The Dead Wife's Handbook (38 page)

She’s right, I am. I didn’t realize until after Ellie was born that choosing the person with whom you’ll have children is probably the most important decision you’ll ever make in life. And it wasn’t until I died that I realized the full extent of my gratitude towards the person with whom I’d been lucky enough to make that choice.

‘I hope she would. All I’m doing really is carrying on the work she started, that she and I started together. I’ve no doubt that the reason Ellie’s so amazing and resilient is because of everything that Rachel gave her in those first six years, all the love and patience and affection and encouragement. Ellie’s the person she is because of
Rachel, there’s no doubt at all in my mind about that. So I guess Rachel and I are proud of each other.’

There’s a calmness wrapped up in the warmth of Max’s voice that I don’t think I’ve heard before.

‘Well, I’m certainly proud of both of you. And I know I’ve got to let you move on, at a pace that feels right for you. It’s just different for me, I suppose. I’m not sure there’s much for me to move on to.’

‘Don’t be silly. You’ve got Ellie and me and I think you’ve got more friends than the two of us put together. I’m often exhausted just hearing about your social life.’

‘I keep busy because I have to, Max. Because if I didn’t I’d think about Rachel even more than I do now. I know it’s terrible for you, losing your wife at such a young age. I know how I felt when Robert died. But losing a child is something else entirely. It’s the cruellest abomination of nature. When you think about all that love you put into raising them, all that time you invest in their happiness, all the hopes you have for their future, you never imagine for a second that they might not have the chance to fulfil everything you dreamed for them. When Robert died I was distraught, of course I was. But when Rachel was taken from me I felt as though the natural order of things had been turned upside down. As though the world had gone mad. The one thing you expect when you have a child is that they’ll outlive you. That’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? So I don’t expect there’ll ever be a time for me when anything feels quite right again.’

Mum’s voice is quiet and measured, as though resigned to the iniquitous hand fate has dealt her. And it’s somehow
all the more upsetting for her sober acknowledgement of it.

Max puts an arm around her shoulders and, as I watch my husband comfort my mum, I can’t hold back the miniature wells of loneliness forming in the corners of my eyes. My tears drop sedately on to the gathering clouds below and I know that my access, for today, is at the beginning of its end.

Seconds later, back in the empty void I now think of as home, my mind begins wandering to places it probably shouldn’t visit, to thoughts of the new trinity – of Max, Ellie and Eve – and the possible life they’ll have together, without me. All this time I’ve been so preoccupied with my guilt about abandoning them that I haven’t prepared myself – not really, not deep down – for what it would feel like the day they began abandoning me. And now that they are I really don’t know what to feel about it. Because how does one possibly square the circle of desire that your husband and daughter should be loved with the sadness and regret that you’re not the person able to provide it?

Chapter 28

White gradually gives way to blue before the sun emerges too, revealing the clearest and brightest of days. There’s a wide gravel pathway flanked on either side by sculpted gardens dotted with immaculately pruned miniature conifers. Ahead is a majestic, red-brick palace, sunlight bathing the walls in tangible warmth giving it the aura of a building contentedly on fire. The leaves on the trees in the near distance are burnt orange, golden, defiantly crimson; it’s the perfect autumnal day.

If autumn, it must be over four months since I was last here. I’ve missed the whole summer. Four months of Ellie’s life that have elapsed without me. A third of a year is a lifetime in an eight-year-old’s development. Who knows how much she might have changed in my absence, how much taller, broader, happier or sadder she might be?

Four months of Max’s relationship developing without my knowledge, too. Now I’m here I’m not sure I dare contemplate the possible evolution of his love affair, even though I’ve speculated about little else in my time apart.

I’ve been to this place before. Last time Ellie was in a buggy, wearing a red-and-pink polka dot dress and a white cotton sun hat that I was forever putting back on her head after she’d yanked it off with irritation. The sun that day was higher, hotter, less forgiving. Max had pushed the buggy, his well-defined cyclist’s calves emerging from khaki
shorts, his eyes protected from the glare by comically oversized sunglasses he insisted were fashionable. I remember sweat trickling down my back and my fear that the loose cotton sundress I was wearing would fail to conceal the evidence. We spent most of that visit taking refuge in the coolness of the house, regretting having left the shaded sanctuary of our garden on such an unrelenting day.

