My Husband's Wife (14 page)

Ed is leaning forward, clearly concerned. So much so that he drops his sketchpad.

Slowly, I put down the phone. Not just because of Merlin, who was my last link with Daniel apart from my parents. Nor because of the horror that someone, somewhere, has tracked down my family. Sarah Evans's uncle perhaps? After all, he'd written the previous note.

No. I'm putting down the phone in shock because Ed's sketchpad is open, revealing the full truth. I'd assumed the girl with the expressionless face was Carla, waiting to be filled in. Instead, Davina is laughing at me from the carpet with that glorious head of hair thrown back in victory.

Carla didn't have a birthday party like all the other girls at school. There wasn't room in the flat, Mamma said. Instead, look what Larry had bought her!

In the hall outside stood the most beautiful pink bike she had ever seen. It was gleaming: almost as shiny as Larry's car. There was a bell, just as she had requested, and a little basket. And when she rode it in the park, she flew!

‘You are a natural,' said Larry. But he did not smile as he spoke.

The following Sunday, the phone rang twice in an hour. ‘When I answer,' said Mamma confused, ‘I can't hear anything. Perhaps it is broken. You get it next time.'

Carla did. At first she heard nothing either. But just as she was about to put the phone down, there it was. Breathing.

Then her tummy ache started again.

‘I don't want to go to Lily and Ed's,' she mumbled.

Mamma ran her hands through her hair. ‘You are just worried about those phone calls. They are probably from silly children playing games. When you get to your friend Lily's home, you will feel better.'

She began to cry. ‘I'm not going. I am ill.'

Mamma's face grew cross. ‘You are a naughty girl. Do you know that?'

Carla was still resting on the sofa when Larry arrived. She could hear them whispering in the hall.

‘Making it up … I am sure of it … always better on Monday … only says she is ill … no temperature … just playing up …'

How tired she felt. Her thoughts began to drift away. At first this felt nice, soothing. But then she thought she heard a far-off doorbell. And after that, a word began to beat in her head as if it had been hidden and was now coming out to upset her.

Murder!

Murder!

That was the evil word she had seen on Lily's papers. The more she thought of it, the more Carla became convinced that Lily was going to hurt her too. It was God's will because she had killed Charlie.

‘What is this you are saying?'

Opening her eyes, she saw Mamma looking down at her.

‘You have had a nightmare,
cara mia
. But it is over now. You must get up. Guess who has come to see you?'

‘Hello, Carla!'

It was Ed.

She'd forgotten how
simpatico
his eyes were. After all, it wasn't he who was bad. It was Lily …

‘I was hoping to begin a new portrait today.' His eyes were really shining now. ‘If it works, I would like to enter it for a competition. With your mamma's permission of course.'

‘A competition!' Mamma repeated the word reverently. ‘Do you hear, Carla?'

‘But first I need another sitting.' Ed's eyes were searching hers. Pleading. It made her feel big. Important. ‘Do
you feel well enough to come over this afternoon?' He turned to Mamma. ‘I'm afraid Lily has got to go into work again, but I'll take great care of your daughter. Are you happy with that?'

‘Of course she is,' trilled Mamma. ‘She was just tired, that's all.'

Carla nodded. In truth, her stomach ache was not so bad now.

‘Wonderful.' Ed looked pleased. ‘Let's get started then, shall we?'

The first thing that Carla saw when she went into num-ber 3 was a new rug on the floor of the sitting room.

‘What happened to the old one?' she asked, noticing with approval that this one was a pale bluey-green and not a boring brown colour like before.

‘Lily got angry and threw coffee over it,' said Ed.

‘Ask him why, Carla.' Lily came out of the kitchen, carrying a pile of papers. Her voice was sharp.

Lily was here after all?

Carla froze on the spot.

Ed laughed, but Carla knew he was nervous. ‘I thought you were going into the office,' he said quietly.

