The Anniversary

by Hilary Boyd

  Arthur, who was eating his lunch, stuffing chicken strips into his mouth, looked at her, his eyes huge and solemn. ‘Why are you crying, Mumma?’

  ‘They’re happy tears, sweetheart. Daddy’s coming home,’ Eve said, wiping her face with her fingertips and smiling broadly at her son. ‘We’ll see Daddy very soon.’

  Arthur, perhaps confused by the tears, looked as if he weren’t sure about this development. He gave a half-hearted cheer, but Stella could tell he was bewildered. Five months was an age in the life of a small child.

  ‘That’s such great news!’ Stella said, breathing a quiet sigh of relief that her responsibility for her daughter’s pregnancy would soon be over. ‘You’re going to find it strange, having him home after all this time.’

  ‘Now he’s coming back, I can’t imagine how I’ve lasted this long without him,’ Eve said, her face glowing with happiness.

  Stella busied herself getting the lunch ready, breaking up the romaine lettuce, draining the oil from the anchovy tin, peeling off the fillets and laying them across the salad, cutting the boiled eggs into quarters, halving the cherry tomatoes, scattering the blanched green beans and boiled baby new potatoes, then finally adding some plump black olives and chopped chives she’d picked from the garden. She laid the earthenware bowl on the table beside the small jug of French dressing, the whole process a calming distraction from her thoughts. But she had no appetite, just a thumping headache and a painfully guilty conscience.

  ‘Thanks, Mum. Mmm, delicious,’ Eve said, helping herself to the salad. ‘You don’t have to go home, you know, when Eric comes back.’ She grinned at Stella. ‘Although I’m sure you could do with a break.’

  ‘I think you and Eric will need time alone together, sweetheart. There’ll be precious little of that once the baby’s born.’ She paused. ‘And Iain will forget what I look like if I don’t go home soon.’

  Stella’s tone was cheery, but she felt suddenly bleak. Part of her did want to stay. The thought of her musty, silent flat was dismal enough, and now she would have to face Iain, guilt lurking behind her eyes, ready to leap out and reveal her treachery at any time. She hadn’t even told Eve about their plans yet, perhaps because doing so would make it real. But it was more important than ever, after last night, to walk away from Jack. She took a deep breath. Now or never, she thought. Make it real.

  ‘On the subject of Iain,’ she began, ‘I haven’t told you yet, what with everything going on …’ She took another steadying breath. ‘But we’re seriously thinking of selling up and moving somewhere near here.’

  Eve’s eyes widened. ‘Really? You and Iain moving in together? That’s brilliant, Mum. It’d be so great to have you close. And with Dad down the road most weekends, it’ll be like we’re a proper family at last.’

  Her daughter’s cosy image of the family felt more like a bear trap to Stella at this precise moment, but she said brightly, ‘Iain can’t wait to be in the country. He’s a gardener, after all. Says he’s only stayed in town all these years for me.’

  ‘And you? Could you really cope with being here full-time, Mum? You love London.’ Stella, her mind spinning with what she did and didn’t want, did not have time to reply before Eve went on, ‘How will you hack living together after all these years in separate gaffs?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The enthusiasm she’d felt while talking to Iain about the plan seemed to drain away under her daughter’s scrutiny.

  Eve grinned. ‘You’ll have to put up with all that man-stuff full time, don’t forget: loo seat left up, snoring, bin-rows, cooking supper every night …’

  Stella laughed. ‘Oh no I won’t. Iain’s a domestic goddess. He’s way better at housework, bins and cooking than I am. And he doesn’t snore yet, thank God.’

  ‘Wow,’ Eve chuckled, ‘maybe he could come and live with me.’ Then she looked intently at Stella. ‘So you’re sure, Mum?’

  Taking a deep breath, Stella said, ‘I don’t want to go on like I have. Your brother … I feel as if I’ve been buried for decades, unable to move forward. But last night …’ she stopped, embarrassed at the thought of the latter part of the evening – the description of the memorial she had given Eve earlier, over breakfast, stopped at the door of Jack’s cottage.