Today it’s a much more grown-up Ellie who’s walking towards the visitor entrance of Hampton Court Palace, hand in hand with her daddy, her clothes today very much her own choice, I’m sure – dark blue skinny jeans, green Converse shoes and a pistachio-coloured mac complete with butterfly-shaped toggles. She hasn’t, I’m relieved to see, altered all that much; her hair’s been cut since I last saw her but it’s still long and beautiful, still bouncing happily below her shoulders. She’s carrying a small purple handbag, the strap swung over her shoulder in imitation of the grown woman she’ll one day become, the only indication that she’s got just that little bit older, just that little bit more mature, in my absence.

There’s no sign of Eve today and I’m grateful; grateful I can spend some time with Max and Ellie on their own. Grateful they’re spending time alone together too.

Tickets procured, they begin their self-guided tour of the house, Max in his element, passing historical knowledge to Ellie as if it were as critical for her personal development as the DNA he bequeathed her nine years ago.

They’re wandering through the first room, Max regaling Ellie with the soap opera of the Tudor dynasty, when he suddenly interrupts his own train of speech.

‘Sweetheart, you like Eve, don’t you? You and she get on really well, don’t you think?’

My ears tune in immediately to what sounds like the beginnings of a conversation I don’t want to miss.

‘Yeah, she’s fun. And I really like it when she helps me with my homework. Especially Maths. I hate Maths.’

Max squeezes Ellie playfully on the shoulder and she pretends to wriggle free of his grasp.

‘I think you made that perfectly clear last weekend when you announced you couldn’t see the point of it when you could do sums much more easily on the computer.’

Ellie giggles.

‘But it’s true.’

Max issues Ellie with one of his mock-disapproving frowns.

‘Outside of Maths, though, you like the three of us spending time together, don’t you? We’ve had a lovely summer, haven’t we?’

‘I love the summer holidays. I wish school hadn’t started again so soon. When can we go camping again?’

They went camping? I just can’t picture Eve in a sleeping bag, somehow.

‘We could go at half term, if you like, if the weather’s not too bad. It wasn’t much fun that night it rained, was it?’

They both start laughing in recollection of a memory I’m unable to share.

‘Eve was so silly when the tent started leaking and she thought there was an animal in her hair. That was funny.’

I try to imagine the three of them hunkering down in a tent together, a true test of familial authenticity, but something stops the picture forming in my mind.

‘It’s really nice that Eve enjoys so many of the things we like, isn’t it? Like our Sunday country walks. And our cooking contests. And our Saturday morning swimming.’

‘Dad, it was awesome when Eve was trying to teach you how to dive and you kept landing on your belly. I wish we could have filmed it and put it on YouTube ’cos I bet loads of people would have watched it.’

Dad. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard Ellie call Max that. It seems that my little girl may have grown up more in my months of absence than I first realized.

Ellie stretches out her arms, mimicking what I’m guessing were Max’s attempts at diving. There appears to be a whole world of new experiences the three of them are undertaking together. A whole new family life in the making.

‘And you like her sleeping over now as well, don’t you?’

Max is continuing to walk as they talk, feigning distracted interest in the Renaissance paintings on the wall, but his mask of composure is an insufficient disguise. He seems nervous. I just don’t understand what about.

‘I like it when she stays over on Saturdays. The other nights are fine too. But it’s best on Saturdays because you two are rubbish at guessing who’s going to go through on
X Factor
and I always beat you.’

Max attempts a smile but fails to conceal his palpable anxiety.

‘You see, I was wondering how you might feel if, perhaps, rather than just staying at our house at the weekends, maybe Eve stayed with us all the time? If she lived with us?’

Eve move in? So soon? They’ve barely been dating a year.

