by Jane Corry
‘So do I!’
‘But I also know,’ he added, ‘that I lost the real Jane when she got ill after Alice. To be honest, she’d never really been the same since. All our friends abandoned us. When you came into our lives, everything changed.’
He took my hands. That same electric thrill as before shot through me. ‘I’ve put the house on the market. The girls and I are going to move away. We’re having a new start. Please, Betty, come with us, and bring your little boy. I miss you so much.’
Go with him? Maybe, one day, become Gary’s wife? It was everything I had ever dreamed of. For a moment I was seized by the thought of what Jane would have said. But then again, maybe she’d have wanted me to! After all, her girls loved me. I would take care of them, I’d be their substitute mother. It would be my chance to atone for what I did.
But what would my husband say? Or do …
‘I’ll need to talk to Jock,’ I gulped.
Gary looked worried. ‘He won’t hurt you, will he?’
‘No,’ I said, remembering what he’d said before about people spotting bruises. ‘I don’t think so.’
Hardly believing what I was doing, I asked Mum to have Stuart overnight and then, when he got in from work, I told Jock I needed to talk to him. I’d had enough of hiding things. I had to tell him the truth. He was late home and had clearly stopped off at the pub on the way.
‘You want to leave me?’ he hollered. ‘With that fancy boy of yours?’
He walked up to me, his eyes glittering with fury, reeking of booze. His fists were raised.
Maybe he was going to hit me this time. ‘Don’t hurt me,’ I whimpered.
‘Oh I’m going to do that all right,’ he snarled, ‘but not in the way you think. If you walk out and take our bairn with you, I’ll fight you tooth and nail to get my son back. Do you honestly think that any court in this land will give custody to a woman who was unfaithful to her husband and made her so-called friend top herself?’
I began to shake. It had never occurred to me that Jock might fight me for custody, Poppy. It sounds naive, I know, but you have to remember that leaving your husband in those days wasn’t as common as it is now. I didn’t know much about the law and whether it would be on my side or not.
‘If you want to keep our kid, you’ll stay here with me,’ thundered Jock. ‘And like I said before, you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone.’
I don’t know why but I felt a flash of bravery then. ‘Just so you can save face, you mean?’ I retorted.
Jock snorted. ‘The same goes for you too. How do you think others are going to treat you when you set up home with a man you’re not married to. Cos sure as eggs is eggs, I’m not going to give you a divorce without a fight. What’s it going to be like for Stuart, growing up without both his mum and dad?’
He was right, I realized. You might not think it after the so-called Swinging Sixties, but some people’s lives were still very traditional in the mid-seventies. I couldn’t do this to my little boy.
The following day, I called in on Gary, even though I knew I was running a huge risk of being seen by one of the neighbours. But what I had to say was too important for a phone call.
‘Betty!’ he said, his face lighting up.
‘Let me in, quickly, before someone spots us,’ I said, heaving the pushchair in through the front door. Then I looked around. ‘Where are the children?’
‘Both having a nap.’
Stuart was sleeping too.
Gary pulled me towards him but I gently extracted myself.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, fighting back my tears. ‘I’ve come round in person to say I can’t come with you.’
His face crumpled but at the same time I could see a touch of relief crossing his eyes. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure now that I can either. I feel so guilty about Jane.’
‘Me too.’ My words came out in one great sob. ‘I can’t see you ever again. It just wouldn’t be right.’ Unable to stop myself, I buried my head in his chest. ‘I’ll never forget you,’ I whispered.
His hands stroked my hair. Then he cupped my face with both hands and looked down on me with such love that I thought my very heart would crack with pain. ‘And I will never forget you either, Betty.’
‘Goodbye,’ I said, breaking away. You’ve done the right thing, I told myself as I ran back down his road, my head bowed over the pushchair. Now I could make a fresh start and – somehow – try to get my marriage back on track.
For the next few days and then weeks, I threw myself into being the best wife and mother I could. I took particular care over making Jock’s meals. I told him exactly where I’d been that day. I polished and dusted our horrible little flat until it gleamed.