‘Changed my mind. I'm going to work in the bedroom instead. I lose time doing that journey.' Lily smiled. But it wasn't a smile that danced in her eyes. ‘That all right with you?'

‘Whatever suits you best.' Ed spoke in that very polite way that adults seemed to use when they didn't like each other very much. Carla had observed that many times on Mamma's favourite television soap. Lily disappeared into the bedroom.

‘Why don't you sit down on the sofa, Carla.'

She did as she was told. Trembling. ‘Is Lily going to murder you?' she whispered.

Ed stared at her and then began to laugh. A lovely warm, throaty laugh that almost made her want to join in. Then he stopped. ‘Why do you ask that?'

Instantly, she felt foolish. ‘Because … because I saw the word “murder” on her homework papers when we were on the bus. And I was scared …' Her voice began to tremble. ‘I thought she was planning to kill me – and maybe you – and …'

‘Shh, shh.' Ed was sitting next to her now, his arm around her. ‘You've got the wrong end of the stick, sweetheart.'

Sweetheart? That's what Larry called Mamma sometimes. It felt good. As though she was grown up and not a child at all.

‘Lily is a solicitor. She helps to put the world to rights.' There was a snort as if Ed was disagreeing with himself.

‘What does that mean?'

‘It means she tries to help people who have been hurt and to look after people who have been accused of hurting others but haven't really. Do you understand?'

No, but Carla felt she ought to nod her head anyway in case Ed thought she was stupid.

‘At the moment, my wife is trying to help a man in prison who was accused of murder but is really a good person – or so she thinks.'

‘But why did they put him there then?'

Ed was back behind his easel now, sketching. Carla felt cold without his arm around her. ‘Good question. But she is also upset because her brother's horse has died.'

Carla made a face. ‘I'm scared of horses. One tried to bite me when we went to the zoo for our school trip.' Then she remembered the stain on the carpet. ‘Is that why Lily spilled the coffee?'

Ed began rubbing out something on the canvas. ‘No. That's because I … well, because I did something I shouldn't have done.'

He sounded so sad that Carla started to jump up to hug him.

‘Please. Don't move.'

So she sat still again. ‘Can I talk?'

His hand was moving across the page. She couldn't see it but she could hear it. ‘That's fine.'

‘I did something I shouldn't too. I … I chopped up the new Charlie.'

‘Who?'

‘My caterpillar pencil case.'

‘Why?'

‘Because I wanted something better.'

Ed's hand was moving faster. His voice sounded like it was coming from far away, as though he wasn't really listening. ‘Well, we all want something better from time to time, Carla. But if we stopped to appreciate what we've got, the world might be a better place. Now take a look at this.'

Jumping up, she ran to the easel. There she was! Sitting on the sofa. Her eyes looking straight out. A smile playing on her lips. But her hands! They were twisted together. As though something was wrong, despite her happy face.

‘It shows another side of you,' said Ed encouragingly. ‘Judges get fed up of chocolate-box paintings. This one, with any luck, might make us win.'

Win? When that happened on television, people became famous! Carla was so excited that when she excused herself to go to the loo, she couldn't help squirting herself with the perfume on the shelf. She also dabbed on a little of Lily's lip gloss sitting next to it.

‘That's a nice smell,' said Ed, when she returned to her sitting position.

Carla crossed her fingers. ‘It's just the soap.' Then, feeling very grown up thanks to the perfume and the portrait, she tried to sit up straight like a proper English lady.

The picture had been sent to the judges of the big competition that Ed had told them about. But it would take them a long time to decide who would come first. ‘We will know by next year,' he promised, giving her arm a quick squeeze.

Meanwhile, the whole world was in a feverish state of Christmas excitement. Mamma had come to the nativity play where Carla and her new friend Maria were angels. Afterwards, Mamma had cried and said that she wished Nonno could see them because then he might forgive her.

‘Forgive you for what?' Carla had asked.

