Imogen’s husband is a bad man. His ex-wife and his new mistress might have different perspectives but Imogen thinks she knows the truth. And now he’s given her an ultimatum: get out of the family home in the next fortnight or I’ll fight you for custody of our son.
In a moment of madness, Imogen does something unthinkable: she locks her husband in the cellar. Now she’s in control. But how far will she go to protect her son and punish her husband? And what will happen when his ex and his girlfriend get tangled up in her plans?
Sticks and Stones is a deliciously twisting psychological thriller from an exciting new voice.
Jo Jakeman was the winner of the Friday Night Live 2016 competition at the York Festival of Writing. Born in Cyprus, she worked for many years in the City of London before moving to Derbyshire with her husband and twin boys. Sticks and Stones is her debut thriller.
Find out more at www.jojakeman.com.
For James
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words will never hurt me.
Traditional
The day of Phillip’s funeral
I expected to feel free, unburdened, but when the curtains close around Phillip Rochester’s satin-lined coffin, all I feel is indigestion.
Naomi perches on the front row, shifting uncomfortably as the congregation whispers at her back. There are creases under her eyes where cried-out mascara threads its way through the cracked veneer. I wonder what she’s crying for because, after all he’s done, I am certain that it is not for him.
The vicar talked of a man who bore so little resemblance to the Phillip I knew, that I almost shed a tear. It is a time for lies and cover-ups, not truthful observations.
I twist my wedding band with my left thumb. No engagement ring. ‘Too flashy, Immie. You’re not that kind of girl.’ Five hundred and forty-eight days have passed since Phillip left me. I know I should take the ring off, but no amount of soap can free me from the snare. Years of marital misuse have thickened my hands, my waist and my heart.
I am sitting five rows back, in the seat closest to the wall, as befits the ex-wife. Though, in reality, am I his widow? We didn’t finalise the divorce. The paperwork is still on the sideboard along with the unpaid bills and the condolence cards. Fancy that. Me. A widow.
Some might say I shouldn’t be here at all. Friends from my old life try not to stare at me but they can’t help themselves. When our eyes bump into each other there is a timid acknowledgement, an apology of sorts, before a gosh-look-at-the time glance at wrists and a scurrying for the chapel door. Nobody called when Phillip traded me in. They went with him into his new life along with the Bruce Springsteen CDs and the coffee machine.
Mother sits by my side alternately tutting and sighing, unsure whether to be angry or sad. She promised not to speak during the service and, though the effort is nearly crippling her, she has kept her word. Her eyes burn holes into my temples. I know that her nostrils will be flaring like they always do when she is displeased. Mother tends to convey more through her eyes than her mouth, and I regret not telling her to keep those shut too.
We disagreed on whether Alistair should attend his father’s funeral. She says that, at six years old, he is too young. I say that he should be here to say goodbye, to keep up the pretence that Phillip will be missed. Mother won. Some battles aren’t worth fighting. We wrote notes attached to helium balloons instead. Up, up and away. Bye-bye, Daddy. Rot in hell, Phillip.
There are simple flowers at the front of the crematorium and Pachelbel’s Canon is piped in from an invisible source. Everything has been carefully orchestrated to whitewash the darkness of death and disinfect the walls against the smell of decay. A palate-cleanser, if you like, between death and the wake. Naomi has booked the function room at the Old Bell, but I won’t go in case the sherry loosens my lips and I smile a smile that shouldn’t be seen at a funeral.
As the mournful parade passes us by, we file out of our rows with the order of service in hand. Phillip’s photograph on the front is a grotesque grinning spectre. It was taken before he was promoted to CID. A decade ago at least. I used to think he looked so handsome in that uniform.
Mother stands in line to pay her respects to Naomi. It will be a brief conversation as high opinion is in short supply. My best friend, Rachel, is talking to DC Chris Miller with a red shawl fastened about her shoulders. She refused to wear black. As she rightly pointed out, black is a sign of respect. Both she and Chris held Phillip in the same regard. I’d hoped it would be Chris leading the inquest into Phillip’s death, but they’ve brought in someone from further afield. Neutral.
I’m aware of Ruby behind me, though I am careful not to make eye contact with her. She is wearing a diaphanous frock of fresh-bruise purple, the most sombre outfit she owns. It’s the first time I’ve seen her wearing shoes. Usually barefoot, sometimes in flimsy flip-flops, it’s anyone’s guess whether this is a nod to conformity or she has simply come equipped to dance on Phillip’s grave. She sits in the back row, as far away from the coffin as she can get, and commensurate with her ex-ex-wife status. The first Mrs Rochester, the woman that Naomi and I have been measured against, holds an icy-white tissue under her nose, a pomander against the contagion of grief.
I stand and edge my way past the eye-dabbers and the head-shakers until I feel the sun on my face and smell the freshly mown grass. I squint against the sudden glare and a treacherous tear escapes my eye.
A stranger touches his cold hand to my elbow in a shared moment of I-know-how-it-feels, but how could he? There are only three of us here – Naomi, Ruby and I – who realise how satisfying it feels to know that Phillip Rochester got the death he deserved.