But Jane continued to haunt me. She still does. If it hadn’t been for me, she might still be alive. I committed a sin. One day, I vowed to myself, I would find a way to pay for it.
And that, Poppy, is where you come in.
21
Poppy
It’s the beginning of a new year and everyone is talking about ‘fresh starts’, the way they always do in early January. But there’s a black cloud hanging over me with Doris’s law suit.
It won’t be long before everyone knows. This is an industry where people don’t hesitate to pass on gossip. And even if Doris doesn’t win, our good name will be damaged. I’ve made a mistake by inviting a client into my home for work purposes without being insured. Our rivals will have a field day. I also feel terribly hurt. Doris had been more than a client. She’d become a friend. Of course, I feel terrible that she had an accident because of me. But I never expected her to sue.
‘We’re going to have to see a lawyer,’ Sally tells me. She’s had some experience in this field; it’s another of the reasons I hired her.
More expense. And straight on the heels of Christmas, too.
The good news is that I still haven’t heard anything from Matthew. I’m pretty sure he’s got the message. Never, ever, will I be so stupid again. Maybe I should spend more time with the girls, I tell myself, sending one more ‘I’ve got just the right person for you’ email to a casting director who is looking for men between twenty and thirty with bald heads. After all, tomorrow they go back to school. Melissa will be leaving home for uni before this year is out. I need to make the most of them.
Meanwhile, Stuart is meeting this Janine again to ‘work on’ the paper they’re writing. He’s actually got a locum to cover his patients. He only does this if something really important comes up or – once – when he had acute laryngitis.
I don’t want to think about it. Head in sand? Maybe. But also I feel I have no right to pry. Not after Matthew.
I realize I’ve been staring at my emails for ages while all these thoughts are going round my head. This is no good. I need to concentrate on the parts of my life that really matter. I make my way downstairs.
‘How about going roller skating?’ I suggest to the girls, who are on their iPads.
I expect them to turn it down like they had done with my bowling idea the other week, but everyone’s enthusiastic – especially Betty. ‘I used to do that with my workmates when I was young,’ she said.
So off we go, leaving Coco with plenty of water and food after having taken her for a walk first.
‘Watch out, Gran!’ yells Melissa as she skates past.
‘Cheeky!’ calls back my mother-in-law. ‘Just wait until I catch you up!’
I have to hand it to Betty. There aren’t many seventy-year-olds who can zip along on rollers without fear of falling over. Then again, she likes to keep active. She does hot yoga once a week and also Pilates. ‘It’s all part of staying young,’ she tells me.
Daisy and I are a bit slower but it gives us time to be together. ‘I love Coco so much,’ she says. ‘Do you think we could keep her?’
‘But she belongs to your teacher.’
‘Yes, but maybe we could ask if she’ll give her to us. She loves me too, Mum. You can see
from the way she jumps up at me so she can be on my lap. I’m the only one she wants to be with.’
‘Let’s think about it, shall we?’
That was parent-speak for ‘definitely not’!
Later, in the cafe, I give the girls some money to buy smoothies. ‘It’s been good to have time together,’ says Betty, patting my hand. ‘You ought to do the same with Stuart. Why not go down to the caravan together soon? Just the two of you, without the girls. It’s your twentieth anniversary coming up, isn’t it? You could celebrate it there.’
The caravan is something that she and Jock had bought when Stuart was a teenager and they had a bit more money. It’s in a picturesque part of Devon. They’d originally gone there for their honeymoon apparently.
Why not? We certainly weren’t going to have a party! We hardly have time for friends any more, apart from Sally, and since she works for me she doesn’t really count. Stuart occasionally meets up with an old uni chum for a drink but that’s it. It’s all we can do to fit in work and children.
Yet the very thought of being alone with my husband on holiday fills me with guilt as well as trepidation. What would we talk about without the girls?
‘Think about it,’ Betty says, patting my hand. ‘You know, marriages take as much work as parenting, if not more. I should know.’
