The Lost Wife: An uplifting page-turner about grief, love and friendship Read online

  The Lost Wife

  An uplifting page-turner about grief, love and friendship

  Anna Mansell

  Books by Anna Mansell

  How to Mend a Broken Heart

  The Lost Wife

  I Wanted to Tell You

  Her Best Friend’s Secret

  For Mel G, because I love that you loved it

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part II

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part III

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  I Wanted to Tell You

  Anna’s email sign up

  Books by Anna Mansell

  A Letter from Anna

  Her Best Friend’s Secret

  How to Mend a Broken Heart

  Acknowledgements

  Part One

  JANUARY 2012

  One

  Ed

  My wife gave me strict instructions in the event of her untimely death: no crying, no drinking, no sympathy sex with an ex. Her final crushed-velvet curtain should fall before a congregation wearing ‘Glitter-red shoes and sky-blue gingham, make that bit obvious on the invites, Ed.’ We didn’t establish the protocol regarding funeral invites as such, because, you know, why would we?

  A big fan of The Wizard of Oz, she also wanted the original version of ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead’ played for a cast of perma-tanned small people to dance down a specially installed yellow-bricked aisle. I didn’t consider the logistics, or how impossible promises would be, because she wasn’t going to die. And now my head pounds, disbelieving tears replaced with dry, gut-wrenching sobs of pain and reality, which means I’ve broken promise one: no crying.

  Despite crisp winter air stealing my breath, I can still detect the stench of whisky and wine and anything else I’ve found around our house, searching for something to dull the pain. Except no amount of alcohol works, it just makes me feel guilty that I’m drunk in charge of a baby. Promise two: no drinking… broken.

  Maybe I should be grateful that I’ve no energy, will or inclination to break promise three. Ex or otherwise.

  Four pitch-black-suited men lower her walnut casket six foot underground, and I resist sinking to my knees. I want to go down with her. I want to hide six foot under. I want this all to be over. I want the pale and solemn faces that surround me to leave. They’re another reminder that I did not do what she wanted: no gingham, no red shoes. I feel the punch in my heart again; on each and every level, I've got this wrong.

  I’ve blocked out the vicar’s words, until now: ‘Let us commend Ellie Moran to the mercy of God…’ It’s too much.

  My head feels a safer place. Sifting through memories that keep her alive, if only for a few more moments. Ignoring the questions I have about how we came to be here. Today is not the day.

  The night she tabled her dark-humoured request was our house-warming, not more than nine months ago, a night of love and laughter and friends. After years of graft, we’d finally finished our forever home. We were on our third bottle of Chianti – drink shared among the group – and conversation flowed as easily as the wine. Ellie’s laughter infected us all to the point we could barely string a sentence together as we threw equally dark suggestions into the mix: a wake on a ranch-style farm; wind machines; a crafted prairie-house coffin; and my personal favourite – ashes scattered by Glinda the Good Witch. It’s easy to be flippant when you’re invincible.

  ‘We now commit her body to the ground…’

  Happy memories flood and splinter the ache in my chest, sending it shooting through my body. We were going to die when we were old, we’d always said so. We’d agreed.

  ‘Earth to earth…’

  We’d share a life together, raise a family. We’d enjoy a lengthy retirement ticking items off a bucket list, once-in-a-lifetime trips had she not done them already... patience was never her strong point.

  ‘Ashes to ashes…’

  Maybe that’s why she was in my brother’s car? Because she couldn’t wait until I got there.

  ‘Dust to dust…’

  If I hadn’t been stealing an hour’s sleep, despite her being the one up all night with Oli, she’d have asked me to take her out. We’d be together. She’d be alive. I wouldn’t be left with little else than a note on the kitchen table: Gone for fresh air, won’t be long. X

  ‘In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.’

  We’d waved off our party guests, finally alone in our newly renovated forever home. Ellie had pendulum-waved an empty bottle in my direction. ‘Open another,’ she’d said, with a wink meant just for me.

  ‘Perhaps I should dress as the Tin Man,’ I’d joked, popping the cork from another red.

  She’d flirted with the idea. We’d laughed. Later that night, we’d conceived Oli.

  ‘Amen.’

  Mourners gather round. Faces I know, a few that I don’t. Simon, my brother, stands with Mum and Dad on either side. His eyes focused on the middle distance, he’s here but he’s not present. Lisa, his wife, stands behind them. Does she wonder why they were together that day? Has he explained? To her? To anyone? He hasn’t to me, he hasn’t even tried.

  I rest my lips upon the softness of Oli’s newborn skull. When he arrived, less than two weeks ago, he and Ellie shared the same smell. If I take a breath, it’s almost like she’s still here. Beside me. Holding my hand as we say goodbye. So, I don’t take that breath. I can’t.

