The Dead Wife's Handbook (10 page)

‘Well, not everyone would be so lucky to have their parents on tap. You’re pretty fortunate, in the circumstances.’

Dodie’s tactless platitude hangs in the air like a lonely phrase in need of companionship but with little hope of finding any. Wouldn’t she be better to remain silent and have people think she’s emotionally incompetent than to speak out and prove that she is?

‘Would you like another drink?’

Max clearly does. Or maybe it’s just that he needs one.

‘Um … that would have been nice but I’ve just noticed the time and I said I’d meet some friends for a late supper. I really ought to head off.’

So it’s to be the emergency rescue package for the failing economy of her evening. Dodie must be aware that no
one believes the late-supper story, that everyone knows it’s the oldest trick in the dating book, that even Max, who hasn’t dated for over a decade and hasn’t spent the intervening period watching Hollywood rom-coms, will know that this is nothing more than the lamest of get-out clauses.

‘Yeah, right, course. Sorry. I didn’t clock the time.’

Stop apologizing, Max. It’s not even eight o’clock. She’s been here precisely twenty-five minutes. She should be the one apologizing to you.

‘No worries. Thanks for the drink.’

‘Don’t mention it. I hope you enjoy the rest of the evening.’

‘Yeah, you too.’

She’s out of her chair and into her jacket faster than Max can stand up without almost knocking over the table again.

‘Well, it was really nice to meet you. I hope all those animals behave themselves and, er, have a good weekend.’

I can see Max isn’t sure how to end this unfortunate encounter, but before he has a chance to decide on the most appropriate course of action, Dodie finalizes what is sure to be their one and only meeting with a verbal goodbye, an ill-disguised sigh of relief and a decisive departure.

Max stands by the table, looking slightly confused as to what just happened. I don’t know whether her swift exit has upset or angered him, humiliated or simply bewildered him. Possibly all that, and more.

Max goes to the bar and orders a fourth pint before returning to the empty table where he sits in solitary
silence, dejection and bemusement etched in the lines across his forehead.

I wish there were some way of me finding out what Max is thinking, some way of him knowing that he’s not alone, some way to reassure him that I’m still here by his side. I wish I could convince him that tonight’s debacle was in no way his fault, that Dodie just wasn’t right for him, that what he needs right now – if he needs anything at all from imperfect strangers – is empathy and patience and understanding about just how hard this is for him. And that while he may be the one feeling despondent at this moment in time, it is he who’s had the greatest escape from this failed venture, not her.

Max finishes his pint in student-record time and heads out into the still-bright, early-summer’s evening to make his way home, concluding his inaugural night out just as the regular Notting Hill-ites are beginning theirs.

As Max wanders with just the faintest air of tipsiness towards the first of the two bus stops which will see him back to Acton, where he’ll collect Ellie from his mum and dad’s before heading home, an opaque mist begins to cloud my view and within seconds my access has disappeared altogether.

I really wanted to stay longer with him tonight. I wanted to see that he got home safely, wanted to reassure myself that he wasn’t too upset, wanted to remain close to him even though I know there’s nothing useful, nothing tangible, I can offer.

Instead I just have to wait as I so often do until I can return to see how he is. And hope, in the meantime, that he’ll be okay.

Chapter 7

Music greets me for a few tantalizing seconds before the clouds disperse, and I feel the familiar lump in my throat that’s been the spontaneous accompaniment to these lyrics for the past eight years.

As the scene pulls into focus, I find myself in the darkened sitting room of my house, the flicker of the television screen the only light illuminating the lone figure of my husband on the sofa, Dean Martin informing him, as if Max didn’t already know it, that he’s nobody till somebody loves him.

And there we both are, on the screen, proving that we’ve found somebody to do just that, Max looking the most handsome I’ve ever seen him, in a charcoal-grey morning suit with powder-blue tie, me in his arms draped in multiple layers of floor-length ivory satin that I’d only that day mastered the ability to walk in, let alone dance. The moment we took to the floor to confirm our status as the newest of formally committed couples.