‘You would not understand.' Then Mamma began to weep again. This was embarrassing because they were on the bus on the way home from school on the last day of term. Mamma was in her work uniform, which smelled of perfume.

‘Larry cannot be with us at Christmas,' she sniffed.

Carla's heart jumped. Good. ‘Why not?'

Mamma sniffed. ‘Because he has to be with his wife.'

Then the woman in front of them on the bus turned round and gave them both such a nasty look that Mamma began crying even harder. She was still crying when they got home.
Maybe, thought Carla as they walked past number 3, her friends might come out to see what the noise was all about.

‘Can we spend Christmas with Ed and Lily instead?' she asked. Now Ed had explained that Lily was not a murderer, she liked her again. Although not quite so much. She'd upset Ed, after all, and it was he who had drawn her picture.

‘They are going to their own families.' Mamma's arm tightened round her shoulders. ‘It is just you and me, my little one.'

Mamma had still not run out of tears by the time that Carla opened door number 24 on her advent calendar. Meanwhile, the Christmas tree which Carla had persuaded Mamma to buy from the market leaned sadly against the wall. Bare.

‘We must decorate it,' she had pleaded. But Mamma had forgotten to buy tinsel, and besides, they didn't have enough money. So instead she had hung up her biggest white gym sock.

At the bottom of it she could see now that there were two presents.

‘Larry gave them to us,' said Mamma.

Then she clutched Carla's hand. ‘We must go and say thank you to him.'

But it was dark and cold outside. Mamma said that didn't matter. She would stop crying – ‘I promise, my little one!' – if only she could walk past the house where Larry lived. So they walked for miles and miles because the bus didn't come as it was a holiday and drivers need to rest too. Some of the houses they passed were so big that they could have fitted ten of their apartments inside.

And then finally they stopped at a tall white house that
went up and up into the sky. Through the window on the second floor shone a light. The curtains were open.

Tears began to stream down Mamma's face. ‘If only I could be in there, with Larry.'

Carla tried to pull her mother away. ‘Just one moment,' Mamma said. But she wouldn't move. Bored, Carla kicked at some leaves while she waited.

‘No!' Mamma was gasping, her hand to her throat. Carla followed her gaze. In the window stood a little girl, looking down on them.

‘Who's that?' Carla asked.

‘It is his child.'

‘He has a daughter,' questioned Carla with a jolt in her chest, ‘as well as a wife?'

Mamma nodded, her tears flowing faster.

A daughter like her? ‘What happens to them on Sundays?'

Mamma's arms were shaking so much that Carla had to hold them to keep them still. ‘We are his family then.
They
belong to the other days. Come, we will go now.'

Together, they made their way back through the streets and past the street lamps and the decorations in other people's windows. Back to the naked Christmas tree and the two presents in her sock.

‘What are you doing?' asked Mamma as Carla put hers in the bin without opening it.

‘I don't want it.' Her face burned with anger. Larry had to go, Carla told herself silently. He was not good for Mamma. Somehow, she had to find a way to get rid of him. Just as she had done with Charlie.

Even if it was wrong.

I'm glad I'm not dying at Christmas.

It would be too hard for everyone involved.

Bad things shouldn't happen when the rest of the world is rejoicing.

It makes it doubly hard for those who grieve.

And the memories spoil every Christmas after that.

Is there ever a good time to die?

I certainly never thought it would be like this.

A strange layering of pain and reflection, of recriminations against others, recriminations against myself.

And of course fear. Because I suspect, from the small sounds around me, that someone is still here.

Christmases have always been big at home. ‘Daniel loves it,' my mother always used to say by way of explanation for the ten-foot-high tree and the stack of presents below. We didn't have a lot of money, but my mother would save up throughout the year. One time, my brother got a Hornby train set which he proceeded to take apart and then put back together again, ‘just to see how it was made'. It took three days, during which he refused to participate in any family meals, including Christmas lunch, because he was ‘busy'.

