So now we rub along just … fine. It’s fine. I’m still single, of course, but that’s fine too. For now, at least.
‘Bye Mum! See you on Sunday.’
Finley has wrapped his arms around my waist, face upturned. I kiss his forehead and squeeze him tightly until he yelps and squirms from my grasp. Eloise takes his place and I kiss her too and then wave them off, the Land Rover pulling slowly out of the driveway just as Brenda and Barbara appear at the gate. They pause to wave and smile, then walk up the drive to where I’m still standing by the open front door. Brenda is clutching a bottle of cava and Barbara is holding a covered baking tray, which I very much hope holds some of her divine chocolate brownies.
‘Evening! Brownies!’ she says.
‘Yesss!’ I say. ‘You never let me down! Come in, come in.’
I shut the door and we head for the kitchen, both of them talking at once.
‘I’m ready for a glass of that bubbly, Brenda. Crack it open!’
‘I’m starving. What shall we order tonight? Oh, Beth, the Kings Head is going to start doing a weekly quiz night next month, have you heard? The Busy Bees have to enter. We’d be brilliant, don’t you think?’
I laugh, open the cupboard, and take out three glasses, then relieve Barbara of her tray. It’s still warm to the touch and the contents smell mouth-watering.
‘Indian? I’m easy though. We’ll order straight away, shall we? I’m hungry too. And yes, a pub quiz sounds fun. Haven’t done one in years. You’re on for a Busy Bees team if I can get Robin to babysit.’
The Busy Bees is the name Brenda came up with for the three of us – Beth, Barbara, and Brenda – not long after we all met. As I stand at my front door, looking out, Barbara lives next door on the left and Brenda on the right. They’re both a bit older – many of my friends are older than me these days, which doesn’t bother me at all, although some would, I suspect, look for a deep psychological meaning behind the fact that I’m drawn to women of around my absent mother’s age – and both are single, and we all just … well, clicked, I suppose. They’re kind, and good fun, and our regular get-togethers are always a hoot. We own three of just eight properties in The Acre, a small, new development just off the top of Prestbury High Street, where I moved after Jacob and I sold our marital home on the other side of town after the split. Brenda moved in just three weeks after I did, and Barbara about a month after that, so we’ve all been here a year or so now, and I love it. The house is spacious and bright and ultra-modern, four bedrooms and an open-plan kitchen and living area; outside, it has a smart paved driveway and a small but pretty south-facing garden, and it’s perfect for me and the kids. Prestbury’s great too, just two miles from Cheltenham town centre and a short drive from work, but with its own mini supermarket, a couple of hair salons, three pubs and, of course, the world-famous racecourse just down the road.
Now I smile as my friends settle themselves on the high-backed bar stools around my kitchen island, clinking glasses. Brenda, who will turn sixty this year, is sporting her trademark red-framed spectacles, her short stylishly cut grey-blonde hair with its long fringe sweeping across her forehead. She manages a boutique in the trendy part of town called The Suffolks, one of those elegant little shops full of cashmere wraps and floaty silk dresses – lovely but way out of my price range. Barbara, who’s always cagey about her age but who I suspect is a little younger than Brenda, is a hippy chick with long red hair and is fond of chunky jumpers she knits herself. She teaches knitting too, in courses she runs at the adult education centre in town, and although she keeps threatening to buy me some needles and wool and give me a free lesson, I’ve resisted so far. The jumpers are nice though. She’s wearing one now – bright yellow with a navy zigzag around the neckline, teamed with a long denim skirt. I’m in black velvet joggers and a matching hoodie, my shoulder-length blonde hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. We’re a mismatched trio style-wise, but none of us cares about that; it’s our differences that make us interesting to each other, as Brenda once said.
