by Jane Green
The warning signs were there, early on, about his drinking, but Maggie had had no experience with life, no experience with alcoholism. She chose to see what she wanted to see, turning blithely away from everything that might have been a red flag.
By the time his doctor told him his liver was shot, that one more drink could kill him, Maggie didn’t much care. And when the news came, that he had collapsed on the train on the way home, his liver having finally failed him, she felt guilty that she had just sent him the text about wanting a divorce. But she had mostly felt relieved.
And still none of their friends knew the truth about what killed him. Maggie didn’t want them to know just how imperfect their marriage was, what a disaster Ben had become by the end. Years of brief sobriety before drinking again, the whites of his eyes turning yellow with jaundice, Maggie having to regularly phone work and make excuses for him. Her official story was that Ben died from a heart attack rather than alcoholic liver disease.
She looked at the wedding picture, feeling nothing. That couple, that happy, young couple with dreams of a family and years of joy, felt like strangers, like they had nothing to do with her.
When Maggie ran into Ben that day in the cafeteria, years after leaving university, it had seemed like fate. Maggie had phoned Evvie as soon as she got home, shrieking at the coincidence of it, and Evvie had said, “This is meant to be. You’re going to marry him.”
Maggie knew she had been right. It was meant to be, and they were happy in the early years, happy even, when life stopped going their way, when they both had to accept they wouldn’t have children, they weren’t being given the life they thought was their due.
But the happiness didn’t last. Ben’s drinking put paid to that. When the police showed up at her door, gently informing her that her husband had collapsed on the train on the way home and hadn’t made it, Maggie looked at them in disbelief. She had been dreaming of divorce for years, had sometimes, in her darkest moments, thought how much easier life would be if Ben just had a fatal heart attack, then berated herself for even thinking that.
And here were the policemen, telling her that her darkest thoughts had come to pass. Initially, after the disbelief came relief. She didn’t have to dread his coming home on the weekends, the dark cloud that seemed to fall on her shoulders every Friday morning when she woke up. She didn’t have to lie in bed grinding her teeth, filled with fury at her husband who was stumbling around downstairs, drunk.
She felt . . . relief, until the shame kicked in. What would she tell people? The truth? That Ben was a high-functioning alcoholic who often passed out on the stairs on his way up to bed, more times than she could count? That she had become the last thing she had ever wanted, a cross between his mother and a detective, attempting to sniff out every drop of alcohol he consumed? Would she tell them his doctor had warned him his liver would fail if he carried on? Or would she lie, say he died of a heart attack?
She went with the heart attack.
After the shame came the guilt. Why hadn’t she done more? Or less? Was she too hard on him, or not hard enough? Wasn’t it her responsibility to check he was going to meetings when he said he was, to check in with his sponsor? Should she have carted him off to rehab as soon as he started drinking again? Should she have kicked him out properly, or left him herself? What could she have done differently? For surely she should have, could have, would have done things differently if she could turn back the clock.
Maggie spent months second-guessing herself, overwhelmed by guilt at not having done the right thing, at letting her husband go years ago, even though she knew she was no match for alcohol. Every time someone asked how he died and she responded with “a heart attack,” she was engulfed by shame and guilt afresh.
While Ben’s unexpected death may have brought her some peace after all the years of chaos, the peace was always tied together with guilt.
Initially, her friends gathered around, but soon they got on with their lives, leaving Maggie with no idea how to get on with hers. She should have been free, she was free, but secrets are hard to keep, especially from your closest friends, and soon she found herself withdrawing.
Her saving grace, she often thought, was the house, a house she loved as much as the day she first saw it, even though it was far too big for her, and every check she had to write for the upkeep was a painful one.
Her days were peaceful now. She did the occasional catering for people from home, but she pulled out of organizing the village fete after Ben died—she wanted to see people less, not more, for everyone was filled with questions as to how a young, seemingly healthy man could suddenly drop dead of a heart attack.
When Ben was alive, Maggie always thought there was nothing lonelier than being married to an alcoholic. But she was lonelier now. At least then she had a purpose, even though it was not one she relished. Now she found that she was drifting aimlessly, unsure of what to do with a life that was not what she ever expected.
She still spoke to her mother most days, her mother who had been trying to convince her to sell up and move somewhere that was not so isolated.
“Bath is divine,” she kept saying. “You’d have a lovely time in Bath. So beautiful and there’s so much to do! Buy yourself a little flat and reinvent yourself.”
But Maggie couldn’t imagine doing any such thing.
So it was, almost three years after Ben’s death, Maggie found herself going through something of a depression. It came on slowly, characterized initially by a listlessness that was unfamiliar to her. Maggie had always been a ball of energy, but suddenly she was staying in bed all day. She didn’t think of herself as depressed, didn’t cry, wasn’t consumed by dark thoughts in the way she had always thought depressives were. But nevertheless, she stopped caring about all the things that were once important to her.
She had loved gardening, but wasn’t interested anymore. The hedgerows were overgrown, and the topiary yews had completely lost their shape, with weeds covering half the gravel driveway.