No one tried to dissuade him. It was impossible to change his mind once it was set. Maybe that's why, in the early days, Daniel got whatever he wanted. It was only when his wish list became illegal that my parents started to lay down boundaries. And by then it was too late.

What, I wonder, as we wait at Exeter station for Dad to pick us up, will it be like this year? In the past few years, Mum has had a glazed, bright, ‘it's all right' look firmly fixed to her face from the second she wakes. It fools no one. Then, when she's had her third gin before lunch, she'll start talking about Daniel in the present tense. ‘He'll love these new lights, don't you think?' she'll enquire, as if my brother is going to come downstairs any minute.

Dad will wear an air of forced resignation. At the same time, he'll look after Mum with a tenderness that smacks of guilt. When a couple go through a tragedy, they either become closer than before or drift apart. I suppose I ought to be grateful my parents finally chose the former.

It's cold here, in the station waiting room with the draught blasting through the door. I shiver. And not just because of poor Merlin, who died because of me. Or because of his unknown murderer. (Sarah's uncle had a firm alibi according to the police, although, as Tony said, he may have put someone up to it.)

No. It's because sometimes – and you might think this is stupid – I wonder if I'm living up to my name. Lilies stain if their pollen brushes something. The recipient is tarnished with a substance that is difficult to remove. It seems to me that I stain whoever I try to love. Daniel, Daniel's horse, Ed … Who is next?

Joe?

Don't be ridiculous, I tell myself sharply.

Noticing my distress, Ed tries to put his arm round my shoulder, but I shrug it off. How does he expect me to react when he's been drawing the face of the woman he was once engaged to?

‘Do you still care for her?' I'd yelled, throwing coffee all over the rug.

‘No.' He seemed genuinely perplexed, like a lost small boy. ‘She … she just keeps coming up in my work.'

‘Work?' I'd screamed. ‘Advertising is meant to be your work.' I waved my hand angrily at his sketch of Davina, her head back, laughing throatily.

I couldn't help myself. ‘Are you having an affair with her?'

‘When would I have the time? But even if I was, why would you care? All you're worried about is this case of yours. Not our marriage.' Ed was angry now too.

Before we knew it, the argument turned into an out-and-out screaming match – something that seemed to be happening more and more.

Since then, we've barely spoken to each other, save for making Christmas arrangements. The day itself at my parents' in Devon. Boxing Day with his, further up the motorway in Gloucestershire.

Ed's warm hand is a festive peace offering. But I'm too wound up in my own thoughts. Daniel. Merlin. The note.

‘Here's your father,' Ed announces, relief in his voice because we will no longer have to stand together in angry silence in the cold wind.

‘First Christmas as a married couple, eh?' says Dad beaming, opening the doors of his old Land Rover for us to get in.

I can't even look at Ed as we exchange jollities. All I know is that my parents will be using our sham marriage as an excuse to be cheerful; to forget the empty place at the table and the saddle still hanging on the rack in the boot room because no one can bear to throw it away.

Part of me longs to tell them how miserable I am. But I can't. I owe it to them to make up for what happened in whatever way I can.

‘Darlings!' My mother is at the door. Her eyes are unnaturally bright. Her hand is shaking. The glass she's
put down on the hall table is half full. ‘How lovely to see you.'

‘Great tree,' says Ed, taking in the monstrosity behind him which reaches up through the circular staircase to the third floor. ‘How did you get it in?'

My mother beams. ‘Daniel helped us. He'll be down in a minute. Now come on in and make yourselves at home.'

‘What's going on?' I hiss to Dad as soon as I get a chance.

He looks miserable. ‘You know what she's like at this time of year.'

‘But she's getting worse, Dad. Surely she should be getting better?'

Ed, to his credit, is every inch the gentleman. When Mum gets out the photograph album showing Daniel and me down the years, he appears genuinely interested.

But his questions – ‘And where was this taken?' – are directed towards my mother. I am ignored.

