by Daisy Tate
Apart from failing to get married and give them a grandson, she’d done everything perfectly. Okay, she could’ve pushed it on the violin front, but they were happy enough with the focused, career-obsessed surgeon they’d made. The one whose goal in life was to do better than they had, to make all of their sacrifices worth their while.
Perhaps this was why Emily loved Izzy so much. Adored, really. Izzy was her polar opposite. Absolutely carefree and the least judgemental person she’d ever met. She never cackled at Emily’s stiff social demeanour. Never mocked her solemnity. Or teased her when she stuck her foot in it with Charlotte or Freya. She accepted Emily ‘as is’. You couldn’t really ask for more from a friend. She loved Izzy. At the beginning probably more than a friend, but that jagged path of unrequited never-gonna-happen had softened over the years into a deep, abiding friendship. Or maybe it was the fact that Izzy had lived in Hawaii for the last ten years and Emily hadn’t had to think about it.
She froze when she heard a cough at the door, then the creak of hinges. The Burns’ house could do with a bit of WD-40.
‘Emms?’ Izzy hissed from the doorway. ‘You awake?’
Emily faked being asleep. Thinking all of that mushy friend stuff about Izzy and then having her appear was too much.
Izzy tried again. ‘Emmillyy? Wanna cuddle?’
Emily held her breath. Izzy used to do this in uni before exams. She’d done it a lot more when her mum had got ill in that first round of breast cancer treatment. Emily had never slept a wink on those nights. Izzy always wove her limbs around, across and through Emily’s, as if she was in a pile of puppies.
Izzy tiptoed over to the bed, eased up the covers and spooned up against Emily. She was all warm and snuffly and a little bit squirmy.
It felt so nice.
Would this torture never end?
Once Izzy’s breath softened and slowed, Emily inched her telephone off the bed stand. She scanned the train times out of the nearest station, then sent an email to her registrar to let him know she’d be available to be rostered onto the surgical schedule by the afternoon. Work always made not thinking about personal stuff so much easier.
She stared out into the darkness.
She made a resolution to play mah-jong with her mother before the year was out.
She made another to bring her father to a karaoke bar over the Chinese New Year.
She made another she couldn’t quite articulate about Izzy.
She looked at her watch.
Only five more hours of not moving to go.
Freya looked at her list of resolutions and sighed.
It was more like a To Do list rather than something she could attack with zest and verve. Normally, she loved making resolution lists. Loved crossing things off. Revisiting lists of days gone by. Seeing how much she had or hadn’t achieved.
It was weird, doing it on her own. She and Monty had always done them together, no matter how blotto or exhausted they’d been. They would find their notebooks, curl up wherever and write.
His list would be full of things like ‘Do Parkour with Felix’, ‘Teach Regan how to make a kite’, ‘Run a 10k for a hedgehog charity’.
Hers were always a combination of artistic goals and practicalities. Strive for greater creative fulfilment. Change savings account. Try new colour scheme for woodland creature prints. Switch mortgage to fixed rate!
Her phone rang. She rolled over to Monty’s pillow, where the phone was lying, and smiled.
When the video call pixelated into focus, he still looked a bit bleary. There was a poster of a snowboarder behind him. He must be in one of his nephews’ bedrooms.
‘Hey, babe. Happy New Year.’ His voice was a bit scratchy. If he was here she would’ve instantly made him a hot toddy. Or at least told him to make one. Instantly.
‘Happy New Year to you, darlin’.’
‘Cameron and Marnie send their best. Did you have a good time?’
He sounded properly emosh. Was he regretting not coming back for Hogmanay?
‘Brilliant actually. We sold out of everything. The donations more than make up for the milk run the distributers couldn’t do. Rocco’s even got a couple of micro-distillers interested in doing a deal with him to make vodka. Apparently milk vodka is a thing.’
‘Great!’ Monty wasn’t enthusing with his usual verve.
‘I sold all of my cushions!’ She made a happy crowd noise.