  ‘I’m so pleased it worked out, Mum. You and Dad have been so brave.’ She smiled. ‘I’m proud of you both.’

  Arthur got down from the table and climbed on to his mother’s lap, thumb in his mouth. For a moment none of them spoke, Eve cuddling her son, Stella feeling so tired suddenly, and longing to lay her head down and sleep.

  ‘I suppose I don’t want to be alone any more,’ she said, suddenly realizing that this was the truth. Used to keeping people at a prickly distance so that she could hold Jonny close, she and her dead son had become locked in a strange dependency. Now the strings had been loosened and she had let Jonny go, her release from the bond was tinged with unexpected loneliness.

  Nevertheless, the images in her head as she plodded upstairs for a snooze were not of the man she had pledged to move in with, but of the other man, down the road, whose kisses were still guiltily imprinted on her mouth.

  33

  August 1992

  The French house belonged to the family of her best friend Rosie’s husband, Ben. He had spent most of his childhood holidays there. It wasn’t on the trendy Riviera, but a couple of hours southeast of Paris in the flat, gloomy farmlands of the north. The house, a nineteenth-century converted stables, was beautiful. It was at the edge of a village that was eerily silent and empty, except for the manic barking of dogs snarling behind metal gates as Stella walked Eve past in the pushchair and stood in a couple of acres, surrounded by fields stretching to the horizon.

  The place had a lovely, settled feel, with cool tiled floors and walls hung with old photographs and antique maps, the furniture rustic French. There was a large, heated pool surrounded by trees and a pretty garden with an outside table, where they ate all their meals. Stella had worried the weather might be iffy, but in fact there was a heatwave while they were there, with temperatures hitting thirty degrees most days.

  The second anniversary of Jonny’s death had come and gone. Jack had been in Turkey on a story; Stella had gone to work as usual. Only Patsy had mentioned it, ringing to ask if her daughter was all right. Stella had said she was fine, but around the time that Jonny had died, she found herself in the toilets at the BBC, stuffing a wad of paper towels to her mouth to stop herself from screaming. She was relieved Jack was away – gone, she was sure, to avoid the anniversary, although he’d insisted it was a really important assignment. She knew, if he’d been at home, he would have felt obliged to mark the day somehow, and she wouldn’t have been able to bear that.

  They had come to an impasse in their marriage. The reconciliation had held, in so far as they were now communicating again, making love – very occasionally – and Stella was trying with all her might not to push him away. But there was still a massive, insurmountable barrier between them that neither seemed able to breach.

  Jack reached for her now in the stifling darkness. They lay naked on the too-small bed in the boiling room on the first floor of the French house, neither of them even covered by a sheet. It was black as pitch with the shutters closed and she thought she might suffocate, her burning skin, from too long in the sun, itching for air and to be away from the heat of her husband’s body. I wish we were home, she thought, miserably, as Jack moved his hand to her breast, giving her nipple a gentle squeeze. She tensed.

  ‘It’s too hot,’ she said, easing his hand away.

  ‘Can’t we open the window, now the lights are off? Eve’s got the mozzie net over her cot.’

  ‘I don’t want to risk it. You saw little Connor’s face yesterday.’ Connor was Rosie and Ben’s one-year-old, whose face had been a swollen, fiery pin-board of bites.

  Jack rolled on his side and dropped a kiss on her shoulder. ‘Are you enjoying yourself, Stell? You seem a bit tense.’ She he
ard, rather than saw in the darkness, him turning away again, on to his back. ‘This is such a fabulous place and you love Rosie and Ben, even if Olivia is a pain in the arse.’

  Stella laughed. ‘God, she really is a pill, isn’t she?’

  Olivia was married to Ben’s college friend, Charlie, and worked in beauty PR. She literally never stopped complaining. According to her, the pool was too warm, the shower in their room was rubbish, the tiles were loose in the kitchen, it was too hot, the sun-lounger cushions had mildew, the state-of-the-art, four-burner stove was dangerous – not that she lifted a finger to cook anything on it – the mozzies bit her more than everyone else. (Stella silently cheered them on as justified revenge for her whining.)