At Midnight Mass in our small village, people I haven't seen for ages come up to embrace me and shake hands with Ed for the first time. Thanks to my mother-in-law's insistence that ‘all Macdonalds' get married in the small family chapel on their estate, there had only been room for immediate relations. ‘So this is the lucky man,' says one of the old boys who used to prop up the bar at the local every night when I lived at home. ‘We all love Lily, you know.' Then he claps Ed on the shoulder. ‘Mind you take care of her.'

This time it's me who can't look at him. Instead, we trudge in silence behind my parents towards home, breathing in the salty air. When I was a teenager, I'd itched
to get away from this place, scorning it for being so ‘parochial'. Only now do I realize how precious it is, how touching the concern for everyone in the flock. And how this little town represents real, solid values. Not outright lies or half-truths or games – whichever way you see them.

Joe Thomas seems another world away.

‘Now, who's going to check on Merlin?' asks my mother as Dad fumbles for the back-door key under the stone wall. ‘Someone needs to make sure he hasn't knocked his water bucket over again.'

‘Mum,' I begin gently. ‘Merlin's …'

But Dad steps in quickly. ‘I will, love. You go off to bed. Nothing to worry about. The turkey's already in the Aga and this young couple will want to go to bed.'

I shiver. It's not just Dad's lies or our couple charade. It's also fear. I told Dad to be careful about security after the note. Yet here he is, still leaving the key in its usual place. Where anyone can get it.

In the morning I'll talk to him, I tell myself as I get into bed, while Ed is still in the bathroom. By the time he is finished I have turned off the lights and am pretending to be asleep.

‘I'm sorry.' My husband's voice clearly indicates that he isn't fooled by my turned back and pretence of even breathing.

I sit up, my back against the pillow. ‘I presume we're talking about Davina here. But are you sorry you're in love with her? Or sorry that you married me? Or sorry that …'

‘I'm sorry about Daniel. It must be very hard for you all.'

Ed's words sink into the silence. Would he say that if he knew the full story?

‘I don't want to talk about it,' I say now, turning away from him.

Then I sleep. Easily. Deeply. The best sleep I've had for years. I'm running along the sand after Daniel. He's still young. Laughing. Jumping in and out of the water. Picking up shells, which he organizes in precise order on the windowsill in his bedroom. Then someone in my dream (who?) moves them. Daniel is screaming because they are spoiled. He's throwing the shells out of the window and now he's collecting new ones all over again …

I wake with a start. It's night. There's a strange scratching sound on the roof. A seagull perhaps. I wonder what Joe Thomas is doing now. Is he awake? Going over those figures again and again? Deciding whether to reveal the secret source who sent them to him?

And Tony Gordon. What might he be doing? Is he in bed with his wife? He rarely speaks about his personal life. Only once has he mentioned a child, and that was when he had to take a call from his wife about a school play that he'd missed. Not that he told me this; it was merely something I gathered from overhearing the conversation. He had expressed remorse, but when he put the phone down appeared to forget it fast, returning to our paperwork.

Tony Gordon, I suspect, is a man who can compartmentalize life quite easily.

My restlessness wakes Ed. He reaches over and strokes my back. Then his hands reach lower. I don't move. Tears begin to run down my face. I don't know if he thinks it's
me or Davina. Self-respect dictates that I should move away, waiting until we are both awake so we know what we are doing. But my dream about Daniel has disturbed me. I am lonely. Sad. And so it is that I find myself allowing Ed inside me. But when I arrive on a wave of illicit excitement, it is not him in my head.

In the morning, I wash my husband away in the old-fashioned bath, which has a crack in the enamel from where Daniel once removed the plughole strainer and stuffed a giant blue and silver marble down the pipe ‘to see if it would go through'.

It had cost a great deal to unblock the system.

‘Happy Christmas,' says Ed, handing me a shiny red package.

Does he even remember making love to me in the night? Or does he feel consumed with guilt for imagining Davina?