‘Oh, love. That’s wonderful. The wildlife ones with the …’ He mimed pouring tea.
‘Yeah. The tea-party ones. Charlotte charged over forty quid a pop and got it!’ Freya was still in a bit of shock. They were time-consuming, but if she could make a few each month, it would cover the minimum payment for the council tax. It was on her list, of course. Chipping away at the council tax.
‘Did you make your resolutions?’ Monty swept a hand across his face.
Was he sweating? Cameron always kept the house warm, but not sauna warm.
Freya held her notebook up so he could see the list. ‘You?’
‘Mmm. Yes.’ Monty looked terribly serious. And epically sad. She suddenly wanted him to be here in the bed beside her so much it physically hurt. Could a person who drove you mad become essential to your wellbeing if you loved them enough? That critical thread that held your proverbial cloth together?
She resolved then and there to tell him about the painting. She would talk to Rocco about selling it. Even if the painting wasn’t worth tens of thousands, it would help. She had brainstormed some great ideas with Charlotte about making tweaks in her shop and, of course, if Rocco could keep the farm shop open he might be able to update his clanky Land Rover one day. Or, at the very least, afford to take a day off and shag Charlotte.
‘Want to hear my resolutions?’ Freya asked.
‘Frey – I need to talk.’
His face was going a peculiar shade of red.
‘Monts, have you drunk too much? Are you going to be sick?’
‘Yes. No. Freya. Listen to me.’
Everything in her stilled. In a bad way.
‘I have to tell you something.’
She forced herself to stay quiet. Surely there could be nothing so bad they couldn’t fix it. Especially if they did it together.
‘I told my parents and Cameron about the credit cards.’
‘Everything?’ she whispered. They were cash only people. Like her family. Buy what you can afford and don’t if you can’t. They would have been horrified.
His forehead crinkled in on itself. ‘Everything. They wanted to know what the hell I was doing leaving you and the kids …’ He faltered then sobbed, ‘I’m not like you. I can’t turn ideas into money. I can’t juggle nineteen things at once. I tried so hard to make the money stretch out and I just … I can’t, Frey.’ He raked a hand through his hair as he choked back another sob. He looked a peculiar combination of young and old. But mostly he looked spent. ‘I told them everything. I told them about maxing out the credit cards. I told them about taking out more to pay off the maxed-out ones. I told them about emptying the children’s bank accounts.’
Oh, gosh. She hadn’t known about the children’s bank accounts.
She stopped hearing the details. A loud buzzing filled her head with the odd word popping through. Arrears. Bankruptcy. Collection officers.
‘They asked how much we owed and I told them.’
It was roughly equivalent to what they had paid into the house. This, after years of scraping and saving and economizing to get the deposit, whilst also supporting Monty through law school.
He sucked in a jagged breath then began to openly weep. Through his snot and tears and gasps for oxygen he confessed his fears about telling her. The anxiety about having let her down. The children down. His parents, his big brother; everyone he’d ever met or who had, for even the tiniest of moments, believed in him.
It was like watching someone have a breakdown. Actually. That was precisely what was happening. She was watching her
husband have a breakdown and all she could do was sit there and wonder whether or not her phone service would last long enough to see it through.
His brother, he eventually explained, would sort it. The money, the loans, the debt – but on one condition: Monty would work for him as a carpenter. Which, he added eyes glued to hers, would entail staying in the West Country.
Freya realized she’d forgotten to breathe.
She pictured that anonymous hand reaching out to touch her newly pregnant mother’s hand. She remembered how frightened she’d felt the day she’d told Monty she was pregnant, only to have her worst fear come to pass: him leaving. She forced herself to remember how all of that fear and pain and anxiety had been swept away not when he’d come back, but when she saw the pride in his face as he held his infant children for the first time.
Choices.
Everyone had choices.
She looked down at her resolutions. It was such a long list.