Eve meeting Ellie, Eve attending family events, Eve sleeping over occasionally – each of those milestones felt like they could, if necessary, be reversed. But Eve moving in, with all her possessions, redirecting her post to my house, sharing in the payment of bills, taking over my half of the wardrobe. I’m just not sure I’m ready for that. Not now. Not yet.

‘What, you mean, like, lived with us all the time?’

‘Yes, angel, that’s exactly what I mean. How do you think you might feel if that were to happen?’

Ellie’s face is quizzical, as if assessing the various responses available and attempting to distinguish her real feelings from those which she knows would make Max happy.

‘But what about her house in Stoke Newington? Doesn’t she want to live there any more?’

They wander into the Great Hall, the vastness of the space an appropriate backdrop for the scale of their conversation.

‘It’s not that she doesn’t want to live in her house, sweetheart. It’s just that she likes being with us – with me and you – so much that she’d like to be with us all the time. And I’d like that too. I think we’d have a lot of fun, the three of us together. But the most important thing for me is how you feel about it, because if you don’t like the idea, then we won’t even consider it. I promise.’

When he puts it like that it sounds so fair, so reasonable, so considerate. And yet I can’t seem to stop my whole body from shaking.

Ellie isn’t saying anything. I’m worried this is too much for her to process, too big a decision for her to take part
in, too soon for such a disruption to her last remaining haven of security and stability.

‘But I don’t want to share you with someone else. Not all the time. I like it just being me and you.’

Her voice is mumbled, her tone tentative, the intonation of someone who needs to be heard but is fearful of the consequences. I want to scoop her up in my arms and tell her not to worry, to reassure her that Max is never going to do anything to make her unhappy.

‘Sweetheart, I love all the time we spend together too. And nobody will ever get in the way of that, I promise. If I thought Eve moving in would mean you and I would be together less I wouldn’t want that either. It would just mean that Eve would be around for more of the time that we do spend together.’

Max looks expectantly at Ellie. I don’t blame him for having this conversation with her if that’s what he and Eve are planning. I just wish they weren’t planning it so soon and that Ellie wasn’t faced with such a difficult dilemma; to please her daddy and go against her own wishes, or to please herself and risk paternal disappointment. How does any eight-year-old square that invidious circle?

It’s the inevitable burden of the single-parent child, I know, the precocious responsibility for adult dilemmas. Parenting your parents: it happens to us all in the end, but so much sooner – much too soon – for the likes of Ellie and me. I never wanted Ellie to have to be like me in that regard. I never wanted her to have to know how it feels, worrying about your parents and sharing in their problems at an age when you should be innocent of everything outside your own pleasurable exploration of the world.

Perhaps Eve’s presence in their lives might provide precisely the mitigation they need to avoid a repetition of history. Perhaps the decision Ellie faces now is the price she has to pay for a normal adolescence. Perhaps all of us need Eve more than we’d care to admit. More than I’d care to admit.

‘I don’t think Mummy would like it. It’s her house, not Eve’s.’

Ellie looks up at Max, a frown of contemplation furrowing her brow. I wish I could thank her for her thoughtfulness, for keeping me in mind, for considering my feelings even after such a long absence. I wish I could reverse time, could give Ellie back the family she so deserves, the family that doesn’t expect her involvement in decisions that should be light years beyond the reach of any eight-year-old.

‘Do you know what I think, munchkin? I think Mummy would just want us to be happy, whatever that involved.’

Would that it were that easy. Sometimes I think I’d give anything to be able to wish them happiness without a shoal of conflicting emotions clouding the waters. But that seems so elusive when I’m still in mourning for the life I’ve lost.

‘But if Eve moved in, it wouldn’t feel like Mummy’s house any more. It would feel like Eve’s. And what would we do with all of Mummy’s things?’

‘Our house will always be Mummy’s house, sweetheart, because it’s home to so many memories of her, so many memories the three of us share. If Eve moved in, it would be like us starting a new chapter in a book, but that
wouldn’t mean we’d forget the chapters that had gone before, would it?’

Ellie pauses for thought while they wander, hand in hand, out of the Great Hall.

‘Why are you so sure that Mummy wouldn’t mind?’