The only way I can justify my own fantasy is that I am so wrapped up in my guilt over Daniel that I cannot allow myself to be happy. Self-destruction. Therefore I imagine someone I am forbidden, professionally, to have sex with.

There's a small box inside the red paper. A pen. I'd been secretly hoping for more perfume. My honeymoon bottle is almost empty. How is it that an artist can be so observant one minute and so blind the next?

‘You're always writing. Thought it might come in useful.'

‘Thank you,' I say, handing over the package I had hidden in my case. It's a box of oil pastels. Ed picks them out, one by one. His face is like that of a child. ‘This is great.'

‘You can paint some more Davinas now.' I just can't
stop myself. Then again, how would my husband react if I flaunted another man in front of him?

His face darkens. ‘We need to leave early tomorrow,' Ed says coldly, after we'd accepted Mum's offer to lend us a car because of a limited train service during the holiday. ‘Otherwise we'll be late for my parents.'

My childhood home is lovely. But when I first saw Ed's family home, shortly before our wedding, I couldn't believe it. It was virtually a stately home.

‘It's actually not as big as it looks,' he said as I sat in the car, willing myself to get out while staring in awe at the Elizabethan stone, the turrets, the family arms over the front door, the mullioned windows, and the lawns which extended as far as the eye could see.

Who was he kidding? Himself? Artists, I was beginning to learn, were good at that. Then again, so are lawyers. Both have to act. To play the part. To get inside someone else's soul …

The truth is that a large part of Ed's home is sectioned off for the public; its visitor fees go towards the upkeep. The other part – the finger-numbingly sub-zero one – is where his parents live, as well as a brother and his wife. Another brother works in Hong Kong and couldn't come back for Christmas this year.

I'm grateful. This lot is more than enough. Ed's mother is a tall, angular, aloof woman whom I haven't seen since the wedding, and who has, so far, failed to invite me to call her by her first name. Artemis. It suits her.

The brother is equally pompous, although Ed's father
is polite enough, asking me about my case ‘with that murderer'. He's clearly read up about it.

‘Consorting with criminals? What an awful job you have, dear,' shudders my mother-in-law over pre-dinner drinks in the library – another freezing-cold place, where the leather spines are peeling off the backs of the books. ‘Didn't you want to do something nicer? In my day, if we had to work, we taught or did nursing before we got married. Of course, many of my friends' daughters are in what I believe they call public relations, or events management …' Her voice tails off at Ed's look, but it's too late.

‘Actually,' I reply, ‘I think that those kinds of jobs are far better left to women like Davina.'

There's a silence. It was meant to have come out like a joke. But no one is fooled, least of all Ed. Or me. Ed's mother smoothly moves on to another topic (that of her eldest son's recent promotion in a huge insurance firm), but the damage is done.

‘I need some air,' I murmur to Ed as I grab my cashmere wrap – a present from the in-laws – and make my way to the terrace overlooking the gardens. They're beautiful. I'll give my mother-in-law that. She spends all her time out here, apparently.

‘Artemis didn't mean it.'

I turn at the gentle voice behind me. It's my sister-in-law with a compact, snuffly toddler in her arms. Out of all Ed's relatives, she is the one I like best. She seems more normal than the others and has slightly grubby fingernails, possibly because she works as a freelance garden designer. ‘She just says what she thinks, I'm afraid. You'll get used to it.'

The toddler is grinning at me. It has a wide gap in its
front teeth. I'm not the maternal type, having had little experience. Although to my surprise, I've really enjoyed having Carla around.

‘I'm not sure I want to get used to it,' I say.

My sister-in-law frowns. ‘What do you mean?'

‘I don't know why Ed married me.' As I speak, I feel I am talking to myself instead of to a woman I don't know very well. Maybe it's the pre-dinner sherry I gulped down in a desperate need for warmth as well as to curb my nerves. ‘He clearly still has feelings for Davina. So why did he choose me instead of her?'