E-mails would show up in her in-box, which she would read but somehow never get around to answering. Bills would go unpaid, and the washing machine stayed broken for weeks, her clothes unwashed. It was easier to hide in bed and watch television, wait for the world to pass her by.
Her mother was convinced it was the house, that she needed a change. “If you insist on living in that enormous house, darling, get lodgers. Something so you aren’t so lonely. Or get a job. You need something to do all day.”
Maggie could barely contemplate getting out of bed, let alone going for a job interview. And even if she wanted to work, was there anyone who would employ an almost-fifty-year-old woman who hadn’t worked in over twenty years? What could she do? She could cook, and she was still eminently presentable. She made an excellent first impression. Maybe she could be a receptionist somewhere? Each time she thought of this, she shuddered and burrowed deeper under the duvet. In theory, she knew it would be good for her—being out in the world, around people, having office workers she could lunch with. If only she could drag herself out of bed.
Her bright spot had been Jasper the cat, who used to curl up with her in bed, but Jasper had reverted to his barn cat roots and spent most of the time outside. She got up to feed the chickens, but that was it. Days went by when she saw no one, talked to no one other than her mother, and was seized by what she was refusing to think of as depression, instead calling it “inertia,” which she worried would never go away.
* * *
• • •
Maggie heard the doorbell from the safety of her bed and hoped whoever was ringing it would leave if she just ignored it. But by the third ring, she was forced to get up, thankful she was in her version of pajamas—sweatpants and a T-shirt—and went downstairs.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t have to get up anyway. Tonight was her university’s thirty-year reunion in a hotel in London. She did
n’t go to the tenth or the twentieth, but neither did anyone else she cared about. Tonight both Evvie and Topher would be there, and Topher had insisted she come. It was the one thing she had looked forward to in months. Maybe years.
But she wasn’t anticipating anyone coming over, and suspected it might be one of her neighbors. She only knew Emily and James, was friendly with them when they first moved in, but a disagreement over tree height—they had refused to cut down their cypress trees, which now blocked the views from Maggie’s house—had led to them ignoring each other.
It was probably one of the other new neighbors, complaining. She didn’t remember their names. All of them looked alike to her, bright young thirtysomethings, newlyweds, with babies and toddlers, gorgeous wives with long glossy hair, fur-trimmed parkas and Hunter wellies, all of them suddenly descending on their tiny village outside of Bath. Why were they here? It wasn’t commutable to London, but because a couple of celebrities had bought nearby, suddenly Frome, and their little village just outside, was the topic of articles in magazines like Vogue and Tatler, bringing scores of aspirational bright young things with their four-wheel-drive baby buggies, full-time nannies, and Range Rovers.
A group of them lived in the houses that led up to Maggie’s own manor house. Once it had been land belonging to the house, before it was sold off to the local farmer years ago. He built one house there, bought years ago by Emily and James, and had promised not to develop any further. When he died, however, his son immediately sold it to developers, who swiftly came up with proposals to build five large houses, in traditional style, which horrified both Maggie and Ben (during a period of sobriety when he still cared about these things). Ben was fighting it, fighting for the open space, when he died, and Maggie had neither the energy nor the will to keep on fighting once he was gone.
It was astonishing how quickly the houses went up. One day there were fields, and the next, it seemed, large stone houses with immaculate gravel driveways on which sat Range Rovers and shiny Teslas, clipped privet hedges, and little children on electric scooters in the road.
Maggie didn’t mind the children. She loved having children in the vicinity, loved hearing the peals of giggles, even the occasional cry as one fell over, and thought she had become accustomed to the houses. It was the adults that she struggled with.
They were all perfectly nice, these young women whose husbands had worked in finance in London, who seemed to have retired at an ungodly age—what, thirty-five? Younger?—to start their own businesses and move out to their dream homes in the country. All of the husbands described themselves as entrepreneurs, and all seemed pleasant enough, clean-cut, fresh scrubbed, handsome. Until, that is, there was that first knock on the door requesting if maybe she would consider trimming the hedges so the landscaping would fit the rest of the street.
Maggie hadn’t even known that they owned the actual road that led to their manor house before Ben died. Nor the hedges that abutted it. She certainly never imagined she would be dealing with these annoying neighbors. But the road itself was indeed hers, which included the hedgerow.
The hedgerow had always been wild. It was a country lane, and the shrubs and trees on the sides had been left. Perhaps twice in all the years they had lived here Ben sent a gardener to clip them back ever so slightly. But they loved the wildness; it was what made it a country lane.
Unfortunately, the wild hedgerow didn’t match the neatly trimmed privet flanking the new houses on the other side, nor, in one case, the rather complicated topiary yew that filled the front garden.
The new houses might have been pretty if they didn’t look quite so new. Everything about them was perfect, and the neighbors were not happy with the wild hedgerow they had to face when they pulled out of their driveways or looked out their windows. They had all gathered together, it seemed, shortly after they moved in. Of course they were friends, the yummy mummies, their children attending the same nursery schools, the women getting together for a glass of wine in the afternoon while their children were fed and bathed by nannies.