I hear a swallowed sob and pull my eyes away from the television to see another version of Max, so different from the beaming, dancing, newly-wed on the screen. He’s sitting on the sofa with tears streaming down his face, his cheeks streaked with the evidence that he’s been here, like this, for too long already. There’s an empty wine glass in his hand, tilted precariously against his leg, the last
remaining dregs of red sediment clinging to its sides, the half-empty bottle resting on the floor by his feet. He’s wearing the same clothes that I left him in after his date earlier and I suspect that only a matter of hours have passed since my last visit, that this video trip down memory lane may have been prompted by the disappointment and disillusionment of the evening’s events.

Max wipes his face with the back of his free hand and I realize that this is only the third time I’ve ever seen him cry, a sight I’ve only ever borne witness to since I died. I want to be able to hold him and for him to feel the endurance of my embrace. I want the love that I have for him – that I’ll always have for him, however far away I am, whatever worlds separate us – to envelop him in security. I want it not to be over, this relationship that neither of us could ever quite believe – even after we’d rented our first flat, even after the wedding, even after creating a new little person together – that we’d been lucky enough to have discovered in one another. We’d often say – in private, never out loud, never in earshot of others for fear of appearing smug – that relationships like ours just don’t happen every day, they don’t happen to everyone. I don’t think either of us ever doubted the rare fortune of having chanced upon one another in that vast sea of human interactions, two lone boats bobbing on the water whose navigational charts just happened to coincide on a day when each of us thought there’d be nothing but empty ocean for nautical miles around.

As Dean Martin concludes his paean to the merits of romantic love, I turn back to the television screen just in time to watch Max whisper in my ear as the next track
begins and a swarm of guests join us on the dance floor. I’ll never forget what he said; I can hear the words right here and now, as clearly as if Max had been wearing a microphone and the cameraman had managed to pick up that most private of triumphant sentiments:

We did it, baby. It’s just me and you and the adventure of the rest of our lives together now.

And it was an adventure, a wonderful adventure, however short-lived.

We’re laughing now, amidst congratulatory friends and upbeat music, but the celebratory tone on the screen does nothing to lighten Max’s mood in the darkness. He chokes back a deep, guttural sob and pours another lonely slug of wine from the bottle into his glass.

Please don’t do this to yourself, Max. I love you reminiscing about our past but I want those reminiscences to bring you happiness, to reignite our relationship for you so that you can experience it even in my absence, not to reduce you to alcohol-infused heartbreak. Perhaps you’re just not ready to watch this yet, perhaps this is one collection of memories that does need to be stored away a little while longer, perhaps tonight just isn’t the night to be recollecting happier evenings from a life we no longer lead.

But my silent entreaties have as little hope of reaching him as if I said the words out loud. There’s no possibility of me whispering reassurances into his ear, of wrapping my arms around him, of kissing away his sadness.

The empty wine glass tumbles sedately, as if in slow motion, from Max’s hand to the rug under his feet. His eyes are closed, his heavy breathing audible above the disco that continues to play in miniature in front of him,
where he’s twirling me around the floor with amateur enthusiasm, both of us grinning ecstatically, high on love and adrenaline, in full confidence that this was the first day of the rest of our lives together. Which it was, I suppose. Just not the lives we imagined might unfold.

Max emits the gentlest of snores, his head tilted back on the edge of the sofa, his face still damp with tears and his lips tinged with the pigment of fermented grapes.

I’m reminded of all those times I’ve watched him sleep in the past, of all those mornings I’d rouse before him or nights when I’d lie awake after nursing Ellie in the darkness, and I remember how peaceful it’s always made me feel. How peaceful and safe and secure. There’s an echo of that serenity now too, shadowed only by the knowledge that tonight he’s wept – and drunk – himself to sleep, rather than slipped into that unconscious realm at peace with himself and the world.

As Max continues to snuffle softly in response to whatever netherworld of his own he’s currently inhabiting, the white mist begins to gather and I know that I’ll imminently be back in my own private existence too.