We order an Indian and drink more cava as we wait for it to arrive, catching each other up on our news, although I don’t have much – another busy week at work, Eloise landing a major role in the school’s Easter play, Finley falling out of a tree in Pittville Park again but managing not to break anything this time. Brenda has been fending off the attentions of a would-be suitor, a gentleman in his seventies who’s been dropping into the boutique on an almost daily basis, bringing her roses and offering to take her to jazz concerts (‘I mean, he’s too old, for a start, and I don’t even like jazz. Why would he think I like jazz? It’s just noise,’ she says.) Meanwhile Barbara is trying to decide if getting a dog would be a good idea, and debating the respective virtues of poodles (‘They’re really clever, and they don’t shed hair, and they don’t need too much walking, apparently,’) and pugs (‘They actually quite like being indoors, I think, so it wouldn’t mind me staying in knitting. Although they often snore. I’m not sure I could handle that; it would remind me of an ex …’).
Brenda has just launched into a story about a customer who tried to return a pair of palazzo trousers which she claimed didn’t fit, but which had very clearly been worn (‘There was this huge stain, and they stank of cigarettes. I mean, honestly …’) when the house phone rings.
‘Probably the curry. Why can they never find us?’ I say, as I jump off my stool and cross into the living area to answer the call.
‘Hello,’ I say breezily. I feel a little drunk already after two large glasses of cava on an empty stomach. There’s a second or two of silence on the line, then a male voice says:
‘Oh, hi. Is that Beth Holland?’
‘It is, yes.’
I roll my eyes, waiting for the inevitable: ‘I’m just trying to find your house. Can you tell me exactly where in Prestbury you are, please?’ Instead, there’s another moment or two of silence, and then:
‘Formerly Beth Armstrong?’
‘Yes,’ I say automatically. Then I pause. Why on earth would the curry delivery man be asking me my maiden name?
‘Why are you asking me that? Who is this?’ I demand sharply.
There’s another couple of seconds of silence on the line and then, abruptly, the call is cut off. The dial tone sounds in my ear. I put the handset back in its holder and stare at it.
‘What’s up? Are they lost again?’ calls Barbara.
I walk slowly back across the room, frowning.
‘No, it wasn’t the curry. I don’t know who it was, actually. It was kinda weird.’
I sit down again and pick up my glass.
‘Weird? Weird how?’ asks Brenda.
‘Well, some guy asked me if I was Beth Holland and then if my maiden name was Armstrong. And when I said it was – and don’t ask me why I did; blame this stuff …’—I wave my glass in the air—‘When I said yes, he just put the phone down.’
‘Hmmm. That is a bit odd,’ says Barbara. ‘I wonder …’
BZZZZZZZ.
The doorbell rings and my friends let out a simultaneous whoop.
‘Curry! Yesss!’
‘I’ll go,’ Brenda says. She jumps up and Barbara turns to me.
‘Shall I get the plates out?’
They’ve both clearly forgotten about the phone call already and I smile, trying to subdue my feeling of unease.
‘Yes, you get the plates. You know where they are. I’ll grab some cutlery,’ I say.
I get up and head for the cutlery drawer, but my mind is racing.
Who was that? Why ask that and immediately hang up? What did he want? But … well, there are plenty of organisations out there who know my maiden name, aren’t there? My bank, car insurance company, credit card people … so, probably nothing sinister, right? Maybe just a cold call from someone selling extra insurance or something, that got cut off? It’s just that …
I grab a handful of knives and forks and turn to see Brenda back in the kitchen brandishing a large brown pa
per bag, a delicious spicy aroma already wafting towards me.
‘It smells amazing. Let’s eat!’ she says.
I smile and nod, but inside my stomach is flipping. My appetite is gone and my anxiety is spiralling again. OK, maybe I’m putting two and two together and making seventeen. Maybe there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for that phone call. But suddenly it’s all too much. As my friends chatter away, dishing out the food, I take a couple of deep breaths, trying to regain control, but I’m struggling. The fear is taking over, threatening to consume me, the fear that it’s about to rear its head again, the thing I try never to think about, the thing I try to keep hidden in a tiny box in the far recesses of my mind. The thing I’ve tried to bury so deep it can never escape. Now I’m starting to think I’m not being paranoid after all.
I’m becoming convinced that finally, after all these years, someone’s coming for me.
Someone who knows what I did.
Chapter 5
Creak, creak, creak.
I hear the sound and I know instantly that this is a dream. A dream I’ve had many, many times before.
No, not a dream. A nightmare.