Would any of this have happened if she’d stepped away from the shop when she started noticing things simply weren’t working any more? They could’ve switched roles. She could’ve sold things online from home while Monty saved the world – or at least part of it – and got a steady income. She could know where Felix’s kilt pin was.
‘Freya?’ Monty sobbed. ‘Say something. Anything.’
This was her fault. Her gorgeous, beautiful, generous husband was falling to bits because she hadn’t reined in her need to prove to her parents she had what it took to make it in the fashion world.
Then again, she hadn’t been the one to take out six secret credit cards, max them all out, then drain what little they’d managed to save for the children’s uni fees, freeze the mortgage and leave untold number of bills unpaid.
Could all this have been fixed if they’d trusted one another more? Believed in one another more?
‘Give me a minute, love,’ she managed to say. Her mind was reeling so fast, nothing would stick.
‘Please Freya. I love you. I will do anything in the world so long as you forgive me.’
He sounded as though he meant it. Monty always meant it when he apologized. It was follow-through that was his problem.
It takes two to tango, darlin’.
There was a knock on her door. ‘Mum?’ Regan slipped in, wiping the sleep out of her eyes. ‘Are you talking to Dad?’
‘Yes, darlin’.’ She waited until Monty swept away his tears and blew his nose before handing the phone to her daughter. She squealed with delight when she saw Monty making a silly face at her. They gabbled on a bit about the party and how much more fun it would’ve been if he’d been there. Regan wandered to the next room so Monty could wish Felix a Happy New Year. A moment later, she heard them all burst into gales of laughter.
She began gouging thick, dark lines across each of her resolutions. The good intentions. The minutiae. The broad strokes. It all boiled down to one very simple choice. A choice that would stay with all of them for ever.
Would she spend the rest of her life resenting her husband for all of the things he wasn’t – or love him for all of the things he was?
Charlotte’s massive platter of pancakes had been demolished. The bacon had long since been eaten and one sad little remaining sausage had Bonzer’s name written all over it. The children had begged an unusually quiet Rocco for one last trip to the barns for calf-cuddles, and Lachlan had excused himself for a wee lie-down before everyone set off on their travels. It was just the girls left at the table, finishing the dregs of their coffee before Emily’s taxi arrived. Izzy steeled herself. It was now or never.
She tinged her fork against the side of the syrup bottle. ‘Announcement time!’
Everyone turned to her, foreheads lifted in curiosity, mouths tweaked into intrigued smiles.
‘Let me guess?’ Emily, who was unbelievably grumpy, said, ‘You made an appointment at the GP’s.’
‘Oh, I was going to do that for you, Izzy,’ Charlotte rushed in.
‘Why can’t we all let Izzy look after Izzy?’ Freya asked. Freya clearly needed more sleep, but it was precisely the point Izzy was going to make. She was a grown woman who needed to both look after herself and ask her friends for help.
‘I have made an appointment,’ she said a bit more grandly than she’d intended.
Emily raised her arms in a ‘finally!’ gesture. Izzy reached out and clasped Emily’s hands in her own. ‘With the oncologist.’
Everyone exchanged confused looks, apart from Emily, whose face was impossible to read.
Charlotte was the one who finally managed to ask why.
‘I had breast cancer back in Hawaii. I think it might be coming back.’
‘Granddad’s car smells like moss and cow poo.’
‘It does, doesn’t it?’ Freya was refusing to let herself be annoyed by the fact that she and her children and all their bags were jammed into her father’s tiny little two-door tin bucket.
Her husband was having a breakdown. They were subterranean levels of broke. Her business was crumbling to bits. She didn’t have the remotest clue what to do about any of it. Or whether or not things could carry on as they had been. (Actually she knew the answer to that one. No. They couldn’t.)
All of which was neither here nor there, because the one thing not on her list was cancer.
Izzy’s news had hit them like an atom bomb. She’d not gone into great detail, but she’d had a single mastectomy, chemo and radiation. Owing to a domino effect of cock-ups between her hospital in Hawaii, Wales, and the one she’d yet to register with in Sussex, she was three months late on her annual scan. She’d had one shortly before she’d moved back and had been clear but, as of late, she hadn’t been feeling quite herself and, no, she wasn’t just talking about the head cold.