Maggie would hear them on occasion if she went out on walks. Shrieks of female laughter, the clinking of glasses. Before the others moved in, she and Ben were invited to Emily and James’s, but because they were older, and because they never had children, once the younger families moved in, they were forgotten about. Now, even if she received an invitation, she wouldn’t go. It wasn’t that she wanted to be un-neighborly, but she had no interest whatsoever in these young mothers who seemed to her as if they thought they owned the world. Perhaps they did. God knows, Maggie had no idea what it was like to have the sort of money that afforded full-time nannies, fabulous cars, and what looked to her like designer clothes. What did Maggie care; she hadn’t been shopping for years, until she lost so much weight after Ben died, she had to eventually buy some trousers that didn’t threaten to fall to her knees as she walked. Even before that, fashion had never been her thing. Evvie used to attempt to style her at university, because Maggie was always most comfortable in long skirts and ballet flats.
She had clearly never been a yummy mummy herself. If she passed them, they would exchange friendly-enough smiles, a brief wave, but invariably sometime after that a husband would be dispatched to inquire politely about the hedgerow. Or the gravel on the road. Would they mind regraveling it so it didn’t have bare patches all over it? Would she please do something about the terrible mess that was the road, and which they just didn’t understand wasn’t terrible at all, but was, in fact, what living in the country was all about.
Maggie did mind. It was the country, she tried to explain, and the road had been like this for decades, probably longer. In fact, they were lucky that anyone at all had ever thought to put gravel down, as it was really supposed to be a dirt road.
They understood, they lied, but the new houses were so pristine, it just seemed so out of place. They would pay for it themselves, they offered, all the new neighbors, and she wouldn’t have to worry about it.
“But I would have to look at it,” Maggie had said. “I don’t want the hedgerow clipped into tight submission. This is the country and it is supposed to grow wild. I love that it’s wild. I cannot give anyone permission to touch it.”
On principle, Maggie now refused to touch the hedgerow, even though it was looking wilder than it ever had before. She got a slightly twisted sort of pleasure knowing that its present state would so annoy the neighbors. She thought she probably ought to feel bad about that, but she couldn’t. There was something about the smugness of these new people that was irritating, and if this was the only victory she could have, it was better than nothing. At least it gave her something to care about.
Opening the door, Maggie stood impassive in the doorway, nodding a hello at the neighbor. He was handsome, she thought. She would give him that, although they were all handsome, these young husbands. They had the confidence you had when you were in your thirties, before life became a grind, throwing obstacle after obstacle in your path, taking away the things you loved and making you realize that the only way to ease the hardship was to move through it.
“Yes?” She arched an eyebrow, preparing for the onslaught.
“Hello!” He gave her his most charming smile and moved in to kiss her on each cheek as she tried to place him. Oh God, she thought, it was James. How long had it been since she last saw him?
“I haven’t seen you in ages. We’ve been worried about you. Emily keeps saying she wants to have you over. Also, you ought to meet the new people in Wisteria Hall. We’re thinking about doing drinks.”
Maggie nodded, registering that it was nice of them to make this overture, even if they were still refusing to cut down the bloody cypress. As to new neighbors, she’d been in such a haze, she didn’t even know new people had moved into the latest house to be built.
Wisteria Hall, she thought, wondering which one of the houses it was, realizing it must be the one—of
course, for the developers had little imagination—with the wisteria growing over the pergola that was attached to the barn. The developers gave each of the houses grand-sounding, if somewhat ridiculously cliché names, all the better to attract the wealthy buyers. It worked, clearly. Wisteria Hall, Willow Farm (this one had a small man-made pond and a couple of hastily planted willow trees), Chestnut Hill Manor (the hill was particularly clever, she thought, given that the land was almost entirely flat, and fill had to be brought in to create the hill), Acorn Hall, and Meadowview Farm (which, true to its name, did actually have a view of the meadows, no cypress trees in its way).
“I’ll get Emily to text you. I’m so sorry to bother you like this,” said James. “I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time.” Maggie shrugged, realizing she looked as if she had just rolled out of bed. Unsurprisingly. “Some of the neighbors have been complaining about noises early in the morning. We have all been woken up the last couple of weeks at around five in the morning by what sounds like a rooster crowing. We’ve all got together to discuss it”—of course you have! she thought—“and we think it might be coming from here.” He waited for Maggie to acknowledge his words, but she merely looked at him.
“Is it coming from here?” he prompted, the smile now seeming more forced.
“I’m sorry,” Maggie said. “I don’t understand what you’re asking. You think I have a rooster?”
“Well. Technically, I’m asking you if you have a rooster. I’m hoping the answer is no because although, granted, we live in the countryside, I think you’ll agree that the houses are now far too close together to make roosters a viable pet.”
Maggie burst out laughing. “I’m not sure that anyone would consider a rooster a pet. They are livestock, and I think you’ll find that you are no longer in Notting Hill, or Barnes, or Shoreditch, or wherever you moved from before you lived here, but in the country, where every other building has cows, horses, goats, sheep, dogs, chickens, and yes, roosters.”