by Shari Low
Denise went first, walking with determination and a face like thunder, while Claire and the mistress followed behind. Claire was panicking inside, no clue whatsoever on how to mediate this, but knowing she had to. Bloody hell, this day had definitely taken a turn for the unexpected.
Thankfully, the conservatory door was open and they marched in. Yvonne sat on a dark grey seat, while Denise stayed upright, pacing. Just as Claire was about to close the door behind them, Doug slipped in too, making Yvonne gasp. Claire wasn’t surprised. She always forgot how much Doug resembled their father. He sat beside her on a bench seat attached to the wall just inside the door.
‘I’ve told everyone else to go on to the wake,’ he said.
That was a small consolation. At least they were no longer going to have an audience.
‘Sam and Jeanna?’
‘Waiting in the car.’
Claire glanced outside and could see the two of them sitting in the front seat of the jeep, staring in at the action. Forget that thought about the lack of audience, there was one right there, watching from afar. And they’d better crack on before Jeanna’s frustration at not being able to hear the conversation got the better of her and she came crashing in here.
‘So who needs to start?’ Claire asked.
‘I do,’ her mother said, leaving no room for argument. ‘Were you still screwing my husband?’
Claire’s gaze caught Doug’s with a helpless look. Nothing like getting straight to the point.
‘Yes.’ Yvonne’s reply was equally frank and contained absolutely no hint of repentance or regret.
They could all see that Denise was so enraged she could barely get the words out. ‘For how long?’
‘Always.’
‘But I warned you…’
Yvonne snorted. ‘And I took no heed.’
Claire could see her mother’s confusion. It matched her own and she couldn’t help ask for clarification. ‘I don’t understand…’
Yvonne seemed fine with enlightening her. ‘Years ago, your mother found out I was seeing your father…’
Claire felt a pang of guilt as she remembered who’d broke that little nugget of truth to Denise.
‘And she came to my door in the middle of the night, gave me money, tried to pay me off.’
‘Really?’ Claire exclaimed. Wow. She didn’t know that. But then, her and Doug had moved to Fred’s house by then. ‘And what happened?’
Yvonne’s expression oozed smugness. ‘I told your father. We used the money to go on a weekend break to Paris.’
There was a whimper of utter agony from Denise and she went so pale, Claire wondered if she was about to faint.
‘No, that couldn’t… Why? Why didn’t he say anything to me?’
‘The timing wasn’t right,’ Yvonne answered truthfully.
Claire decided to step in. ‘Hang on. So you’ve been seeing him all these years? Yet he stayed with my mother? Why didn’t he just leave her for you? Why stay? What do you mean about the timing?’
Yvonne sighed. ‘When I met him, I’d just had a baby. My daughter.’
Claire understood immediately. Denise’s gasp told her she’d cottoned on pretty quickly too. Ray Harrow needed to be 100 per cent centre of attention at all times. He’d resented her and Doug’s very existence because he couldn’t bear to share Denise’s time or affection. There was absolutely no way he would enter into another full time relationship with someone who had a child.
‘Ray didn’t want to live with someone else’s kid in the house. Said he’d already done the family thing and he had no desire to do it again. So we came to terms with living a different life. He decided to stay with her, but we continued our relationship.’
‘Why? Why would you agree to that?’ Claire wanted to know. What was wrong with these women? Why would they demean themselves like that? And why would they do it for a despicable man like Ray?
‘Because I loved him.’
Claire wanted to slap her hand to her forehead. Fuck. Here we go again.
Yvonne shifted in her seat. ‘I tried to break it off a few times, to see other people, but no one ever made me feel like he did, no one ever took care of me the way he did, so I learned to live with it. He supported us, he gave us a good life, a home…’
Claire remembered something Jeanna had said about Yvonne moving to another area. ‘He bought you a house?’
‘At first,’ she conceded. ‘Then he built us one,’ she replied.