  Why did I strap him to my chest when I can barely breathe as it is? All 8lb 6oz of perfection, snuffling like a truffle pig in his sling. Perhaps I shouldn’t use him as a tiny human shield.

  I said I didn’t blame Simon. That’s what I told Mum and Dad. I said I knew it was an accident, that the investigation will prove that.

  But even accidents can be avoided. Can’t they?

  The vicar nods at me. With Bible in one hand, he offers his other out, palm up, inviting me forward. One step is enough to bring her resting place into view. I drop two crimson roses, their velvet petals deep and plush, down on to the brass plate
with her name. One from me and one from our boy. My breath catches and my eyes sting. A stifled cry behind me makes me pause, and another moment of clarity presents: muddy wet layers of newly dug soil surround her, a smell we once loved. Gritty. Earthy. Evocative. On rain-soaked mornings we’d step outside and take a deep breath, our senses full. Because then the smell signalled life, new beginnings, the future. Now? It’s dirt and damp. It smells of the end. The End. A smell that will forever remind me that Ellie hated burials. Yet here I am, in the grounds of a church in Nottingham, laying my wife to rest. If anything happens to her Versace dress she’ll be furious. It’s her favourite. Was her favourite.

  ELEANOR JANE MORAN-FITZGERALD (Ellie)

  16th December 1976 – 14th January 2012

  Wife. Mother. Daughter. Friend.

  R.I.P

  Two

  Rachel

  Making the walk from hangover to the local shop is hellish. Mo can’t structure a sentence, the smell of stale ale repeats with my every breath, and it’s freezing out here. Like properly, properly, freezing.

  We can’t do this any more. We’re too old for it. We should probably have stayed at home… last night, if not this morning. I reckon I could’ve cobbled a breakfast together from whatever we have in the cupboards, then I wouldn’t have to be dressed, in the cold light of day, smelling faintly of lady sweat as a result of overenthusiastic vogueing down our local nightclub. I swallow back a burp and Mo shoots me a disgusted look.

  Icy fog hangs over the church steeple. Car after car weaves the tree-lined road with blatant disregard for double yellows. There’s a hearse parked at the front of the queue, right outside the church gates. ‘Lots of people,’ I say, nodding at the giant congregation huddled by an open grave. ‘Is that a good sign or not?’

  ‘What?’ Mo grunts. ‘Are they mourning the loss, or dancing on your grave, d’you mean?’

  ‘She speaks,’ I announce, sarcastically. 'And no, Mo, that’s not what I meant.’ I push my hair away from my face before ruffling it back to cover up cold ears again. We walk on in almost silence, except for Mo loudly sucking bubble gum into her mouth to distract me from the memories the odd passing funeral can invite. I look down to the flagstone pavement; it’ll be sixteen years, later this year. Sixteen quick-long years since I buried Mum. I was twelve. No age is good, but twelve is really shit. You’ve generally got enough on with the gangly legs and emerging hormone-fuelled attitude. Losing a parent and then years of bundled angst are not a magic combination. Nor are the years of anger I felt towards an illness that, at the time, swallowed our lives just as much as it did hers.

  ‘Do you know, I never knew that my dead granddad had a twin brother until Mum’s funeral.’

  ‘What?’ Mo spins around. ‘I did not know this!’

  ‘Yeah. Sat down on the pew, Mum’s coffin before us all, and this bloke who – as far as I was concerned at the time – was the grandfather we’d buried two years before, sat beside me to pay his respects. Mum’s entire service was overshadowed by me wondering if anyone else could see this ghost of a man beside me.’ Mo fails to stifle a giggle. ‘It’s alright, you’re allowed to laugh. To be fair, it was probably the distraction I needed at the time. Funerals can be grim.’

  ‘Grim. Sure. That’s the word for it. You know, your family are the gift that keep on giving!’

  ‘Hmm…’ I say, pointedly, because I think she’s maybe forgotten that currently, if my family were a gift, they’d be the equivalent of a £5 book token that my eleven-year-old self wants to swap for a shopping spree in Topshop.

  Mo pushes open the door to our local Tesco Express. ‘Mission hangover cure begins!’ she declares. ‘Bread, hot dogs, ketchup, crisps, chocolate, full fat Coke by the litre! What do we need?’

  ‘A time machine back to the hour before that final bottle of Prosecco in the club?’

  ‘Prosecco? It was a freebie from the DJ! I dread to think of its actual origins, because it definitely wasn’t made from Italian grapes.’ She swallows with a grimace. ‘Eurgh, drinking that was a bad move.’