I know this is a nightmare, just a nightmare, not real, but I still can’t make it stop. I’ve never been able to make it stop, never been able to wake myself up once it starts.
And so I stand there, under the old wooden beams in the half-light, listening to the noise.
Creak, creak, creak.
The bedroom is cold. My breath hangs in the air in front of me, like little puffs of ghostly candyfloss. But I’m not cold; I’m sweating. My armpits are damp as the panic rises inside me again. My heart hammers painfully against the wall of my chest.
And yet, I know this isn’t real, that I’m not really here in this room.
In fact, despite being able to see it in all its horrific detail in my nightmares, I’ve never been in this room.
And so I do what I do every time. I tell myself that everything is OK, that I’ll wake up in a minute, that this isn’t happening.
That this never happened.
And for a moment, or two or three, I’ll believe it, and great waves of relief will come crashing over me. My heartrate will slow, my muscles will start to relax, and the sweat begin to dry on my skin. But the relief won’t last.
Because then I’ll wake up.
And as I lie there alone in the dark, I’ll remember again, slowly, agonisingly.
I’ll remember that it is real after all.
It was the night that changed everything.
Every choice we make in life has consequences, doesn’t it?
Chapter 6
‘Let’s just go up to Lonely Tree, then turn around, OK?’
It’s ten o’clock on Saturday morning, and I’m up on Cleeve Hill with Ruth and Deborah from work. It’s a semi-regular thing for us on a weekend morning – my few-times-a-month attempt to take a little exercise. This involves a brisk walk up the hill – the highest point in the Cotswolds – then some restorative (and probably benefit-cancelling) coffee and cake at the little hotel on the way back home. This is my happy place though, a thousand acres of limestone grassland criss-crossed with footpaths; the views are breathtaking. It’s common land up here, with hundreds of sheep and cattle during the grazing season, but right now in early March it’s just walkers – many with dogs – runners, and the occasional mountain bike or horse. We take many different routes, the three of us, during our weekend walks, but we often end up at Lonely Tree. Some call it Lone Tree, or Single Beech, but I prefer Lonely Tree because it really is lonely; a solitary, twisted, windswept beech tree, the highest tree in Gloucestershire, surrounded by a memorial wall with plaques dedicated to those who loved the hill.
‘Race you to the top!’
Deborah is off, her long legs powering across the scrubby grass. Ruth and I roll our eyes and follow at a more leisurely pace. It’s steep though, and if I’m honest I’m a little hungover from last night – a tad too much cava consumed – but I grit my teeth and keep moving. I’ve put on a few pounds recently. My size fourteen jeans are tight across my tummy and I know I need the exercise today – for my body as well as for my head. The exertion is helping me to forget the gnawing anxieties of last night and the nightmares that visited me yet again in the early hours. There’s a chill in the air, but we’ve been walking uphill for the past fifteen minutes and I’m sweating, too warm now in my old navy puffer coat.
‘Phew!’
Finally, Ruth and I are at the tree; Deborah is smugly waiting for us. We pause for a few minutes, reading some of the plaques.
1950-2018
John Evans, who walked his dogs here for 25 years.
Love you always, forget you never.
In loving memory of Ellen McDuff, 1944-2016.
Here forever, enjoying the view.
‘I want one of these, one day. Make a note of that, Ruth, will you? You’re the organised one,’ I say.
‘What do you want it to say? In memory of Beth Holland, who used this hill as a hangover cure and an excuse to eat cake?’ asks Deborah, and we all snort with laughter.
‘Something like that,’ I say. ‘Come on, let’s sit for a bit.’
There’s a bench nearby and we slump onto it. There’s silence for a few moments, as we take in the view.
‘Rain coming. Not for a while though,’ says Ruth. She’s right; there are dark clouds gathering in the distance, but the sky above us is still a clear baby-blue.
‘So how was last night? Have fun with the Bees?’ asks Deborah. She’s tied her barely shoulder-length bob back into a tiny ponytail at the nape of her neck for the ascent, and now she pulls at the hairband to release her hair, letting it swing round her face.