A low, anguished howl came from her mother, followed by a whisper, steeped in pain. ‘That’s where all the money has gone.’
‘What?’ Claire asked. ‘What money?’
‘All his bank accounts are empty.’
‘Shiiiiiiiit.’ That prolonged whistle of surprise came from Doug.
Claire, however, was busy doing the maths. ‘What I don’t understand though… I was about fourteen when all this happened. If you already had a child, she must be about twenty-five by now. Why didn’t he move in with you when your daughter became an adult?’
She was so intent on waiting for Yvonne’s answer that she didn’t even hear the door opening beside her. She only realised they’d been joined by someone new when the new arrival spoke.
‘Mum, what’s going on?’
The look of panic on Yvonne’s face was unmistakable. ‘I told you to go straight to the car, son.’
Claire glanced up, gasped. A dark haired guy stood there. Maybe seventeen years old.
Claire could barely believe what she was seeing.
Yet another younger, taller, but unmistakable version of Ray Harrow had just walked into the room.
Forty-One
Denise – One month later
Denise walked out of her lawyer’s office, held her face up to the sunlight and then she screamed at the top of her lungs. Passers-by glanced at her warily, but she could honestly say she did not give a fuck what anyone thought. Nobody mattered any more. Not even herself.
Thanks to her lawyer’s digging, information spilled by that bitch Yvonne, and endless communications with bank managers and insurance companies, she had a full picture of the decimation of her life now.
Ray had transferred all their cash into an account he shared with that woman. They’d been planning to start a new life together, in the home he’d spent the last few years building for them. Oh yes. All those jobs in different cities that she thought he was working on? He was ten miles away, building the house of his dreams for him and that tart to live in. Not that she’d been slumming it before that. For twelve years previously, she’d been living in a house he paid for. Not much more than prostitution, as far as Denise was concerned.
Anyway, the cash was all gone, either into the house or his joint account with her. He’d even put the house in Yvonne’s name so that Denise couldn’t claim on it when he divorced her, as it had become clear he intended to do. His life insurance policy that had named Denise as the beneficiary had been cancelled and he’d written a new will, leaving everything he had to the other family.
Despite his wishes, under Scottish law, as his legal wife, she was entitled to half his moveable estate, which encompassed the cash that was left over after all his debts were paid. It had taken her several sessions with the lawyer to work how much that would be. Nothing.
If there was a consolation, it was that Scottish law also awarded a percentage of the moveable estate to his children, but given there was nothing left, Claire, Doug and Yvonne McTay’s son would be getting nothing either.
The only glimmer of reprieve for her was that the house she was living in now was still in their joint names. She’d be able to sell it and keep half the proceeds.
She would never, ever understand why he’d done this to her. How could he even think of leaving her? Yvonne McTay insisted that it came down to a simple choice. She’d given him an ultimatum, she said, that when their boy went to university, Ray would finally choose who he wanted to be with or they were done. All those years, he was just playin
g both sides, hedging his bets, taking his time to make up his mind. In the end, he’d picked Yvonne. Denise would never accept that though. After meeting McTay, she’d decided that it hadn’t been Ray’s fault. He’d been corrupted by that devious cow who had tried to steal him. She might think she’d won, but Denise had convinced herself that he’d have come back to her if he hadn’t died when he did. They’d have made it. She was sure of it.
Meanwhile, the proceeds of the house sale were going to be enough for Denise to buy a small flat, and – if she was frugal – to live on the rest of it for a considerable time. Not that she’d planned to do it that way. Nope, she was going to get a job, get back out in the workplace. Her lawyer had already mentioned that when her case was resolved, she might want to apply for a position that was coming up on reception in his firm.
He was older than her, maybe sixty. Overweight. Crumpled suit. Didn’t look like anyone was taking care of him at all. Not like she’d done with her Ray. Anyway, she would apply for the job and she would make sure that she made herself completely indispensable. Hadn’t she and Ray clawed their way up from nothing? If she had to do it again, then she had absolutely no doubt that she could. Wasn’t Ray always telling her how strong she was?
