My Husband's Wife (17 page)

‘Mayonnaise.’

The two curled their legs up on the bench and giggled at the absurdity of the situation, just as they always had.

‘Oh God, Mel, I feel like I’m losing the plot.’ She let herself fall across her friend, who wrapped her in her arms. ‘I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Rosie Shitstar.’

Rosie closed her eyes and inhaled the intoxicating scent of apples that seemed to hang in the air.

The girls had been leaping around, full of laughter and beans since she had collected them from school. Not only did they have the weekend to look forward to, but tonight they were off to have tea at their dad’s. Rosie went through the motions on autopilot, part of her wanting to shake them and say,
‘Do you know what he has done to us? To me?’
while her rational self kept on smiling and trying to make it as pleasant as it could be for everyone. And now it was nearly time and the kids’ laughter had twice turned to tears as they became a little overwhelmed with excitement.

‘Are you going to be okay, Mummy?’ Naomi twisted her skirt in her hands.

‘Course I am. I’ve got you.’ Rosie kissed her nose.

‘I just meant while we’re out, are you going to miss us?’

Rosie felt a wave of guilt that her little one was feeling torn, sad that she was experiencing these feelings at such a tender age.

‘Miss you? No way! I’ve got lots to do. You just make sure you have a nice time and tell me all about it.’ She even hummed, to show that all was well.

‘If we had two baby dogs, they could keep you company while we were gone.’

‘We are not getting two baby dogs, or even one baby dog.’

Naomi took a deep breath. ‘But—’

‘No buts, Naomi Jo. We can’t have dogs. Apart from the fact that they’re expensive, who’d look after them while I’m at work?’ She was grateful for the extra hours she’d been given, which now saw her issuing keys and booking families in and out at reception. Financially, it was a lifesaver.

‘We could leave dog programmes on the telly for them so they don’t get scared and they would have each other to talk to and we could leave their dinner in a big bowl.’

‘That’s not going to happen, it wouldn’t be fair on them. And when you have a dog, you have to think about what’s best for them, not just what’s best for you. Who would take them for walks and take them out to go to the loo?’ She shook her head, weary of the topic.

‘We could teach them to use the toilet!’ Naomi clapped, as though this was obvious.

‘Right, that’s it. I don’t want to hear the word “dog” again – you are banned from using it!’

‘For how long?’ Naomi stood with her mouth turned down.

‘Three weeks.’

‘Three weeks?’ she yelled indignantly.

‘Yep, and stop shouting or it will be four.’ Rosie smiled, half teasing her little girl. It was actually good to have the distraction of banter while they waited for Phil to knock on the door like the big bad wolf.

The girls had packed their school reading books and swimming costumes as per their dad’s texted instructions. Rosie was still plagued by the image of Phil and the petite, pert-breasted Gerri swimming the day away and sipping champagne morning, noon and night, only now she pictured her children swimming alongside them and laughing with the lady with the red polka-dot bikini, flat tummy and no stretch marks.

It was five o’clock on the dot that the knock on the door pulled her from her daydream.

‘Daddy, let us out!’

‘Daddy! We’re here, but we can’t get out!’

The girls shouted in unison as they ran to the front door, banging at it in their haste to get to him and sounding very much as if they were being held prisoner. Rosie hoped that Mummy von Trapp hadn’t nipped back from London for the weekend and wasn’t overhearing all this.

‘Mind out the way, please, girls, so I can open the door!’ She pulled them backwards and reached over their excited, bopping heads to get to the latch.

Phil took one step forwards and the girls charged at him, throwing their arms around his midriff and holding him tight. She silently berated the punch of jealousy that hit her in the stomach.
Don’t be ridiculous, Rosie, he’s their dad!
She couldn’t, however, help the feelings of envious curiosity, wondering what it would be like to be the one that had left and was missed so much. It had only been ten days since they’d last seen him, but for them it felt like an age.

Phil looked up and away and then immediately returned his gaze to his wife. ‘Hi.’

She held up her palm in greeting.

‘Just wanted to say, about the whole barbeque thing the other week... Andy had told me you couldn’t make it and we were only there for an hour or so. I wouldn’t have gone if I’d thought...’ He paused. ‘Mel’s your mate.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ She gave a brief smile.