22 days before the funeral
The Barn was one of those new-old houses. Only one storey, but never to be referred to as a bungalow. Large sand-coloured bricks and small dark windows with their frames painted National Trust green show that history has been given the once-over with a bleach wipe. Everything is reclaimed, sourced with the utmost integrity from salvage yards and auction houses. Old made to look new, and new made to look old.
I’d never set foot inside The Barn. It was laughable that barns were des res rather than shacks for animals. Farmers made a fortune selling dilapidated sheds with planning permission, and I could think of no better habitat for Phillip and his heifer.
I rang the doorbell and waited as the echo of the bell chime ran off down the hallway. I adjusted my armour: handbag across my chest, leather gloves pulled tightly over my wrists, and my scarf wound about my neck like ribbons on a maypole.
It wasn’t easy for me to see Phillip in his new life, in his new house, with his new girlfriend, but this wasn’t about me. This was about Alistair.
We had agreed to be grown-up about the whole situation. Civil. For the sake of our son. But there was still the small matter of finalising the divorce, and it wasn’t bringing out the best in either of us.
On paper, we would split everything amicably down the middle.
For better, for worse.
For richer, for poorer.
In sickness and in health.
Left to Phillip, I would be awarded worse, poorer and sickness while he got the rest. My solicitor said no one won by going through the courts. I told her, where Phillip was concerned, I couldn’t win anyway.
Alistair hadn’t suffered when his father left us. In fact he might have felt life was considerably better. I know I did. Alternate weekends were conducted through clenched teeth and false smiles. Lately, however, Phillip wanted more than I was willing to give. More family time with Alistair and a woman who wasn’t family; more sleepovers where sleep was never had. The more he wanted to take, the less I wanted to give.
With calls going unanswered and solicitor’s letters ignored, I’d agreed to have ‘a word’ with Phillip but, standing in front of The Barn as day tipped into night, I still hadn’t made up my mind which word it would be.
I stretched out a gloved finger to press the bell again, when I heard a door open. Footsteps getting louder.
The girlfriend answered the door wearing next-to-nothing. She was attempting to pass off a sash of denim across her hips as a skirt, and I wondered how high their heating bills must be. She folded her thin arms under her chest and leaned against the doorframe with a faint smirk tickling the corners of her mouth.
Her long red hair was out of a bottle, but I suppose it suited her pale skin and brown eyes. I was transfixed by her eyelashes: so thick and long. Real? False? Questions that could just as easily have been about the woman. And the breasts.
‘Imogen. What a nice surprise,’ she said.
She should’ve given her face fair warning before she spoke, because it betrayed her in her lie.
‘Hello, Naomi. Is he in?’ I asked.
‘Not back yet.’
‘Can I come in and wait?’
‘Does he know you’re comin’?’
We looked at each other expectantly: her expecting me to go away, and me expecting her to find some manners, though my manners stopped me from saying so.
‘Come on in then, but you’ll have to tek off yer shoes.’ She spoke with an unfamiliar, difficult-to-place twang that suggested north of Derbyshire and sheep farming. Perhaps that’s why she felt at home in The Barn.
Out of politeness, I told her she had a lovely home, and I wasn’t even lying. The house smelled white: of vanilla, and lilies, and bed sheets drying in the sun. Everything was cream or soft grey, giving the impression of moving through low-lying cloud. Beware of turbulence, I thought. Her head snapped to look at me and I wondered whether I’d spoken out loud and out of turn.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, ‘just beautiful.’
She waited while I unzipped my boots. I saw her take in my odd socks and she seemed to grow two inches taller at the sight. I bristled, feeling shabby and unkempt beside her painted nails and stencilled eyebrows.
‘Renovations have been a chuffing nightmare. The beams,’ she pointed above our heads to the exposed rafters, ‘are the original beams of the local abbey. They reckon they used them to build the farm after the abbey burned down. There’s a conservation order on ’em. We had to get special permission to open all this up and, even then, we had to be dead careful what we did.’
She’d adopted an air of false irritation, which belied her pride in her home.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘Fancy all that fuss for second-hand wood.’
I took off my gloves and scarf, folding and pushing them into my Mary Poppins bag to get lost amongst the used tissues, old receipts and Pokémon cards.
Even without her being a weekend stepmum to my son, and only half my age, and weight, I still wouldn’t have liked Naomi. People who didn’t know what Phillip was like assumed I was jealous. If I complained about him, they thought I was bitter at being thrown over for a younger woman; and if the tables were turned, I might have thought the same. I didn’t know Naomi, nor did I care to spend the time getting to know her. She’d be gone before long. From where I stood, she was shallow and self-obsessed. She was far too pretty to be a nice person, because the universe just didn’t work that way.
Naomi made Phillip look good. She was the lover, the co-conspirator, the neon sign that proclaimed his dick still worked. To the outside world, Phillip had found love again after the breakdown of our marriage. Or slightly before, if you read his text messages when he left the room. I was a single mother gripping onto the final years of her thirties. Left behind. A solitary battered suitcase, doing another lap on the airport carousel.
‘Coffee or tea?’ she asked.
‘Is it filter coffee?’
‘Instant.’
‘I’ll have tea, thanks.’
She held my gaze and blinked rapidly, eyelids tapping out Morse code for cow, then disappeared into the kitchen. I simply couldn’t help myself. I found it impossible to make life easy for her.