Her scream subsided, tension released. Time to move on.
She jumped into the car – it was in his name, but she’d set it on fire before she gave it to Yvonne McTay – and drove home. As she pulled into the street, she saw a woman with two teenagers get out of a car near her house. At first she thought… No, it wasn’t Claire. Couldn’t be. Her boys had gone now anyway. As she got closer, she saw that the woman was older, maybe her age. Probably her neighbour and her grandsons. For a second, Denise paused, a thought coming to her. Did she regret having nothing to do with her grandsons? Or with her own children’s lives, for that matter?
She let that settle, until her gut told her the answer.
No.
There wasn’t a single regret about the way she’d lived her life. She hadn’t even seen sight of Claire or Doug since the funeral and that suited her just fine. Nothing they could say or do would change how she felt. The only person who could ever light up her room, make her laugh, make her feel complete, wasn’t here.
Everyone else was just a poor substitution.
That’s why she’d trained her mind to focus on her Ray. Not the one who’d done all those terrible things. No, she chose only to think about the man who had been with her for almost forty years, the one who’d given her a wonderful life and the kind of love that most people never found in a lifetime. That was the man whom she thought about now, every day and every night.
She let herself in and went straight upstairs, second nature to her now. In her room, she pulled off her clothes, and grabbed his robe from the back of the door.
She poured a glass of wine from the minibar and padded across the carpet to the bed. A rug covered the vomit splash stains from that unfortunate night. She’d wanted to replace the whole carpet, but she wasn’t wasting the money, not when she’d be moving soon anyway.
‘Hi, honey,’ she said, as she always did when she lay down on the bed. Her fingers reached over to his bedside table and gently touched the brass urn that sat there.
His ashes.
This was her Ray. Right there. The love of her life. All of him. And she didn’t need to share him with anyone.
Epilogue
Claire – 2019
‘Are you ready to do this tonight?’ Sam asked her, and she responded by going up on her tiptoes and kissing his face off.
‘Absolutely,’ she murmured.
‘Will you two stop bloody doing that!’ Jeanna wailed. ‘I swear to God, it’s making me want to heave.’
Claire tossed an oven glove at her, ignoring her indignant ‘Ouch!’
‘Doug, are you going to let her do that to me?’
‘Absolutely,’ he said, aping Claire’s earlier response to Sam.
Claire giggled and high-fived her brother.
‘You two are so immature,’ Jeanna drawled.
‘I’m not the one who kept my relationship secret for years like some naughty teenager,’ Claire bit back, teasing her. In truth, she loved that Jeanna and Doug had finally, after all these years, come clean about their love and made it official. It made so much sense that she found it difficult to believe that she hadn’t thought of it before.
Only one thing had bothered her when she’d finally spoken to Doug about their relationship, late on the night of their father’s funeral. They were back at her house and Sam had already gone to bed. Jeanna was conked out on the couch and they’d thrown a blanket over her. Sitting at the kitchen table, they were several gins down and she felt completely comfortable probing into his love life and invading his privacy.
‘Years ago, when Jeanna got sick, she told me she’d been seeing someone other than Giles. That was you?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘And yet, you didn’t admit your relationship even then?’
He shook his head, his shoulders slumped with regret. ‘She told me she wanted to call the whole thing off. That it had been a mistake. That she’d only been having the odd one night stand with me for all those years because it was a bit of fun, a distraction.’ He was a couple of drinks too far in to say ‘distraction’ properly, so it came out as a bit of slur. Luckily, Claire was just on the right side of drunk to understand him. ‘It was only a couple of years later, when we got together at your thirty-fifth birthday party…’
‘You slept together at my thirty-fifth birthday party?!’
‘Yeah, sorry about that. We weren’t actually checking out the tilework in the toilets.’