So for today? It simply didn’t matter that they were in a cramped car reeking of teenaged boy socks and cow dung. Not when the one thing they didn’t have to worry about was dying.
Poppy climbed out of the car and closed the door quietly behind her. ‘All right, Mum?’
‘Of course, darling.’ Charlotte wasn’t. She was absolutely heartbroken for Izzy. How they’d managed to pack the car, get the children in, particularly with Jack taking up his status as resident moody teen again, and hit the motorway was beyond her. She’d driven in a daze and, it appeared, pulled in for coffee in much the same state.
At least Izzy (doped up on cold medicine) and Luna (in the back row with Bonzer) were asleep. The last thing they needed was to realize they were being driven down the road by a woman in shock.
Izzy was the most exuberant person Charlotte had ever met. It was impossible to imagine all of that energy being savaged by cells, uncontrollably dividing again and again with the sole intent of malevolence.
Mercifully, any animosity Poppy had felt over seeing her and Rocco kissing had vanished. Jack, on the other hand, was re-harnessing his surliness with each passing mile. Whether it was the absence of cows to tend to or the Instagram pictures she could see him thumbing past – well, she had her guesses. The past few days had been a little bubble of perfection. A bubble now slit wide open with the blunt reappearance of reality. A reality that included a message from Hazel hoping to discuss ‘the assets situation’ sooner rather than later.
‘Mum.’ Jack tugged her phone off the charging jack, glared at it then climbed out of the car and handed it to her. ‘Dad’s sent you something.’
Irritatingly, her fingers shook as she pressed the download button. The attachment – there was no note – was from Oli’s divorce lawyers.
Something about this being the busiest time of year for divorce lawyers sprung to mind then faded as she began to read.
She scanned the document, doing her very best to keep her face neutral as she absorbed the full brunt of the blow.
If she was interested, Oliver had a buyer for the house. If Charlotte wanted to stay that was, of course, her legal right, but … benefiting both parties … expediting the proceed
ings … would have to be sold eventually …
She pinched her fingers to the bridge of her nose.
‘Is he coming back early?’ Jack asked, his ever-deepening voice tinged with hope.
‘No, darling. I’m afraid it’s to do with the divorce.’
Jack swore. Poppy told him off. He bit her head off.
‘All right, you two. Why don’t we go in and get something hot to drink, shall we?’
As they walked towards the services, Poppy quietly asked, ‘Is he going to, like, totally forget about us? I mean, he still loves us, right?’
Jack told her not to be such an idiot; he’d offered to let them stay in London instead of Sussex, hadn’t he?
Poppy snapped back at Jack that she was only asking, gawwwd, then slipped her hand into Charlotte’s.
Charlotte didn’t know whose hand needed holding more. Oli had said they could move in with him?
‘Of course he still loves you, darling,’ Charlotte said. ‘Life’s just a bit complicated at the moment.’
And there it was. The complexity of divorce in a nutshell. A beeped-out word one minute. A father his children couldn’t bear to lose the next. A wife who’d thought her family’s world revolved around her, only to discover it didn’t.
‘Should we get Izzy some more cold medicine and Luna a hot chocolate?’
‘Good idea.’ Charlotte gave Poppy’s hand a squeeze. ‘I just need to run to the loo. If I give you some money, why don’t you and Jack get some hot chocolates for everyone.’
After a quiet weep in the cubicle, Charlotte pulled herself together and went to the sink to give her face a quick wash. As awful as it was, she couldn’t help but appreciate how the divorce had thrown a spotlight on how she’d lived her life. The wallflower who’d been so busy running around trying to make everyone else’s lives better, she’d nearly faded out of her own. She washed her hands, eyes locked on the long mirror as busy, tired travellers shuffled in and out of the cubicles behind her. So many lives.