The only drink I wanted was clear and served over ice, but how else would we survive awkward situations if we didn’t make tea to fill our time, hold tea to busy our hands and drink tea to stop our mouths from running away?
I looked around the sparsely decorated room, my hands playing with the strap on my handbag. Phillip hated clutter. He was too embarrassed to bring people to our home because I could never elevate it to his standards. I wondered whether he had made me fearful of mess or whether I’d always had the tendency. Of course he was Phil nowadays. A reinvention. I wondered who he was trying to convince.
On the beech table beneath the window were thirteen mismatched photo frames. Thirteen. I tensed. Good God, why were there thirteen? I picked up the picture of Phillip wearing a snorkelling mask and slid it into my bag between the folds of my scarf. Twelve. Far better. A curved, round and gentle number. My shoulders loosened and the flow of anxiety in my chest reduced to a mere trickle.
I smiled to myself, pleased that I had diffused a potentially difficult situation. The therapist had taught me some breathing exercises, but sometimes it was easier to remove the problem entirely. The last thing I needed was to have a panic attack in front of The Girlfriend.
I looked at the remaining, even-numbered photos. Phillip and Naomi on a beach, at a wedding, kissing dolphins. Naomi as Catwoman and Phillip as a plump Batman. It had been his standard party outfit through the years. His crime-fighting persona had always been important to him. Phillip had what I liked to call a hero-complex. He failed the tests to become a firefighter, and his poor attendance at school – and even poorer grades – barred him from the RAF and, though the uniform wasn’t as seductive, the police force was good enough.
His job had even brought the lovely Naomi to his door. He’d told me about the woman who laughed uncontrollably when he caught her speeding. He’d implied that she was a dotty old dear who shouldn’t be driving, rather than an attractive adolescent who shouldn’t be making sheep’s eyes at another woman’s husband.
Traffic violations usually went one of two ways. Either the drivers came up with excuses: lateness; not seeing the signs; wife in labour; dying parent. Or they accused him of being a jobsworth; of conning innocent people out of their hard-earned money; asking why he wasn’t out arresting real criminals.
But the woman at the wheel simply threw her head back and laughed.
‘Do you know why I stopped you?’ Phillip asked.
‘Because I’m an idiot?’
‘This is a thirty-mile-an-hour zone.’
‘I weren’t doing thirty,’ she said.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘There’s no point denying it, is there? That’s the end of me licence too. I’ve been collecting points like there’s no tomorrow. If I don’t laugh, I’d cry.’ I didn’t find out until much later that he’d let her off the hook by suggesting he might have accidentally captured the speed of the car travelling behind her. Of course she couldn’t wait to thank him, and there’s only one thing that Phillip finds as satisfying as getting the bad guy, and that’s getting the girl.
Naomi slithered into the room, her footsteps absorbed by the plush carpet.
‘Tea,’ she said, placing the cups on the pristine mirrored table. No grubby fingerprints from a small child or ring marks from cups and glasses.
‘Thanks. I was just admiring your photos.’ I placed my body between her and the table so she wouldn’t notice one was missing.
‘Why?’
The question threw me. Why? Because I’m nosy? Because I want to know if your life is better than mine?
‘I don’t really know,’ I said. ‘They’re nice, aren’t they?’
She shrugged and sat heavily on the sofa. I perched opposite her and smiled.
It was the first time Naomi and I had been in the same room without Phillip circling us like a lion around his pride. I could have got some things off my chest. I could have launched into the wronged-wife routine. It would have been a good time for Naomi to apologise to me. Not that I minded her having Phillip, he was her problem now, but common decency should have pricked her conscience into addressing the tension between us.
Phillip and I should have brought our relationship to an end years ago, but I clung to the dream of the childhood that had been denied to me. I’d grown up without a father and I didn’t want Alistair to do the same. Some people call me stubborn, I prefer ‘determined’. It wasn’t the breakdown of our marriage that bothered me. I didn’t look upon it as losing a husband but gaining a nemesis. One more person to consider, when I was hardly a people-person at the best of times.
‘Phil should’ve been back from work by now,’ she said, looking at the clock.
‘Right,’ I said and looked at the clock too. ‘Is he working today? Only I went by the station and they said he wasn’t in work this week.’
She didn’t meet my eye. There was surprise behind the painted eyebrows, but her voice was low and calm when she said, ‘I forgot. He’s at the doctor’s.’
‘Nothing serious, I hope?’
‘What?’
‘The reason Phillip’s gone to the doctor?’
‘Oh,’ she looked out of the window, her thoughts somewhere else, a slight frown bringing her brows together. ‘No.’
‘That’s a shame.’
I reached for my drink, realising I was sounding bitter and hating that Phillip brought out this side of me. My hand trembled at the effort of remaining calm and I spilled tea over the table. The milky pool dripped twice onto the cream carpet before I could get my hand underneath it.
Naomi flinched. A sharp intake of breath.
‘Whoops!’ I said. ‘Sorry about that.’
Her body was rigid. Years of living with Phillip had made me an expert on body language and reading signals, like imperceptible vibrations in the air. I expected to feel her anger – another remnant of living with Phillip – but instead I saw something that unsettled me more.