  ‘I’m glad we came,’ Jack said. ‘I think it’s been good to have a holiday for once. A change of scene.’

  Stella didn’t reply. She knew Jack was right. She should relax, try and enjoy herself. But the tight knot at her centre simply refused to let go and unwind.

  ‘Where you are doesn’t change how you feel,’ she whispered fiercely, a familiar spurt of irritation triggered by what she saw as his constant desire to ‘move on’.

  He didn’t seem to take offence, just replied, his tone mild, ‘No, but you know what I mean.’

  She took a breath, attempting to dampen her annoyance. It wasn’t fair, she knew, always carping on at him as she did. She could almost feel their marriage slipping away, feel the toll the last two years had taken on the closeness, the harmony between them that she had valued so much. The love was still there, somewhere, she was sure of that, but neither of them could reach it any more.

  ‘I’m not sure they fully appreciated your brilliance on the European Monetary Union at supper,’ she said, her tone conciliatory but also genuinely admiring of her husband’s grasp of the current financial complexities.

  He groaned. ‘Yeah, they did look a bit baffled, didn’t they? We’re heading for disaster if we sign this treaty. The ERM is one thing …’ Jack began a long, whispering rant and Stella found her eyes shutting, her breathing begin to slow. The ERM demanded less of her than sex, and she was grateful.

  As they drove along the virtually empty French autoroute towards the Calais ferry the following Saturday – Eve strapped in her seat in the back of the Citroën and fast asleep – Jack, after miles and miles of silence between them, glanced sideways at Stella.

  ‘Do you still love me, Stell?’ he asked quietly.

  Shocked out of her doze, Stella took a minute to reply.

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  Her husband sighed. ‘Just, these days I seem to irritate you all the time. Nothing I do is right.’

  ‘Of course I still love you,’ she said without thinking.

  There was a long silence and Stella found her heart pounding. What is he really saying? Thump, thump, thump. She swallowed hard; the aire de service coffee she’d consumed earlier, along with an indigestibly large jambon cru baguette, rose in her throat.

  After what seemed like a lifetime, Jack finally spoke. His voice was pained. ‘Obviously I understand why you’re miserable … But you’re always getting at me, as if I’m to blame.’ He paused. Rain started beating heavily on the windscreen. ‘Look at this morning. Even before we left, you’d ridiculed my coffee-making, nagged at me for packing Eve’s blanket, shaken me off when I tried to hug you, lambasted me for swimming because of my wet trunks.’ He sighed softly. ‘As if it mattered.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Stella heard her voice tremble. The thought of Jack leaving her made her guts dissolve in fear.

  Jack let out a long sigh, eyes firmly on the road. ‘I’m not saying anything, Stell.’

  Neither of them spoke for the forty-five minutes it took for them to reach the ferry. But Stella was shaken. She could hear something in Jack’s voice, could feel him pulling away. Part of her wanted to just throw herself into his arms at the first opportunity and beg his forgiveness, insist she would make more of an effort. But he wanted her to be happy and she couldn’t just flick a switch. She was angry at just about everything these days, and she took it out on him.

  34

  When Stella woke from a fitful snooze that Sunday afternoon, feeling the after-effects of too much wine and aware of her body bruised and stiffening from the tumble in the japonica, she lay thinking for a few moments. The decision she came to was this: I must avoid Jack at all costs.

  As soon as Eric was back, she would go home. There would be times when Stella would have to see Jack – Eve would insist on family lunches, etc., especially around the new baby’s birth – but not in the concentrated way of this summer. And when, eventually, she and Iain found somewhere in the area, it would be months down the line and the tension between them would have passed. Nobody need ever know.

  Stella felt calmer as she pulled herself out of bed and tidied herself before going downstairs. She could hear Eve on the phone as she walked to the bathroom, and the tinny electronic roar of Arthur’s transforming dinosaur – his pride and joy at the moment, much to his mother’s despair.

  Her daughter was just finishing the call when Stella arrived in the kitchen. ‘That was Morag,’ she said. Morag was Eric’s mother. ‘They want to come and stay, after the baby’s born.’ She pulled a face. ‘They’re lovely, but a bit of an effort. Still, family’s important, eh?’ Eve heaved herself up from the table. ‘It’s going to be great when you and Iain are down here, Mum. We’ll be quite a gang!’