‘I’ll bring them back by nine, is that okay?’ he asked and she was surprised by both his question and his civility.

‘That’s fine, if Leo lasts that long, otherwise earlier. Whichever. I’m not going anywhere.’

He nodded. ‘Thanks for this.’

She ignored him, not wanting to indulge in pleasantries. Civil was one thing, but friendly, which would intimate forgiveness? That was quite another.

‘Be good, girls, and see you soon!’ She blew kisses and watched as her daughters ran to the side of the vast Range Rover and patted the pristine paintwork with their hands.

‘Is this a van, Dad?’ Leo asked as she climbed up into the vehicle.

‘No, it’s just a car.’ He smiled.

‘This is like a throne! It’s so high up I can see everything!’ Naomi called from the back.

He shut the door and jumped into the driver’s seat, as if he had been doing so his whole life.

Rosie stood on the doorstep with a grin plastered to her face, waving at her kids, who waved back excitedly. This was already quite the adventure and they hadn’t left the street yet. She could see their mouths opening and closing as they rambled on to their dad, catching him up with their lives over the past days. As they rounded the bend and disappeared, she quietly walked back inside.

A second later, she took a deep breath, howled loudly and slid down the inside of the front door. Landing in a heap on the welcome mat, she lay there crumpled and sobbing, feeling like her heart might twist out of shape.

‘I miss you so much!’ she yelled hoarsely. ‘I want you back! I want you home! I want it to go back to how it was! Please, Phil, please...’ She shouted into the ether, hoping that her words might reach him and make him think.

*

An hour later she had calmed down. She lay on the sofa with a cup of coffee and her phone for company. She lit her apple candle, inhaling the sweet, calming scent and fired off texts to Mel and her dad, trying to think of anything other than her children and her husband and his girlfriend, all playing happy families in the Downton-style mansion up the coast.
I
hope they hate it there, hope it’s cold and uncomfortable and they never want to go again.
She shook her head to get rid of the nasty thoughts that leapt unbidden into her mind. It was a curious emotional state to be in when all she ever wanted was for her children to be happy.

‘Don’t be like that, Rosie. Don’t let them make you like that,’ she said out loud.

Her phone rang. It was her dad.

‘Thanks for your text,’ he said. ‘Thought it might be easier to call – I haven’t quite got the hang of texts; they always fly off half finished before I’m ready to send them. I think it’s my ancient phone. Or my ancient fingers.’ He tutted.

She’d spoken to him once since Phil had left, to briefly let him know what had happened, but it hadn’t been much of a chat.

‘How are you?’ His voice was level and sincere.

‘Ah, you know, Dad, getting on with it. But I’m sad, very sad. When I’m busy, I might forget about it for a bit, but then I see him, or the kids ask something quite harmless, like “Where is he?” and I’m back to howling.’ This sort of confidence sharing was rare between them, but she needed someone to talk to.

‘It will get easier, Rosie. Might not be for a while, but it will.’

He was a man who spoke from experience. She thought of Laurel’s letter, the rather cool explanation of a woman who had plans and wasn’t about to let marriage and motherhood get in the way.
I didn’t want any of it, not marriage, not kids, not the routine of laundry and housework, not the small seaside life, none of it. I wanted more than to be known as my husband’s wife...

‘Did you feel this bad when Mum left?’ She kept her tone neutral. This was new territory for them both, but it was somehow easier to discuss it over the phone with a stretch of the A377 between them.

Her dad gave a small cough. His words, when they came, were barely more than a whisper.

‘I did, yes. It was a difficult time. I was taken aback, shocked. She rejected everything I had to offer, and there was no Plan B, no alternative life that I could tempt her with. She just disappeared, and I wanted to run away too, if I’m being honest, but I had this little baby girl to care for and I didn’t know how. I really didn’t.’

He chuckled with relief, as if he’d survived a near miss. ‘Looking back, I think I blamed you at first, in some way. I thought that if you hadn’t come along, she might have stayed. But I know that’s not true; you were just a little baby, you were an angel, too, placid and quiet, almost as if you knew you couldn’t be too much trouble, because I couldn’t have coped. And I figured out after a while that she was always going to go, it was just a question of when. I was never enough for her. And so I did what I had to do, battened down the hatches, tried not to think too much and soldiered on. I had no choice, did I?’