Fear flashed across her face like a shooting star. It was instantaneous and I might have dismissed it, had I not seen her hands. She rubbed the soft skin between her thumb and forefinger. I knew that fleshy spot. I remembered what it felt like. For a moment, neither of us moved. I stared at her.
A prickle of sweat coated my forehead, though I was suddenly cold. A door to the past had opened and memories blew in on a cold draught. Phillip used to bend my thumb back until I fell to my knees. Always the left hand too, just where Naomi was rubbing. That way, it wouldn’t get in the way of the housework, the ironing, the cooking of his dinner. He’d got the most from his police training. Maximum pain, minimum effort. It was barely more than a playground scuffle, nothing that would stand up in court, but I knew what it meant.
Naomi caught me looking and there was a jolt of recognition. Her eyes, wide with fear a moment ago, narrowed and hardened. I opened my mouth to speak. So much to say and yet, as the words jostled to find the right order, Naomi stalked into the kitchen. My words of comfort floated up beyond the conserved beams and hung there like cobwebs.
I stood and looked back at the photos. The picture of Phillip with his arm around Naomi now looked like he was holding her a little too tightly. Her smile forced. No wonder there had been thirteen frames. Thirteen. Unlucky for some. Unlucky for her.
Naomi bustled back with cloth and cleaning spray. She began dabbing at the beige spots on the carpet. She’d suddenly become fragile, as if light would pass through her and leave no shadow. I wanted to reach out, touch her shoulder, but the abrupt switch from scorn to sympathy had wrong-footed me.
‘I am so sorry. Is there anything I can help you with?’ I asked.
The question was ambiguous enough that it could have been about spilled tea or much, much more. Unspoken words cowered in corners.
‘No. I’m fine.’
‘I never can remember which things are good for stains. Can you? There’s salt, isn’t there? But I think that’s for red wine. I’m more likely to spill wine than tea in my house. Not that I drink more wine than tea … just, well, it’s easier to spill, isn’t it? Must be the glasses. Perhaps I should drink wine out of a mug.’
I ventured a small laugh that was lost in the vast room. She ignored me.
‘Would you like me to go?’
The urge to flee was causing beads of sweat to gather on my top lip. The fight-or-flight response was causing my heart to pound faster and I was in no mood for a battle.
She had wiped the table, and most of the tea from the floor, but a faint mark remained on the carpet.
‘Or I could stay, if you want to talk to me about anything? You know, before Phillip gets home?’
She sat back on her heels and wiped a strand of hair off her heart-shaped face. I clutched my bag tightly and lowered myself slowly onto the arm of the sofa.
‘Don’t sit there! He don’t like it if people sit on the arms.’
I stood up quickly.
‘Sorry. You were going to say?’
‘Nothing. You should go.’
‘Are you sure?’
I glanced at the clock. She’d said, ‘Phil should’ve been back by now.’ He would be home at any minute. Ready for me to confront him about the divorce.
Or about bullying Naomi.
Or he would confront me about spilling tea on his impractical carpets. Confrontation suddenly didn’t seem as important as self-preservation and I rooted around my bag, pushing the purloined picture to one side and retrieving a fat white envelope.
‘Righty-ho. If you’re sure there’s nothing I can do?’
She sprayed the carpet and worried the mark in circular motions.
‘Perhaps you could you ask Phillip to call me? About the divorce papers. I mean, I’m sure you’re as keen as I am to get this all … well, put behind us. Here, could I leave these with you, in case his solicitor hasn’t been forwarding them?’
I placed the envelope on the table as Naomi dabbed at the stain.
‘I think a formal arrangement would benefit us all, don’t you? Make sure that certain … responsibilities are met.’
‘You’ve got some nerve,’ she said, getting to her feet.
‘Sorry?’
‘You’ve been poisoning that boy against Phil since the day he left you.’
‘Me?’
‘You’re letting your bitterness at a loveless marriage …’
‘That’s really not what this is about!’
‘… ruin Alistair’s relationship with his dad, and he’ll grow up hating you!’
There was a silent second, a frozen instant, when all I could hear was my own breathing. With our faces inches apart, I could see the anger in Naomi’s eyes. She was embarrassed and lashing out. It was all too familiar.
This was my moment to tell her that I understood; that I knew what Phillip was capable of. But I breathed out and let the words disperse like dandelion seedheads on the breeze. Any sense of solidarity disappeared when she brought Alistair into this.
‘Well, if that’s how you feel …’
I walked from the room, pausing only to slip into my boots. Naomi shouted something about me sucking the joy out of life, and about being jealous because I was left all alone. A bitter old crone, she called me. I consoled myself with something like satisfaction. Well, I’d tried. What more could I do?
Naomi was still shouting as I closed the door softly behind me. Her outburst had given me the excuse I needed to walk away from her, and the life that used to be mine. Perhaps I should’ve been smiling as I started the engine and re-joined the high street. Maybe I should have been content that she wasn’t living the picture-perfect life she portrayed.
But she was no different from me.
My shoulders hunched and an uneven percussion of tears fell into my lap. I was kidding myself if I thought I could ever be free of Phillip. Almost two years since he’d laid a finger on me and yet, after five minutes with his girlfriend, it was as if the bruises were still fresh. I could feel his fingers digging into my upper arm; see his sneer as he called me useless.
