, signalling they’re cementing those same promises they made to each other, repeating them in their heads. Yet-to-be-marrieds darting glances at each other and sharing shy smiles. I look towards the back, where Jude has positioned himself – on Dan’s side. The lesser of two evils – but he’s staring at the ceiling, so I turn my attention back to the bride and groom.

  I’m pleased to see the glow on Becca’s face, one I recognise from a life I’ve almost forgotten was once mine. I find it easier to concentrate on her than focus on Dan. Seeing him look at her the way he once looked at me makes me feel as if I’m paper thin, as if I might vanish from this reality and appear in the other one, right while I’m standing here.

  I breathe out when it’s all over and Becca and Dan head back down the aisle.

  I need to get used to this, I tell myself, as I check we’ve got the full quota of ‘little’ bridesmaids and herd them off behind the bride and groom, like a troupe of lilac-clad ducklings. They’re married now. Joined in the eyes of God and everyone else, and I have a sense that if I can get it to stop feeling weird that I’ll sever the last ties I have to that other life. I’ll be able to loosen the ropes, cast off and drift free from it. That way, I’ll stay in this life
, where everyone is happy: me with Jude, and Becca with Dan, not Grant.

  Billy.

  I inhale sharply.

  Yes, I know. Billy.

  But I could be pregnant this time next year. Billy could be on his way back to me. Or even Sophie. Maybe, if I do everything right, play this game fate has set me by the rules, I’ll be rewarded with both. I have to hang onto that, or at least the hope I’ll be reunited with one of my children in this life.

  Jude isn’t in a very good mood during the reception. Hardly surprising, really, seeing as he doesn’t much like Dan or Becca, and I’m at the top table while he’s been stashed away somewhere at the back of the room next to somebody’s aunt, who insists on taking her false teeth out to eat each course and then putting them back in again so she can talk his ear off in between.

  I discover that watching your best friend marry the man you once loved, are supposed still to love, is a great clarifier. I look at Becca and I think to myself, I was never that much in love with Dan. I wanted to be, but I never was. I was too busy counting all the things about him that weren’t quite perfect to let myself.

  I have to stop being so nitpicky and dissatisfied, I decide. I have to make sure I don’t start secretly resenting Jude for not being ready for babies right now. I have to believe that he’ll make good on his word, that within the next couple of years we’ll be a family, maybe even get married.

  Love is patient …

  So I suppose I will just have to be too.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Nine months later, when I jump back into my life with Dan again, I’m prepared. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching re-runs of Quantum Leap, but I’ve come up with a plan to take control of my crazy life. I’ve decided that, just like Dr Sam Beckett, there must be something I have to fix and I think the thing I need to fix is Dan. He’s the loose end I need to tie up. If I can make this version of Maggie and Dan happy then my work will be done and I can move on and leave them to it.

  I’m also ready to go all guns blazing to get Becca away from Grant, even if it means she doesn’t talk to me for a decade. Keeping her safe is more important than keeping her to myself. I phone her straight away, ready to put my plan into action, and discover that, much to my relief, they’re no longer an item. Not only that, but there’s a lovely little restraining order in force. That means I can focus all my attention on Dan.

  When I hear his key in the door that evening I try not to be nervous, but I am. He comes into the kitchen and dumps his keys on the side. I’m surprised by the rush of warmth I feel when I see him and realise that maybe all that jitteriness was really anticipation. Dan, however, doesn’t seem to be feeling much of anything for me. There’s no kiss on the cheek and he makes me my obligatory cup of tea without hardly making eye contact, then slopes off into the living room to watch The Weakest Link.

  As soon as I exit the kitchen door I see Dan’s shoes thrown across the hallway, one right at the bottom of the stairs in prime tripping position. Oh, for goodness’ sake! I think, feeling the familiar crawling sense of irritation across my skin. I turn and yell, ‘Dan!’ but before I get any further, I stop myself.

  ‘What?’ comes the distracted reply from the lounge.

  I stand there and stare at the shoes for a second. ‘Nothing,’ I call back, and then I gingerly hook the heels with my fingers – they’ve just been kicked off and they’re still … fresh … if you know what I mean – and then I pop them into the shoe tidy. They look weird in there, I decide. Foreign.

  Now, don’t think I’m going to be doing this for Dan every day. At some point he’s going to have to learn to pick up after himself. All I know is that if I want things to be different, then I’m going to have to do things differently, and the best idea I’ve got is to think of what I’d usually do, which always seemed to make things worse, and do the opposite.

  Project ‘loose ends’ has officially begun.

  It takes a couple of weeks but, gradually, I see Dan smile more and more. Sometimes he even comes into the kitchen and, instead of bypassing me for Anne Robinson, actually sits and chats about his day with me while he drinks his cup of tea. Once or twice we’ve even laughed together. But I can’t shake the idea that we’re more like flatmates than husband and wife. I don’t know how to change that.

  What did we do to ourselves? I often ask myself silently. Unlike Grant the Scumbag, who did something dramatically wrong to end his relationship with Becca, Dan and I managed to bludgeon our marriage to death with a thousand tiny blows, so slowly, so carelessly, that we hardly even noticed it happening. It’s only by living it the second time that I’ve even become aware of it.

