The Dead Wife's Handbook (42 page)

Harriet smiles self-deprecatingly and I can’t imagine how she must be feeling because I can’t really imagine the Harriet I know wanting children in the first place. Her tone right now is stoical, matter-of-fact, but that’s just her barriers of self-protection at work. That much I do know.

‘I know that feeling all too well. It’s unnerving how quickly it can become an obsession. I remember when I began actively wishing that I could have children – probably about five years ago now – and suddenly it seemed like every woman I passed on the street was pushing a pram. And then four of my colleagues went on maternity leave at the same time and three of my old university friends got pregnant within six months of one another. It starts sending you slightly crazy, doesn’t it?’

I think about all those months Max and I were trying to give Ellie a sibling and how all-consuming and emotional and obsessive it was. And I was already fortunate enough to have one child.

‘Yes, but I never thought I’d become one of those women. I’m not sure it suits me, although there doesn’t seem to be a lot I can do to stop myself. It’s just a bit of a nasty surprise to discover at the age of thirty-eight that I’ve inadvertently made decisions about the rest of my life that I never – not consciously, anyway – intended to make. I guess I was seduced by the fantasy that women really could have it all, without appreciating that there’s a pretty harsh sell-by date attached to that particular offer. I’m sure everyone thinks they’ve got all the time in the world. But we haven’t, have we?’

She’s right, we haven’t. I thought I was the only one who felt it so keenly, but I can see that it’s as true for the living as it is for the dead. I don’t suspect anyone ever feels like they’ve had enough time. I’m sure most of us postpone decisions every day, whether the casual or the critical, as if there’ll always be a tomorrow.

‘Well, it sounds like this other clinic might be promising. When do you think you might start the ball rolling there?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ve only just started email contact with them so I don’t know yet whether they think they’ll be able to help.’

‘Look, I know you’ve probably thought of every option, but if this clinic doesn’t work out have you considered adoption or even fostering? I’m sure agencies would be crying out for someone like you.’

‘Yep, I’ve considered those – for about a nanosecond – and dismissed them already. I’m far too narcissistic to want to look after someone else’s baby. If it hasn’t got my genes, I don’t think I could muster the inclination to devote my energy to it. Funnily enough, I did wonder whether adoption’s something you and Max had thought about though?’

Adoption? It’s not something that’s even crossed my mind. But now that it has I feel instinctively unnerved by the prospect.

‘We did talk about it once but we don’t think it’s for us. Not least because of how unsettling it could be for Ellie. Like I said earlier, Ellie’s wonderful and she should be blessing enough for any family.’

She is. It’s true. It makes me wonder now why Max and I ever got so preoccupied with having another child.

‘Well, if science can’t sort me out I’ll just have to accept that it wasn’t meant to be. I’m still not a hundred per cent convinced it would be the right move, anyway. There’s a part of me that’s unsure whether I want to give up my life in its current incarnation, whether having a child I’d only ever really see at weekends, a child who would know the nanny
better than they knew me, would be right for either of us. So if it doesn’t work out for whatever reason, I’ll just have to be content with godmothering Ellie and hope that I’m nice enough to her over the next forty-odd years that she deigns to come and visit me in the nursing home once in a while.’

Harriet laughs but there’s a sadness behind her smile.

‘Ellie adores you, you know that. She’s the most devoted goddaughter I’ve ever known.’

‘I’m lucky, I know. I’ll always have Max and Rach to thank for that. But the thing is, and I’m sure I’ll regret admitting this the second I walk out of the door and I probably wouldn’t be confessing it at all if I wasn’t still a bit drunk, I felt envious of you tonight. Because of all the kids in the world, Ellie’s the one I’d most like to be a surrogate mum to. But now that you’re moving in, I’ll no doubt be displaced one rung further down the pecking order of her affections.’

So that’s why Harriet was quiet. I knew something was wrong with her. I’d just never have guessed in a million years exactly what.

‘Harriet, with Rachel gone, I don’t think there can ever be too many women trying to fill the maternal role for Ellie, do you? It’s certainly not a job any one woman can hope to accomplish alone, that much I’m well aware of.’

‘Well, you’re clearly doing a great job with her so far. Seriously. However jealous I am to acknowledge it, I can’t deny that she’s mad for you.’

My old best friend and my husband’s new girlfriend exchange tentatively sympathetic smiles.

‘Thanks for confiding in me, Harriet. I’m sure it can’t have been easy.’

‘Well, it seemed like the right thing to do after you confided in all of us earlier. That was one of the things Rach taught me, about relationships being built on mutual honesty and self-disclosure. It’s not something I’ve ever been particularly good at, but Rach was one of the few people patient enough to wait for me to reveal my hand. Most people never get past what my mum kindly describes as my brittle exterior. But I think if you and I are going to be in Ellie’s life for the foreseeable future, then I’d rather us be friends if we can.’

‘I’d really like that too.’

The lightest breeze of envy blows my way but following swiftly behind is a much warmer air, an unexpected flurry of reassurance at the prospect of a burgeoning friendship between Harriet and Eve. I don’t think I’d realized until now quite how guilty I feel about leaving my best friend. Perhaps there simply wasn’t room in my remorse-ridden war chest for any more regret, no space to accommodate yet another person I’d inadvertently abandoned. It’s only now, hearing her confide in Eve, that I realize how much Harriet lost when our friendship died with me.

It’s only now, too, that I realize quite how much I miss Harriet as well; I miss being able to tell her anything, miss knowing that her pragmatism and common sense are always at the end of a telephone. I miss her being the person I turn to when I want sensible advice, when I know the practical solution to a dilemma and just need someone to drive it home. It’s the kind of counsel I’ve often been in dire need of here.