I look up, surprised. Stuart had always made out that his parents had had an idyllic marriage, and they’d certainly seemed a ‘together’ couple when I knew them, even though Jock had a rough manner about him that was very different from his wife’s. But before I can question her, Betty says ‘Ah. Here are the girls. Ooh, look. Lovely. Cream on top too!’
I suddenly realize I haven’t checked my phone since taking it out of the changing locker. There’s the usual stream of emails but nothing that can’t wait until I’m back. Sally hasn’t left a message, which means she hasn’t got through to the lawyer yet to book an appointment. There’s nothing more from Matthew (phew!) or any missed calls from Dad. Nothing from Stuart either. It would be nice, I thought, to have a husband who calls at lunchtime to see how we are doing.
‘Got to go to the loo,’ I say.
But before I can get up, my mobile rings. It’s an unknown number. ‘Mrs Page?’
‘Yes?’ Maybe this is the lawyer after all.
‘This is the Accident and Emergency department of Worthing Hospital. Your father has asked us to ring you. I’m afraid he’s had an accident.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing too serious. The X-ray shows he’s sprained his left ankle. But he’s a bit shaky, so he had problems dialling your number.’
‘How did he do it?’
‘I’ll put you on to him, shall I?’
There’s an urgent voice in the background (‘Doctor needed here!’) while she hands the phone over, and then I hear Dad’s voice.
‘Poppy?’
Dad doesn’t sound like his usual grumpy self. He sounds frail. As though he is the child and I am the parent. ‘I fell down the step by the front door.’
He says each word slowly and carefully, almost as though he’s repeating words from a script.
‘How did you do that?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I just slipped. It’s been a bit icy down here.’
I’d been telling him for ages that he needed a handrail.
‘How did you get help?’
His voice falters again. ‘A man walking past saw me and called the ambulance.’
Thank heavens for that. The thought of Dad lying in the freezing cold on his doorstep doesn’t bear thinking about.
‘What’s wrong?’ mouths Betty.
‘Tell you in a minute,’ I mouth back.
‘I’m on my way down, Dad. Do you mind if I ring Reg so he can pick you up and stay with you at home until I can get there?’
‘That’s all right.’
Dad must be feeling rough if he isn’t objecting.
I fill Betty in. ‘I might have to stay the night,’ I tell her. ‘Dad will just have to put up with me in the bungalow until I can arrange some care. Or maybe I’ll find a hotel again.’
‘Don’t you worry,’ she says. ‘We’ll manage.’
‘Is Grandad going to be all right?’ asks Daisy.
‘He’ll be fine,’ I say with far more certainty than I feel.
‘Do you want me to come too?’ asks Melissa.
‘Nice try,’ I say, in an effort to inject some lightness. ‘You’ve got school tomorrow.’
‘We’ll all go back to the house together now,’ says Betty, gathering our stuff. ‘Then your mum can pack a bag and get going.’
I give her a grateful hug. Thank heavens for my family. Whatever would I do without them?
22
Betty
I tried to carry on for Stuart’s sake, but Jane gave me no peace. She talked to me in my dreams. Sometimes she screamed at me. Sometimes she said she understood. Then, when I woke up, red and raw from Jock’s ‘lovemaking’ the night before (‘Did he kiss you like this? Are you telling me the truth when you say you didn’t have sex? Tell me, you bitch. Tell me!’), my husband gave me the silent treatment. He also looked at me as if I was no better than the rubbish in the overflowing dustbins outside.
I could barely eat for grief and guilt. I kept wondering what Jane’s body would have looked like when they’d pulled her out of the pond. Suddenly, the very sight of meat made me feel sick. I couldn’t touch the stuff. Jock didn’t even comment. It was indicative of how little attention he paid me, except in bed, where he constantly told me that I was ‘his’ and no one else’s.
Often I started to dial Gary’s number but then stopped. What was the point? One day, however, I couldn’t bear it any longer so I let it ring. Someone answered after a while. ‘Hello?’ she said.