  ‘Dan?’ I ask absentmindedly one evening, as he’s doing a stir-fry for dinner.

  He thinks he’s Gordon Ramsay, or Nigel Slater, or whoever’s popular at the moment, when he’s cooking. ‘Mm-hmm?’ he mumbles as he’s carefully cutting peppers into strips of exactly four millimetres. Dan’s a bit OCD about stir-fry.

  ‘Do you want to go out tomorrow? As a family, I mean? The weather’s supposed to be lovely.’

  He stops chopping and looks round.

  ‘I thought it would be fun,’ I add.

  He looks slightly bemused, but he nods. ‘OK. What did you have in mind?’

  ‘Oh, just a stroll in the grounds of Elmhurst Hall, maybe? I thought we could take a picnic. Billy would love running up and down some of those hills …’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, and I see a new light appear in his eyes. I suspect he’s thinking about bringing a football along. ‘Let’s do that.’

  So the following morning, I make a picnic up and we put it in the cool bag-slash-rucksack-thing Becca gave us for a Christmas present that we’ve never used, and we head off to Elmhurst Hall.

  We eat first; it’s noon anyway and it means we won’t have to lug the picnic bag around. I put a blanket down on the grass and we eat cheese and ham sandwiches, bags of salt and vinegar crisps, a few sausage rolls I found left over from last Christmas in the back of the freezer and a selection of fruit. Not the most stylish picnic I’ve ever had – I don’t think anything would beat the champagne and oysters I ate with Jude on the beach on Lido island in Venice – but there’s something about the simple pleasures of the fresh summer breeze, the rolling hills, that makes it the best thing I’ve eaten in a long time.

  Dan and I don’t chat, but there’s a companionable silence as we work our way through the food, taking turns to encourage Billy to eat something other than endless packets of POM-BEAR.

  After lunch Dan’s eyes light up. ‘Let’s build a camp!’ he says to Billy.

  I’m not sure Billy knows what a camp is, but he’d do anything if it meant doing it with his dad, whom he adores. So for the next hour or two, I am demoted to wood carrier and leaf picker as the two boys construct a lean-to in the woods from which they can spy any bandits or pirates without being detected.

  I have to do a bit of fast talking when we’re finished, because Billy initially insists it’s only for boys, but eventually we all clamber inside and sit there, eyes peeled, eating the last of the chocolate buttons from the picnic. Billy’s not very good at sitting still and lasts about five minutes before he decides, actually, it would be much more fun to be a baddie and runs around outside, doing his best one-legged pirate impressions until Dan and I are helpless with laughter.

  When we finally manage to breathe properly again, Dan turns to me. ‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘This is fun. I think we needed this.’

  I nod, too full of everything I want to say to say anything. I lean forward and rub his arm. ‘I do love you, you know,’ I say, making sure my eyes don’t leave his. ‘I know we don’t say that much anymore, but I really do.’ My voice catches embarrassingly on the last few words, because I realise it’s true. As much as I’ve chosen the life with Jude, it doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings for him. I think on some level I always will.

  ‘I know,’ he says softly. ‘And I love you too. It’s just …�
�� He shakes his head, unable to articulate what he wants to say.

  I exhale softly, thankful he’s finally ready to hear this. ‘I’m sorry I’m such a crabby wife sometimes, that I always want to do things my way …’ I trail off, having an odd moment of déjà vu, although I don’t really know if you can call it that, about my other life. I’m thinking about Jude, how my role with him is reversed, and suddenly I understand how deeply frustrated Dan must get with me sometimes. It strikes me, even though I haven’t felt very much that he loves me recently, that maybe he gives in to me for the same reason I do to Jude: because he loves me. Maybe he hasn’t given up on me – on us – yet.

  ‘I think it started to get bad when Billy was small,’ I say. ‘I know I wasn’t in a good place and it can’t have been easy for you.’

  He gives me a look filled with gratitude and I know I’ve hit the nail on the head. ‘I really tried to be there for you, Maggie, but you just kept pushing me away.’

  I nod. ‘I know. It wasn’t your fault. I’m not even sure it was fully mine, either. It was just … hard.’

  ‘So how do we make it better?’

  I think for a moment. ‘You know those two-person rowing boats we used to see on the Thames when we were at college?’

  He gives me a quizzical look. ‘Rowing boats? You think we need to get one?’

  I laugh and shake my head. I could never quite get my head round the fact Dan is both a storyteller who’s imaginative and creative and a husband who always takes everything so literally. It still fascinates me how those two parts of his personality sit so comfortably side by side. ‘Do you remember that time we stopped and watched those two who just couldn’t row in a straight line?’

  ‘Oh, yes! They were awful! Couldn’t manage to row in sync with each other at all, let alone the same direction!’

  ‘Well, I think maybe that’s us,’ I say. ‘We’ve been pulling in opposite directions for too long and all that happens is that nobody gets where they want to go and everyone gets frustrated.’