I think about my relationship with Harriet, about the decisive moment we went from being casual acquaint
ances to lifelong friends. I can recall that twenty-year-old conversation as if it were yesterday, the two of us sitting wrapped up in gloves and scarves on a cold autumnal day in our first term, huddled together on a bench outside the university refectory, smoking cigarettes when it was still cool to smoke and drinking coffee that neither of us had yet developed a taste for. I remember telling her about the day my dad was killed, about how it was the first time I’d ever felt murderous feelings towards another human being, towards the drunk who’d carelessly knocked Dad down and how, ever since, I’d felt the heaviest burden of responsibility for my mum, a responsibility I couldn’t imagine ever being lifted from my shoulders. I remember Harriet’s reticence and my sense that she had something she wanted to say but that she couldn’t find the words or perhaps the courage to say it, and me cajoling her into telling me what was on her mind, but discovering that the more I pressed her the further she retreated.

And I remember delivering that self-disclosure speech, a monologue full of the self-assured certainty that accompanies late adolescence, about how friendships evolve from the risk of shared confidences, how the failure to do so could only lead to estrangement, how the exposure of my own vulnerable hand should have made it easier for her to reciprocate, all the time fearing that, at the end of it, she’d tell me I was being stupid or, worse still, pretentious. But instead she’d looked me straight in the eye, as if weighing up the likelihood of betrayal, and then looked down at the floor again and begun reciting her story as if entrusting it to the empty air rather than to me.

That was the time she first told me about the day her mum collected her from school with a tear-stained face and unkempt hair, and how Harriet knew immediately that something really bad had happened, something she didn’t want to ask about for fear of being told the truth. She described arriving home with her mum and her brother to the news that their dad had gone away and that he wasn’t going to be living with them any more. She talked of how she’d known, even at that age, that such a disappearance wasn’t normal, and of her certainty that one day she’d be told the rest of the story to which this was only the prologue. She said it was over a year before her mum revealed the truth; how one day over dinner, without any warning, her mum had announced to her and her brother that their father had moved to France to live with a woman he planned to marry and that she didn’t expect he’d ever come back, didn’t even know exactly where he was living. She’d told them they needed more money, that she was going to have to take an extra job in the evenings in a local pub, that Harriet would need to look after her brother to avoid the services of a babysitter they couldn’t afford.

Harriet said she remembered all too clearly the determination not to let her mum down, on those nights when she tucked herself under the duvet wanting nothing more than for her mum to be there to put her to bed, or those evenings she had bad dreams and awoke to the realization that there was no one to comfort her. She understood exactly, she said, those feelings of filial responsibility, feelings that don’t leave you even long after you’ve left home yourself.

That was the conversation, we both admitted later, when we knew we’d be friends for life.

It’s a conversation I never imagined Harriet would still be referencing nearly two decades later.

I’d thought the only reverberation I’d conferred upon the world was Ellie, but now I see I’ve left fragments of myself in the most unexpected places, with people who are only now beginning to reveal the cast of imprints I hadn’t previously detected. I’d assumed I’d brought all of myself here with me, but now I’m discovering that there are multiple traces I’ve left behind.

I can see that my friends and family are in the process of forming fresh allegiances, putting both old loyalties and new relationships to the test. It’s a test that involves accepting I’ve gone, that their lives go on without me, that they’ll need to find new people to love and to laugh with and with whom to share life’s adventures. My test is, in many ways, both greater and lonelier: to acknowledge my own absence, to resign myself to the bittersweet recognition that the people I love most can be happy without me, and for that acknowledgement not to destroy the significance of the life that I shared with them.

With Harriet and Eve finishing the tidying up below, I will myself away with an ease I haven’t experienced before. Not for the first time, but new enough to be surprising still, I find myself appreciating the solace that my isolation affords me, and the space it allows to reflect on all that’s taken place tonight.

It occurs to me that the greatest test of unconditional love may be allowing the people we care most about to love and be loved by others. The only question remaining, for me at least, is whether I have the capacity to pass that test.

ACCEPTANCE

Chapter 31

The void around me opens up to reveal that my former hallway is stacked with bulging black plastic bags. They’re piled on top of one another, like mistreated prisoners in need of escape. One bag hasn’t been tied properly, leaving its contents visible to anyone squeezing – or hovering – by. I peer into it and there, lying forlornly on top, is my favourite brown cardigan, the one I practically lived in on winter weekends when we were too cold, or just too cosy, to leave the house. Underneath I spy the belt of my red 1950s-style dress, the one with the scoop neck and the pencil skirt that Max always said was his favourite, the one he proclaimed he’d be happy to see me wear every day, forever more. The dress he once told me he’d have been happy to marry me in had I not opted for a traditional, unjustifiably expensive ivory number.

Now it seems he can live without both me and the dress.

I wonder if there could be any clearer indication that the people you’ve left behind are ready to embrace a life without you than the sight of your worldly possessions stuffed into the inanimate objects’ equivalent of a coffin? Seeing these two dozen or so bin liners piled up, inertly awaiting their fate, it’s as though another little part of me is preparing to depart the earth for good.

I hear the murmur of voices upstairs. With the all-too-familiar fear of what I might find when I go to investigate, I make my way to the first floor.

‘Dad, can I keep this?’

Ellie calls out her question to Max, whose feet I can see protruding from the loft, balanced precariously on the rickety ladder we were always meaning to replace. Moving across the landing I see that Ellie is sitting on my bed – or what used to be my bed – with Eve. They’re surrounded by clothes, shoes, handbags, jewellery, make-up: the remains of a life no longer in use.