‘I don’t even recognise you any more,’ she told him, feigning outrage and pursing her lips to stop them smiling.
‘It was only then that she admitted if she’d let me take care of her when she was sick, she’d never have known if I was there for her, or out of sympathy and the need to do the right thing. She’s so stubborn.’
‘You think?’ Claire asked, sarcasm dripping.
‘Thing is,’ Doug admitted, ‘I’d have been there in a heartbeat. She’s stubborn and bitchy and difficult and a train wreck of unpredictability… but I’ve never loved anyone like I love her. God help me.’
Claire knew he was definitely way past his normal levels of drunk to admit that. And she adored him for it.
The two of them had sat with that for a moment, before Claire’s mind had gone in a different direction.
‘Our mother only ever loved our father,’ she said, not sure what point she was making.
Doug nodded. ‘But that was a twisted love. It’s different.’
Claire took a minute to process that. ‘Do you think she’ll want to be back in our lives now that he’s gone?’
Doug shook his head. ‘Nope. And we can’t get back in her life because we were never truly there to begin with.’
Claire knew he was right, but she needed to bare her soul a little further and he was the only person she could do it with.
‘I agree. Even if she turned up at my door tomorrow and asked to be part of our family, I wouldn’t let her. Not because of the way she treated me – I learned to deal with that a long time ago – but because of the way she treated Fred and my kids. It was like they were completely unimportant, didn’t matter. She barely spoke to the boys their whole lives, had no interest in them whatsoever. As a mother, defending my own kids, I’ll never forgive her for that.’
‘And you shouldn’t,’ Doug agreed, reinforcing her feelings.
‘I pity her,’ Claire went on. ‘Because she never learned that all that really matters in life is family, and if someone wants you all to themselves it’s because they want to control you, not because they adore you. She never grasped that. Or maybe she did, but she still chose to live that way because it genuinely made her happy. But where’s it got her? She wouldn’t give love to anyone but him and it’s left her a sad, lonely woman. What a waste.’
Doug was nodding as she spoke. ‘Forget her. Don’t let her take a single minute more of your time. You have an incredible family, great boys, a good man and a world of people who love you. What was it that Grandad told us Gran used to say? She made her bed so she could lie in it. Well, our mother made her bed and the result is a pathetic life. Her choice.’
A pause while Claire digested that. ‘At least we got a brother out of it.’
Doug grinned. They’d met up with Ryan, their half brother, the week before. Yvonne had dropped him off at Gino’s and come back for him a couple of hours later. It had been a bit awkward at first, but by the end of it, they’d started to form the kind of bonds that she hoped would become much stronger over time. She always had room in her life for someone else to love, and thankfully, despite the physical resemblance, he’d turned out to be a decent, caring guy who was nothing like his father.
‘Just don’t decide you like him better than me,’ Doug joked.
‘Depends whether he keeps lifelong secrets about his relationships,’ Claire jibed back. He was still laughing when she’d leaned over, wrapped her arms around him, and stayed like that, feeling safe and loved… at least until she’d realised that he’d fallen asleep, at which point she’d slid out, let him slump forward on to the table, and gone off to bed. In the morning, she’d found him wrapped around Jeanna on the couch. It was one of the most heart warming things she’d ever seen.
Until tonight.
She answered the doorbell and in trooped Val and her husband, Don, Josie and Suze, and Cammy and Caro. They were all holding large bags with tantalising aromas wafting out of them.
‘Christ on a bike, we’re lucky to make it here alive,’ Val blurted. ‘Ma nerves are shattered. Have you ever seen six people, an Indian feast for ten, and four extra portions of pakora fit into a Hyundai? If the police had caught us, we’d be sucking our samosas in a cell right now.’
‘I didn’t mind it, to be honest. It’s the closest thing to an intimate moment I’ve had in months,’ Josie cackled, making Sam howl with laughter. He’d absolutely fallen in love with these women, which was just as well, given the change in status that was about to affect their relationship.