I had been naive to think that the past would ever let me go.
21 days before the funeral
Rachel caught my eye and nodded towards the lift. The phone on my desk was ringing and I put my hand up, fingers stretched, to show I’d be with her in five.
‘Imogen speaking. How can I help?’
I took off my glasses and picked up my pen. Despite the smooth silence in my ear, someone was there. Their reticence to speak was disturbing. I shifted in my seat and watched the display on the telephone tick through the seconds. All I could hear was the clack-clack-clack, from the opposite desk, of Claire’s nails on her keyboard.
‘Hello?’ I said, uncertain and tentative.
‘Don’t come to my house again,’ the voice said.
‘Phillip?’ I leaned back in my chair. ‘For a minute there …’
‘If you’ve got something to say to me, use the phone like a normal person.’
‘I did try calling. Perhaps you didn’t get my messages?’
‘Did it occur to you that I might be busy?’ His voice was terse.
‘Well, yes, but …’
‘I’ll call back when I’m good and ready.’
‘Sorry, I …’ As soon as the apology left my mouth I wanted it back again.
I worked in an open-plan office where everyone pretended not to listen to each other’s conversations. As little as a raised voice or a low whisper, and gossip-hungry ears would prick up. Wolves sensing prey. Eyes following ears, they would read humiliation in the pink spots on my cheeks. I kept my voice calm.
‘I only wanted to … to …’
I lost the ability to speak in front of Phillip. Always quick to jump on my mistakes, laugh at my stutters and hesitations, he made it difficult for me to form coherent sentences.
‘… chase up on the paperwork. I was passing anyway, thought it might speed things up if I dropped the papers off. Have you looked at them yet?’
I waited for a response that didn’t come. The silence on the telephone became dense.
‘Phillip?’ I said. ‘What do you think? Is there any chance you could get it signed and back to my solicitor by the end of the week?’
Still nothing.
I sat forward in my seat and looked at the display on the phone. It showed the date and the time. Nothing else. The call had ended.
I kept the receiver to my ear, pressed it into me so that the back of my earring came close to puncturing the soft skin on my neck. There was sudden laughter from across the office. Opposite me, Claire looked up and tut-tutted.
‘Right,’ I said to the hollow mouthpiece. ‘That would be perfect. Thank you.’
Claire glanced at me and I cast my eyes skywards. Husbands, eh?
I counted to three.
‘Don’t be silly. There’s no need to apologise. No. Really, I wouldn’t use the word tosser, as such.’
Count to four.
‘You’re too kind. Stop it, you’re embarrassing me.’
One. Two.
‘You too. Take care. Bye.’
I put down the phone, put on my glasses and added a note to my to do list. It now read:
It took longer than it should have done to compose myself. Claire declined my offer to bring her something back, by waving a Tupperware box of home-prepared salad at me.
I took the lift to the café on the top floor. Windows reached from floor to ceiling, offering views of office blocks and cat’s-cradle roads to the assembled caffeine-hunters who sniffed out coffee like a heat-seeking missile. The irresistible smell of mid-morning muffins pulled us all in. Cardboard-cuffed paper cups ‘to go’ identified Dominics and Sarahs, in black Sharpie.
Rachel waved when she saw me, as if I wouldn’t notice a six-foot blonde with sunglasses on her head as soon as the lift doors opened. Rachel and I didn’t go to the same places or move in the same circles. In fact, I didn’t move in circles at all. I zigzagged between work and home. Our paths would never have crossed if it hadn’t been for a drunken Christmas party. She was the drunken one, and I was the one holding back her hair.
She was younger than me, lived for the weekend and was adamant that she would never get married. Her money was spent on spray tans, manicures and Jägerbombs, while mine was spent on school uniform, toilet roll and milkshakes. And yet she was the only person who knew how Phillip treated me.
I didn’t have many friends. Phillip hadn’t expressly forbidden them, but he made it difficult for me to meet people, and had discouraged me from inviting anyone to the house. The women I used to mix with were mostly the wives of his friends and I could never confide in them, in case it got back to Phillip.
Rachel had been a breath of fresh air. I’d first told her about Phillip’s treatment of me when she was drunk and I was sure she’d forget, but Rachel was one of those drunks who, though she couldn’t remember how to walk, would recall every confidence you’d whispered. She hadn’t met Phillip, so she hadn’t been blinded by his charm. Phillip had been away on a golfing weekend, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to go to the party. Mother had babysat and I’d had my first night out without Phillip in five years.
Rachel had tracked me down in the office the following Monday and said she wanted to buy me lunch, to say ‘thank you’ for looking after her. In reality, she wanted to tell me to leave Phillip. It was an unlikely friendship, but one I was grateful for. For months she urged me to leave him and then, when he was the one who did the leaving, she threw me a party.
‘I assumed the usual,’ Rachel said, pushing my coffee towards me.
‘What? They do Merlot now?’
She laughed once, and loudly, so it was more bark than laughter.
‘So,’ she said. ‘I’ve been reading …’
‘Steady!’
‘It’s okay, there were pictures. Anyway, this article said the end of a marriage – even a crap one like yours – is huge, right? Even if you wanted it to end, you still need to, like, process it. And it’s natural to be angry about it. You need to let it out of you.’