  Stella nodded but didn’t reply. She was touched that her daughter thought of them all as a ‘gang’. It was what Stella herself had glimpsed yesterday, with Eve’s thoughtfulness over Jonny’s birthday cake and the new ease she felt in Jack’s company – a real sense of family. Until … Now was not the time to tell her daughter that she didn’t want to hang out with Jack any more than was absolutely necessary.

  ‘So, tell me more about last night, Mum. What did you get up to, after the rose garden?’ She grinned. ‘Apart from breaking and entering and getting drunk, that is.’

  Stella gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘Oh, we just went back to Jack’s and had a pizza, talked a lot about Jonny. And yes, drank too much Rioja.’

  ‘Where was Lisa?’

  ‘Working. She’s coming down today.’

  Eve nodded. ‘It must be so strange, hanging out with Dad again. Do you think you can be friends now?’

  With Jack’s kisses still almost tangible on her lips, Stella was horrified to feel heat creeping slowly across her cheeks.

  ‘Friends?’ she squeaked, turning and randomly grabbing the jar of strawberry jam sitting on the side and removing the sticky knife balanced on the rim. When she glanced round, Eve was frowning.

  ‘I just thought, now you don’t have the tension between you about Jonny …’

  Stella tried to pull herself together, but she didn’t know what to say. How could she be friends with Jack now? Eve was still waiting for her to answer, hands in the small of her back and arching her stiff, overburdened body.

  ‘Friends,’ she repeated helplessly.

  ‘You and Dad didn’t have a fight, did you?’ Eve asked, a worried expression on her face.

  ‘No! God, no. We had a wonderful evening, Evie. It was absolutely magical.’ She knew she had unconsciously allowed the pleasure she’d felt in Jack’s company to break through her subsequent guilt, because Eve’s face relaxed and she gave Stella a grin.

  ‘Great. That’s such good news, Mum.’

  35

  Jack was meeting an old colleague and friend, Howard Duff, in Hastings for coffee on Tuesday morning. He wasn’t really in the mood, but it had been in the diary for months. He put Lisa on the train first. Their two days together had been surprisingly calm, given the terrible start to his Sunday.

  Luckily Lisa had bought the story of the car having a flat battery, and Jack had willingly taken the flak from his wife for supposedly leaving the lights on overnight. And when she asked if they were going over to see Eve and the family
, Jack had got multiple brownie points for saying he’d rather they had a day on their own. He had come to the same conclusion as Stella: he must avoid seeing his ex-wife at all costs.

  He had nervously waited all day for Lisa to find him out. In his dazed state he knew this was mere paranoia – Lisa had known he was meeting Stella for the memorial, after all. But Stella’s kisses had not gone away; they seemed to hang in the air for all, including Lisa, to witness.

  Oddly, though, his wife seemed unusually sweet and loving, in a way she hadn’t been for months now. She asked sensitively about Jonny’s memorial, without any signs of jealousy or irritation about the time spent with Stella; there was no mention of the baby issue and, mercifully, no demands for sex. He’d wondered what had changed, then decided not to rock the boat by asking. But her sweetness heaped guilt upon guilt.

  What a stupid mess I’ve got myself into, he told himself, his head spinning. He wished with all his heart that he and Stella had been able to mourn their son properly sooner. Like Stella, he had been eternally running from Jonny’s ghost. But since Saturday, when he thought of his son, it was the beauty and tranquillity of the rose garden that came to mind, the memories of the boy, alive, that he and Stella had shared, the knowledge that Jonny was now free of the confines of the bamboo box, melded with the soft earth. The pool was gone; the ashes were gone. Jack had his son back.

  ‘You seem to have fallen off the planet,’ Howard complained as they sat opposite each other at a table on the decking of a modern café next to the fishing beach in the Old Town. The morning sun burned hot on the two men – no umbrellas – but since his friend chain-smoked, they had no choice but to sit outside. Jack wished he’d brought his cap. ‘I miss your rants,’ Howard added.