Rosie swallowed, taking in her Dad’s words of revelation and seeing him in a new light. She thought about the silent serving of her bland food at tea times, remembered his distant stare while she tried to chat and saw his fleeting, disingenuous smile, offered as a weak consolation on her birthdays. She realised for the first time that he hadn’t been cold or uncaring; he’d simply been trying to survive and had done so by putting a lid on the feelings that threatened to bubble to the surface. In fact he put a lid on all his feelings. And all the while she’d blamed him for her mum’s departure, assumed she’d upped and left because of something terrible
he
’d done.

‘Well, I think you did a good job, Dad. We muddled through, didn’t we?’

‘We did – just.’ She heard the crack of emotion in his voice. ‘And Naomi and Leona will be just fine too. You know that, don’t you?’

‘I guess.’ Again she pictured them at that moment.

‘I’ve seen the way you and Phil are with them: they are lucky kids and you’ll all come out the other side, all of you.’

‘Doesn’t feel like that right now,’ she whispered.

‘I know. But I do think you end up with who you’re meant to, Rosie. Look at Shona and me. We are happy. She looks after me, the first person ever to have done that. Your mum said something in her letter, she said that her leaving was to give everyone a chance to have the life that was meant for them, and I can see that now, not that I thanked her at the time.’

Rosie smiled, happy that her dad knew the words by heart. She visualised the coffee ring disappearing from the back of the envelope.

Her situation was, however, quite unlike his. The life she was meant to have was with Phil, there was no better life out there for her, of this she was sure. That life was the one she had always wanted; gorgeous kids, a lovely house and her man by her side. She swallowed the tears that threatened.

Her dad had more to say. ‘And she was right, you know. Hard as it was to see and to come to terms with, she was right. If she’d reluctantly stuck around, I would have had a very different life and so would you.’

‘It didn’t feel like that when I was growing up. I... I missed her.’

‘I know. But what you did was imagine a perfect mum.’

She thought about her apple-scented, smiling mummy who used to sit by her side in the darkness.

‘And you have become that mum for your girls and that’s the absolute best thing you could have done. It’s made you who you are.’

Rosie nodded. She had never thought about it in this way, but her dad was right. She had always been determined to give Naomi and Leona the love and care she felt she’d missed out on. So what if they were a bit rowdy and a bit less well behaved than the von Trapps; so long as they knew she would always be there for them, for the little things as well as the big things – ready to fix their hair for parties, to talk about periods and other stuff – that was all that really mattered.

‘I don’t say it often enough, Dad, but I appreciate what you did, what you went through, and I do love you.’

‘I know. And I love you too.’

After she put the phone down, Rosie felt her mood shift a little; she wasn’t happy, but she was less fearful. Her dad’s words had made an impact, made her feel as if she wasn’t alone and that was all she had ever really wanted.

Her phone rang again and she checked the screen. Mo. She must have known that the kids were out and was checking in. Rosie smiled and answered the call. ‘Hello, Mrs.’

‘Look, I know my hair’s a bit long and I have been known to wander round in a sarong, which is technically a skirt, and I do wear a bracelet, but—’

‘Kev! Oh my God! You’re home!’

‘No, I’m still away, but I got Mum to send her phone to Borneo so I could prank-call you.’

‘Very funny.’ She’d missed his teasing sarcasm.

‘So, Rosie Watson, what the hell’s been going on? I turn my back for
five
minutes...’

‘Oh, Kev.’

‘Wait! Don’t say a word. Bench time?’

‘Yes!’ She laughed. ‘Bench time would be good.’

*

Rosie arrived first. It was a little chilly in the evening breeze and she’d thrown on her thick wool poncho for warmth. She lifted her head and smiled in anticipation at every dog walker who passed by, waiting for her old, old friend. Her dad’s words were still fresh in her mind as she pictured her teenage self sitting at this very spot chatting to her mum in her mind and meeting Kev for ‘bench-time’ catch-ups whenever they were needed.