‘It’s been eighteen months …’
‘Yeah, and you still haven’t moved on. You need to, like, hit something. And hard. So I think we should join a boxing class.’
‘Rachel!’
‘No, hear me out. It’s for women only. It’s called Rum Punch or something. What do you think?’
‘I’ve decided to practise the ancient and long-forgotten art of forgiveness. I’m doing okay, Rach, trust me. Anyway,’ I said, ‘back to what I wasn’t saying …’
‘Passive-aggressive. That’s what you are. You’d be better off smacking her. Or him. Or both. Get it out of your system. And you really need to start dating again.’
‘I can’t. Not while Alistair is still so young. Anyway, will you listen? I have news.’
She sat back and took a sip of foamy coffee, ignoring me.
‘I know people,’ she said. ‘I could have Phillip … neutralised. There was this guy I was dating at Christmas and he—’
‘Your loyalty is appreciated, even if it is the tiniest bit scary, but I read that the best revenge you can take is to live your life to the fullest.’
‘And how is that working out for you?’ she asked.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘Phillip is acting strangely.’
Rachel sucked at the froth on the top of her coffee and raised an eyebrow.
‘I went to see him yesterday about signing the divorce papers, and guess what?’
‘What?’
‘He wasn’t there. And then this morning he phoned me and told me to stay away from the house.’
‘And this is strange because …?’ Rachel asked.
‘Because Naomi said he was at work. But I’d already been to his work and they said he wasn’t in and wasn’t expected back any time soon. Then she said he must be at the doctor’s, but when I went by the surgery his car wasn’t there.’
I looked at her triumphantly. She leaned in closer with her elbows on the table.
‘So,’ she said, ‘putting aside the fact that you’re stalking your ex and are two, maybe three, steps away from boiling his bunny … I still don’t get it.’
‘I think he’s having another affair.’
Rachel shook her head, but she wasn’t surprised.
‘Did you tell Naomi?’
‘God, no. I spilled my tea and then she went all … well, peculiar. She freaked out and I had to leave. Besides, it’s not really my place.’
‘Of course it is. Don’t you wish someone had told you when Phillip started knobbing Naomi?’
‘If I recall clearly, someone did; and that someone was you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
A secret was no longer a secret, once it was shared. Rachel reminded me of that fact almost daily. She was the person I confided in when I wanted to have confirmation of how terrible my life was, or have her rip Phillip to shreds, but if I wanted sympathy, or my innermost thoughts kept between the two of us, then Rachel was not top of the list. But then, as lists go, it was a short one.
Rachel was an advocate of honesty being the best policy. She’d yet to come across any thought that would remain better off unsaid. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t tell her the whole story.
I didn’t want to believe my own eyes. If Phillip really was abusing Naomi, how could I sit by and watch? Once I admitted it to Rachel, I would have to intervene. Until I was sure what was happening I would keep it to myself. It was a cowardly way to behave, but I still wasn’t a match for Phillip, even with Rachel by my side.
‘I don’t like to gossip,’ I said.
‘Oh, bless you, but it’s not gossip when it’s in the other person’s best interest. Think of it as “information dissemination”. Imagine telling the tart that Phillip is doing the hokey-cokey at someone else’s shindig.’ Her eyes sparkled at the thought and she held up her index finger. ‘Numero uno, he gets his balls sliced off as he sleeps because, as we know, she is a psycho bitch.’
‘Do we know that? Because …’
‘Numero duo,’ she held up two fingers, ‘she gets that smug look knocked off her Botoxed face.’
‘I don’t think she’s had Botox. That’s just how skin looks when you’re in your twenties.’
‘And numero trio …’
‘I don’t think that’s Italian.’
‘… you get to sleep soundly at night, knowing that you have saved another woman, albeit a cheating witch, from going through the same bollocks that you did.’
I smiled. ‘You have a fair point.’
‘Indeed I do.’ She inclined her head graciously.
‘And if it was that simple, maybe I would. But he’s Alistair’s dad. What affects Phillip affects us all. I just want things to be – I don’t know – normal between us. We’ll be co-parents for the rest of our lives, and I want to enjoy Alistair’s graduation, and wedding, and the birth of his children without feeling awkward every time I’m in a room with Phillip. I never want Alistair to feel he has to choose which parent to invite to important events. I never want him to worry about hurting our feelings.’
‘He’s six, babe. There’s still time for Phillip to get run over by a bus.’
I laughed.
Rachel took my hand and stared hard into my face until I returned her gaze. ‘Stop worrying about stuff that might never happen. Alistair won’t thank you for being a doormat.’
I felt myself colour. I didn’t want to be a pushover, but it wasn’t in anyone’s interest for me to cause a scene.
‘Anyhoo,’ she said, dropping my hand and picking up her coffee, ‘how are you fixed for Friday night? I’m thinking double-date …’
20 days before the funeral
There had been love between Phillip and me once. Difficult to believe it now, I know, but there was a time when he had doted on me, and I would have done anything for him. I hadn’t needed anyone else but Phillip and our baby.
The baby before Alistair.