I savour one last glimpse of my slumbering husband, that familiar surge of love sweeping through me as it always has, as it always will while I watch him sleep, before he’s gone from me altogether.

Chapter 8

‘Oh, come on, mate – there have to be some single women here, surely?’

Max’s brother, Connor, surveys the scene in front of him: adults politely jostling for position on inconveniently low mahogany benches, colourful plastic equipment of various shapes and sizes being assembled in the field beyond, children in uniform white T-shirts and navy blue shorts chattering impatiently amongst the preamble. It’s an event that’s almost certainly being replicated all over the country this week.

And sitting on one of those benches is Max, looking incredulously at his brother and laughing.

‘Is that why you came? Did you seriously expect there to be a pool of school mums you could hit on? Honestly, you’re incorrigible. Sorry to disabuse you of your sordid little fantasy but we’re here to watch Ellie, not to provide you with the opportunity to meet women. As if you needed that anyway.’

‘You underestimate me, little bro. I can do both at the same time. It’s called multitasking. You might like to try it some time.’

‘Yeah, well, I think I’ll leave that particular brand of multitasking to you, thanks very much.’

I sometimes have to remind myself that Max and Connor did actually emerge from the same gene pool, albeit three
years apart. I imagine that’s one of the revelations that come with having more than one child; that a shared genetic inheritance can nonetheless produce two such distinctive characters. It’s remarkable that, in spite of those differences, Max and Connor still get on so well. I’ve often thought how lucky they are, not just in the fact of one another’s existence, but in genuinely liking one another as much as they do too.

If you didn’t know Connor as well as I do, I’m sure it would be easy to caricature him as a walking cliché: a hedge fund manager with an incomprehensible salary, an annual bonus that I’ve no doubt would extinguish half the mortgages on our street, a Farringdon bachelor pad equipped with every gadget imaginable and a string of unfeasibly beautiful – if not particularly long-lasting – girlfriends. On paper, at least, he reads like someone most of us would try to avoid in a City bar on a Friday night. But they’re just the headlines and that’s far from the whole story. He conceals it well, behind the bravura and the status and the steering wheel of his Aston Martin, but there’s an endearingly soft centre to Connor’s self-aggrandizing exterior. I’d known him for years before I saw it for myself. It was seeing him with Ellie, in fact, that helped Connor’s hidden depths first surface for me.

I remember a friend telling me, after she’d already given birth to her first child but before I’d even conceived of – let alone conceived – Ellie, that when you have children the prism through which you view your friends shifts focus from how you feel about them to how they feel about your child. I’d thought at the time it sounded self-absorbed and slightly crazy and I remember vowing that
I wouldn’t become the kind of parent who expected my child to be at the centre of everyone else’s lives. But when Ellie arrived I realized it’s a feeling that surpasses rational thought, that it mines the most primitive of instincts, beyond your control – that feeling of being drawn to people who are interested in, engaged with, invested in your child. It’s primordial, I’m sure, that urge to surround your progeny with people who’ll help them navigate their journey successfully through life.

That’s when Connor became more than a peripheral, two-dimensional character for me; when Ellie was born he embraced his new-found avuncular role with such joy, such enthusiasm, such unexpected commitment that it gave birth to a new relationship between us too. I can’t think of a single time he’s ever let Ellie down. And that’s why, I’m sure, Max has invited him to her school Sports Day today.

I spy my little girl bounding across the field towards her daddy and her uncle, where she throws herself on to Connor’s lap and into his arms.

‘Hello, princess. You’re looking particularly fetching today, if I might say so. Like a perfectly edible piece of pink candy floss. Much prettier than all those others in their drab uniforms.’

Ellie frowns, first at Connor, then at Max and then back at Connor.

‘I’m supposed to be wearing my PE kit but Daddy forgot to wash it and I couldn’t wear it ’cos it had blackcurrant all down the front.’

‘Guilty as charged, m’lord. I’m so sorry, angel. I did explain to Miss Collins, didn’t I, and she was fine about it?’

‘But I really wanted to wear it today. Miss Collins says that wearing your PE kit shows that you’re part of the team.’