  ‘You’re probably right. Okay, we need all of the beige carbs in our basket,’ I say, but Mo’s not behind me. I retrace my steps to find her staring out of the window, face awash with vacant expression.

  'What?’ I ask, catching sight of my reflection in all of its morning-after-the-night-before glory.

  Her eyes scan up and down the road, beyond a passing tram. ‘I was just wondering if I could stomach sushi, then thought I saw someone I knew. Black-suited and booted, like they were on their way to that funeral.’ She strains to see past the promotional posters in the window.

  ‘Can you do sushi?’ I ask, suspiciously. I mean, who does raw fish on an empty stomach?

  ‘Nah, don’t think so. I’d do pretty much anything for a finger buffet though.’ She winks, last night’s mascara clumping her lashes together.

  ‘So, what? You’re trying to get an invite to a wake now? Classy.’

  ‘You know me, Rach! I love a cheesy pineapple hedgehog.’

  ‘I’m more of an open cob kind of girl myself. But not at a stranger’s funeral, so come on, let’s get what we need and split.’ Mo nods her head in agreement, sauntering off to pick up things off the shelves, dropping them into the basket: Alka-Seltzer, Coco Pops, two bags of Doritos, followed by a third because it’s ‘buy two, get one free’ and Mo can’t resist a bargain. ‘You pay, I’ll meet you over at The Pitcher for hair of the dog.’

  ‘Nope. Can’t,’ I answer, taking my card out and swallowing another disgusting burp.

  ‘Okay, DVD then. Shotgun Pretty Woman.’

  ‘Hey! My birthday, my choice!’ I protest.

  ‘You know full well that shotgun trumps birthdays. You snooze, you lose,’ shouts Mo, picking up the pace and leaving me behind as she stomps down the back streets to our city-centre flat. I look back over to the church, send my love to Mum up in the sky, and skip on to catch Mo up. Pretty Woman it is. But I’m totally following it up with A Chorus Line. That’ll teach her…

  Three

  Ed

  Mum’s polished black court shoes click around the kitchen. She’s not a natural homemaker, never has been, so she keeps picking things up and looking at them before putting them back down, or moving them somewhere else with the statement, ‘I don’t know where they belong.’ As if cupboards couldn’t be opened.

  She goes to reach for the steriliser then stops. Then sighs. I can’t hear her sigh again. I don’t want it. I want her to leave so I can go up to our room. Wrap myself in our cream cotton sheets; sheets left unchanged because Ellie slept in them. I want the fading smell of her perfume to wash over me as I sink into our bed. I won’t sleep. I haven’t since Simon called, not properly. Distress, fear and hurt poured down the phone line as he told me what had happened, the horror yanking me from gritty-eyed, new-parent slumber. Since then, I’ve laid in bed, my mind wandering away from reality. It’s not sleep so much as wakeful dreaming about our life together, until a noise plucks me back and the pain hits me all over again.

  ‘Keep the cat away from Oli,’ Mum says eventually, as Floyd twists through her legs, reaching his tail high for her attention. ‘Cats can smother a newborn.’ She looks down on him, accusingly, not a fan of public displays of affection from people, never mind things with four legs. Floyd chases after her as she clicks away, before rubbing his head on her shin, then darting out of the cat flap.

  Oli suckles the last of a clumsily prepared bottle, my hands tired, shaking. I shift to rest him on my shoulder, muscles aching as I rub his back the way Ellie would each time she fed him. She’d celebrate his burps as if we’d bred a genius.

  Mum reaches across the table for a muslin cloth to tuck under his chin. ‘Put this here,’ she instructs and it irritates me that I forgot. Mum sighs again, looking around. Her hands rest on the counter top. ‘Can I at least tidy a little before I go, Edward?’

  She wants to for her sake, not mine. She wants to occupy herself before
she finally takes her leave. She could just go.

  ‘I could just clear this side, maybe wipe it down for you?’ Her hands reach out to a pile of Ellie’s post.

  ‘Leave it,’ I hiss, making Oli jump on my shoulder. Her hand retracts as if her fingers burn. ‘Sorry. But, don’t touch it, please,’ I say. Mum goes towards a candy-striped box, one of Ellie’s famed memory boxes, left out on the side. ‘Don’t touch anything.’

  Redundant, she stands in the middle of the room, uncomfortable, uncertain.

  Just leave, I want to say.

  ‘I appreciate your help with all of this, and the funeral…’ The words stick in my throat and I turn my back, hiding my face as I lie Oli down to sleep in the Moses basket we excitedly chose the night she finished work for her maternity leave. ‘I just need to be on my own.’

  ‘Your family are here to help, Edward,’ she says, quietly. Her voice has the clip of elocution that makes everything sound harder than perhaps she intends.