For a minute I thought it was Jane herself. But then I realized – it was her mother. Swiftly, I put the phone down again. To my horror, it started ringing. Maybe she was calling me back. I didn’t answer. Then I lived in fear of her doing it again when Jock was in.
Luckily, she didn’t.
A few weeks later, when I thought I might be going out of my mind, I took Stuart for a walk up near Jane’s house. There was a SOLD sign outside. Removal vans were taking furniture out. I couldn’t help myself. I ran up to the open front door. Two men came out carrying a double bed. The one on which Gary and I had had such passionate kisses. The reason for Jane’s death.
‘Is the owner still here?’ I said desperately.
‘Sorry, love. You’ve just missed him.’
Where had he gone? There was no way of knowing. I cried all the way home. Stuart started to cry too, as if he knew I was upset. Maybe he missed his old playmate, Violet.
Then Jock started to come home late, reeking of cheap perfume. It was nothing like the one that Jane had worn and which I, to my shame, had borrowed. This one churned my stomach. ‘What’s that smell?’ I asked.
Part of me thought that maybe it was one of those fancy sprays to take away the stink in a loo. Perhaps the factory had upped its standards. But my husband gave me a cold look. ‘What smell?’ he said challengingly.
I wrinkled my nose. ‘The sickly stench that’s coming off you.’ I took the polyester brown check jacket he’d bought recently because he needed to look smart now he was ‘rising up the management ladder’ and sniffed it. ‘Ugh.’
Jock whipped it off me. ‘Nothing wrong with that! Just because you’ve got high-and-mighty views on what people should and shouldn’t wear. ’Sides, it’s my business what I smell like after what you did with that Gary.’
And then I got it. ‘You’ve been with a woman,’ I said slowly.
‘So what if I have?’
Jock was sitting at the kitchen table now, his hands unwashed, waiting for me to put dinner in front of him. Stuart, who was one and a half then, was in the pyjamas I’d made for him myself. I ought to have put him to bed, especially if an argument was about to break out. But I couldn’t help myself.
‘Who is she?’ I demanded.
He laughed. ‘You think you have a right to ask? Just count yourself lucky that I’m still here.’
His old fear that I might leave him now seemed to have gone. Instead he took pleasure in threatening to leave me instead.
As if on cue, Stuart toddled up to him. ‘Dad, Dad,’ he chanted. He’d got most of his baby teeth through now but there was a big gap between the front two that I couldn’t help worrying about.
‘If it wasn’t for the bairn,’ said my husband coldly, ‘I’d have gone long ago. But a lad needs two parents.’
‘You mean you couldn’t look after him yourself,’ I found myself retorting.
He shook his head. ‘Maybe not. But that’s not to say another woman couldn’t – or wouldn’t.’
A cold feeling snaked through me.
‘Think about it, Betty. Supposing this scent did belong to another woman? What if that woman wanted to take me on – and my lad too? Do you really think any court of law would take your side over mine after what you’ve done?’
‘Don’t,’ I said, collapsing on a chair. I didn’t know which was worse – my guilt over Jane’s death or the fear that Jock might change his mind and decide he wanted to divorce me after all. What if the judge really did give Stuart to him? I wouldn’t want to live any more. Was that what Jane had feared when she’d seen me and Gary? Did it cross her troubled mind that her husband might leave and that the courts would give the children to me and him, declaring her to be an ‘unfit’ mother? I can’t bear to think about it.
‘At the moment,’ said Jock, setting Stuart down gently, ‘I’m prepared to carry on, but only on my terms. And if I come home smelling of someone else, that’s my business. Now what’s for supper? I’m starving.’
His words brought on a deeper, darker despair– worse than I’d ever felt before. But then a voice popped into my head. ‘It’s no more than you deserve.’
Where had that come from? A shiver ran right down my spine. It sounded so like Jane! As you know, Poppy, I’ve become quite interested in mediumship and meditation therapies as I’ve got older. Why shouldn’t we be able to hear those who have been so important to us after they’ve passed on? But I’ll be honest. Jane’s voice freaked me out.