As late-afternoon sun bled into the fields, I stood and brushed the dirt from my knees. A patch of crocuses covered the ground nearby. New green leaves unfolded around me while soft white clouds brushed over the horizon, lit golden from beneath, as they hurried after the setting sun. The first butterflies of the season swooped and fell like streamers in the breeze. I didn’t believe in reincarnation – didn’t believe in anything really – but I often looked out for signs that she was still with me.
I would have called her Iris, if she had lived. The messenger of the gods; the personification of the rainbow; the symbol of hope. When she was taken from me, I mislaid the little bit of hope I had set aside for a rainy day. I was yet to find its hiding place. Every time I saw a rainbow I thought of her reaching out to me and telling me she was okay. That I would be okay.
It was the anniversary of the day she should have been born. I could not – would not – remember the date of her death, but every spring I would go to the place where I had lost her and say ‘sorry’. As far as the world was concerned, she had never existed. She was a note on my medical file and a scar on my heart.
Grief, when it comes, takes many forms. I had lost enough people from my life to have experienced them all. But the tears shed following the death of someone close to you were nearly always the tears of the future. People cry for what will never be: the days they won’t spend together, the celebrations they will miss, and the conversations they will never have. They are the tears of absence.
This year she would have been eight glorious years old. I wrote a card and bought a gift, just as I would have done if she had lived, and spent the afternoon thinking of what might have been. I spoke to her as if she was in my arms, and I told her stories of her little brother and how much I missed her.
Rachel sat in the car. She didn’t have children, said she never would, but she knew what Iris meant to me. She would drive me to pick up Alistair from the childminder and order pizza for our supper. Hot and spicy for me, cheese-and-tomato for Alistair. She wouldn’t ask me how I felt, or shed tears of her own. She was there to pick me up when I fell, and top up my wine glass when it was empty.
Phillip never spoke about that night any more. Didn’t wonder out loud ‘what if?’ Her death didn’t alter his course, yet it knocked me off my axis and spun me out of control. That’s not to say it didn’t affect him. He was different after that night. We both were. Phillip became crueller, angry at the world. It was his way of coping, I guess. But it seemed, after that night, that he always kept me at arm’s length.
Sometimes I’d look at Phillip and see him, as he should be, twenty years from now, grey-haired, in a morning suit, walking Iris down the aisle. She’d look beautiful and he’d look proud. A significant event wiped out in the turn of a wheel. A future – a dream – destroyed.
Our marriage became a minefield to be navigated with caution. I used to wish that I had died in the accident, rather than live with the pain of loss. Most people were scared of death. I was afraid of life.
When I think about it now, it unfolds as if it was happening to someone else. The car had appeared from nowhere and retreated to the same place. Hit-and-run, the police called it, but that sounded like a game of cricket. End of the over. All out.
In those first months, the only thing I lived for was to find out who’d done this to me and who had killed my unborn child. How could I forgive them, if I didn’t know who had been behind the wheel of that car? How could I put it all behind me, if I never heard them apologise? The only reason I had to get out of my hospital bed was so that I could stand and look them in the eye. I’d sworn the car that hit me had been black, dark green maybe, but when they retrieved paint samples from the bushes they said they were looking for a blue car. I scanned every blue car I saw in the following weeks for signs of damage or repair, fancying myself an amateur sleuth who would find the person who was eluding the police.
Months passed and no one was charged. I swore at Phillip, and he swore back. He worked late following up leads, checking with more and more garages out of town. They were called and visited, especially those known to the police for operating on the wrong side of the law, but no one had brought in a car with damage that was consistent with having mown down a pregnant woman in the street.
He wasn’t officially allowed to be on the investigating team, but the investigating officers were his friends and they told him they’d keep him in the loop and that they’d catch the bastard. I drew up my own shortlist, of people he’d arrested, those who might hold a grudge, but he wouldn’t listen. He was hurt that I’d dream of suggesting it was something to do with the job that he loved, as if by doing the right thing he had brought grief to our door.
When his ex-wife, Ruby, sent me a letter suggesting that ‘these things happen for a reason’, I accused her too. I knew she hated me and wanted Phillip back. Had he checked out Ruby? Where was she that night? What car was she driving nowadays? But he threw his plate against the wall and shouted, Enough is enough! I never trusted her after that, though, in fairness, I’d never trusted her before.
Phillip visited me at the unit, where they talked in hushed tones and gave me tablets to make me float over the pain. Not that I minded the solitude. The quietness. The kindness. Phillip was considerate in understated ways. He didn’t talk about his feelings, or ask about mine, but while I was in hospital he did his best to dispose of things that would remind us of what we’d lost. He replaced the nearly-new car with an extra-roomy boot for a buggy, took the stair-gate and bassinet to the charity shop, and gave away all the books on pregnancy and contented babies.
It wasn’t my first encounter with depression, but it was my most significant. When I was sent home with a pocket full of Prozac, depression was there. Its clothes hung in the wardrobe, its toothbrush still in the bathroom like it had just popped out, door on the latch, and was coming back at any minute. Even now I sometimes caught its scent when I walked into the room.
Phillip would tell you I started to lose my mind about that time. His affairs, his brutality, they were my fault. The first affair, and the second, I forgave him for. I accepted their inevitability. He was searching for attention that I was reticent to give. There was no point dwelling on the past, he’d say. With the third affair and the fourth, I stopped pretending to care. He was hurting too, he said, but I would drive a saint to distraction with my constant weeping. Chin up. Life goes on.