‘Yeah, it was nice,’ I say. Apart from the phone call, I think, but I don’t say it.
‘We should organise something for all five of us one of these days. A girls’ night out. Fancy it?’ I add.
‘Definitely,’ says Deborah, and Ruth nods too.
‘That would be fun.’
It makes me happy that my friends all get on so well. I invited Deborah and Ruth, along with a few others from the surgery, to a house-warming drinks party a couple of months after I moved in last year when the decorating was mostly finished and I finally felt the place was ready to welcome visitors. As my immediate neighbours, I’d popped invitations through Brenda and Barbara’s doors too, more to be polite than anything; I’d only spoken to Brenda a few times when we’d seen each other in the street, and Barbara had only moved in a fortnight or so earlier. That night though, we chatted like long-lost friends, and long after everyone else had gone home, the three of us, plus Ruth and Deborah, were still gathered around my kitchen island, drinking wine, polishing off the last of the cheese and crackers, and laughing until our stomachs ached.
As I’ve said before, it is maybe a little odd that all of my closest friends are twenty years older than me, but it’s just the way it is. I do have younger friends, of course: old uni friends, although we’ve largely lost touch these days as a result of careers and families scattering us across the UK and indeed the world; there are ‘mum’ friends, parents of Eloise and Finley’s schoolmates; and ‘couple’ friends Jacob and I made when we were together. But they’re all … more acquaintances, I suppose. We get together for coffee, discuss sleepovers and school events, have nights at the cinema or the odd dinner, but I’ve never really felt that I can talk to them, not about the things that really matter. I suppose that for years I had Jacob for all that – my teenage sweetheart, my husband, my best friend. I didn’t need anyone else. When my marriage fell apart, it was Ruth and Deborah at work who saved me, who took me under their motherly wings, and helped me put my life back together. They’re both married: Ruth is on her second marriage after her first husband died young, and Deborah, ‘a late bloomer’, in her own words, didn’t meet her soulmate until she was forty-five. She doesn’t have kids; Ruth has one son, now in his thirties and living in
Canada. The three of us were already friends – they’d both joined the practice not long after I did and we’d hit it off straight away – but during those long, sad months they almost took on the role of surrogate mums too, doling out hugs and advice (and cake and wine, of course, on occasion) with unending patience and kindness.
Brenda and Barbara, who only knew me after the worst was over, have been equally kind, both more than happy to pop round and watch the kids at short notice if I need to go out, despite neither being mums themselves. Brenda, she confided once during a leisurely Sunday lunch last summer, was unable to conceive with her late husband, although I never got the impression that this was a great sadness in her life, rather something to be accepted and moved on from. Barbara, who’s had several long-term female partners but never married, simply shrugged when I asked her if she’d ever wanted to be a mum.
‘It was never a priority for me, no. And it all seemed so complicated, you know, with two women? I mean, I know nowadays there are lots of options, but you know … I’m fine with it,’ she smiled.
‘How’s Robin these days?’ asks Ruth now. ‘No more … odd incidents?’
‘She’s great,’ I say. ‘No, nothing odd. I don’t know, I probably read too much into that, you know? She’s invaluable, to be honest. Can’t imagine what I’d do if she ever left.’
‘Good. Well, let’s hope she won’t then,’ says Ruth. ‘Right, shall we head back down? I need coffee.’
We stand up and start the descent, following the winding path that will take us back down to where we’ve parked our cars. Ruth and Deborah start chatting about some work thing and I tune out, my mind drifting back to one of the ‘odd’ incidents Ruth mentioned. The first was on a Monday morning a few months after Robin started working for me. I’d got halfway to work when I realised I’d left some files at home – stuff I’d been working on over the weekend – so I’d rushed home again to pick them up. I pounded up the stairs to my bedroom, which doubles as a home office with a small desk fitting snugly into an alcove by the window. When I burst in, breathless, Robin, who was wearing headphones to listen to music as she cleaned, was standing at the desk. She had a sheaf of papers in her hands and was leafing through them. When I tapped her on the shoulder she jumped so violently and whirled round to face me so abruptly that I almost lost my footing, staggering backwards.
The Happy Family Page 3