Except for the baby’s. Hers was forever suspended somewhere between my heart and my mind.
I locked my grief away. I took it out when I was alone at night, when Phillip was working, and when I was sure that no one would catch me crying. I didn’t tell him when I fell pregnant with Alistair. I waited and waited, fearing the worst, not letting myself hope. But then it was real. A pulsing heartbeat and a grainy image. A second chance. I barely left the house after that. I wasn’t going to let it happen again. No one was going to take my baby this time.
For one day each year I would think about Iris, and then I would spend the evening being thankful for Alistair. There was no point in worrying about what I didn’t have when what I did have was so precious.
Tired but calm, after a day of thinking about my daughter, Rachel and I pulled up outside the childminder’s house. I couldn’t wait to collect Alistair and hear all about his day at school, who he’d played with and what he’d learned. I loved him with a power that hurt. And that was why I was slow to get out of the car, and why I was measured in each step I took towards the neat semi-detached house with the miniature windmill in the front garden. Self-reproach trumps joy. I hated that someone else knew more about his day than I did.
Another woman would tell me whether he’d done his homework, and how he’d been when she picked him up from school, and what he’d had for his dinner, and I felt each of her words as a sharpened arrow of judgement to my conscience.
Alistair was younger than six in all the ways that counted. He slipped into his sixth year while the labels in his clothes still read ‘4’. He was in a ‘big boy’ bed when he was anything but. Six candles. Six friends to tea. Six bumps. Six years of making the world a sweeter place through cuddles, sticky kisses and smiles. Alistair. A cinnamon-scented stretch of a boy, yet to find control of his limbs and emotions. Holding onto his infant ways like a favourite pair of threadbare pyjamas.
I could see him at the window. He had his coat on, and I knew he would have been wearing it for the past twenty minutes, asking, ‘Is it time yet?’
I rang the doorbell, even though I could see his blue duffel coat through the little window and knew he was reaching for the lock that he was still too short to reach. I wriggled my fingers at him, and his face creased to show dimples so deep that you could lose kisses in them.
Ella opened the door, smiling, in her apologetic way, from beneath her fringe and ushered me through to the warm hip-high cuddle of my boy. She was skinny with a mass of curls and an oversized mouth, like a child’s drawing of a stick-woman. The school-dinner smell of gravy and mash lingered in the hallway. Finger paintings and photos on woodchipped walls led upstairs, where toys and books were neatly stacked. Music played in the kitchen, a kids’ television programme, keeping Ella’s youngest child rooted in her high chair, and Mummy’s hands free to deal with the paying guest.
‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!’
‘Hey there, Buster.’ I pulled him onto my hip and kissed his hair. ‘Everything okay?’ I asked Ella.
Ella’s rubber mouth twisted to one side and then drooped at the corners. ‘Well …’
‘Go get your school bag, Alistair. And find your shoes.’ I plopped him down and he scurried away.
‘It’s fine really, but we did have a little accident. And then we tried to cover it up. Said he didn’t know he’d wet himself. These things do happen to little ones from time to time. We’ve dealt with it now.’
‘That’s not like him.’ I watched Alistair down the corridor, concerned that something had upset him, and embarrassed that Ella had dealt with it instead of me.
‘And it’s probably nothing, but …’
Alistair came running back into the hallway and barrelled into my knees.
‘Where are your shoes?’
He dropped his bag and ran back to the kitchen.
‘We did use a naughty word today. He called me a b-i-t-c-h.’
The word was spelt out in crisp syllables, her lips enunciating each letter, so that I would be in little doubt as to what she was saying, or the gravity of the situation. She closed her eyes and shook her curls, as if the very act of spelling such a word caused her a great deal of personal anguish.
‘No. Really? I don’t know where he’s heard that kind of—’
‘Says he heard it from you.’
‘Did he?’
‘Along with a poem about beans being good for your heart?’
‘God! Sorry. That probably was me. Funny at the time, but in hindsight … Have you got those shoes, Al? We need to move. Rachel’s waiting in the car.’
‘Obviously we don’t like to encourage that kind of language. But given your situation, poor lamb …’
‘Situation?’
‘Broken home.’ She over-enunciated again and I rushed into the kitchen to find Alistair transfixed by the television, as vegetables sang a song to a ginger-haired man in a hat.
‘Shoes on? Good. What do you say to Ella?’
‘Beans, beans, good for your heart …’
‘Okay, thanks then.’
I took Alistair’s warm hand in mine and pulled him out of the house.
‘We’ll see you next week,’ I said.
‘Beans, beans, they make you—’
‘Bye!’
I slammed the door. Ella always made me feel like a fraud, like she was the perfect mother. Or was that my own insecurity leaching into the evening air? I took Alistair’s bag from him and walked to the car idling at the kerb. Rachel was uncharacteristically immobile in the driver’s seat. Usually she would hang out of the window or blast inappropriate music from the stereo to make Alistair laugh. But something had changed in the five minutes since I had left the car. Sitting by her side, in the passenger seat, I could see the unmistakable silhouette of Phillip Rochester.
16 days before the funeral