The Lost Wife: An uplifting page-turner about grief, love and friendship Page 13

  ‘I know the ending,’ I say, my voice low.

  ‘You know part of it.’ She goes to reach for my arm, but stops short. ‘I wish I could take that pain away, Edward, but I can’t.’

  I look at the woman who gave me life. Do I remember her being so cold? As a child? Was she always aloof? Is that even the right word? It’s not so much that she doesn’t want to engage, as she can’t. I learnt that many years ago. She taught me everything I do not want to be myself as a parent, especially now, in circumstances like this.

  When I became a father, my perspective changed in an instant. My priorities and what I would do to protect, nurture and love my son. I don’t understand my mother’s position, her thoughts. I don’t understand her approach. I came to get answers, I leave with more questions. And I’ve nobody to talk to about any of it.

  Twenty-Seven

  Rachel

  I run my finger down the Liberty print book. Two thousand and twelve is cleaner than the others. No real breaks in the spine, but then I guess she didn’t get a chance to use it like the others. I’m curious as to the contents; religiously kept daily commentary, or meetings and birthdays? Who’d keep so many notebooks? And among memories and drawings, too? The box before me is full of tickets, receipts, sketches and the brochure to this house, which is barely recognisable.

  I rub at my chest, now tight. Nerves make my fingers stiffen. Is there something here that can help? Something to show him she was true? Has he read the diaries? Should I?

  5 January 2012

  Dear Diary,

  He's here. And I know I said I'd stop writing, but how could I finish this journey anywhere but with his arrival? Ten years of diaries, written almost daily. I have to finish on a positive note.

  I look up, my heart racing, aware that I’m crossing a line so bold, so clear. A line you cannot uncross, and yet, as my eyes drift back downwards, I can’t quite tear myself away. It’s for him, it’s to help…

  He's perfect. My beautiful, perfect, gorgeous boy, he completes me. As I look into his eyes, my own stare right back at me: my nose, my lips, my heart and my soul. I cannot tell you how that makes me feel. My home is full and my life has promise. Whatever challenges life may throw in the coming weeks, months or years, we will get through them, as a family. That’s the promise I make to my boy. Xx

  The fabric cover catches on the roughness of my hand as I close the book. Has Ed seen this? Surely, if he had, it would be all the information he needs? But what if he hasn’t? What if he respects her privacy in a way I’ve totally ignored? What if he is missing out on the opportunity to lay to rest all these questions? He needs to believe, he has a right to see that he can trust her, doesn’t he?

  But, how can I tell him? To do so means I’d have to admit to sitting here, in his room, their room. With her private diaries.

  I feel faint. I feel sick. What have I done? I’m sat here, looking through a dead wife’s diaries. Oh God. Oh shit. What was I thinking? I fumble to close the diary, my hands itching. I toss it onto the wardrobe floor, burnt by guilt. What right did I have to read this? How could I kid myself this was okay? I feel as though I know more than Ed does at exactly the time he should have all the ammunition he needs to protect her memory, to protect their love.

  Maybe I could leave the notebook out for him to see? Except that he’d know then, he’d know what I’d done, wouldn’t he? He’d see things weren’t as he left them. Maybe that doesn’t matter. He might forgive the intrusion if it gives him the truth he needs?

  Would I? Would I forgive me?

  I’m not so sure.

  I reach for the box, pulling it towards me. I’ll put it all back, I'll get out of here, I’ll give myself some time to think about how I might be able to sort this out constructively. I could do more harm than good just throwing it all at him.

  What if he finds out and is so angry that he takes Oli from nursery? He doesn’t speak to me again?

  Would it matter? He’s just a parent from work, that’s all. Oli’s dad. Nothing more…

  I think…

  Ignoring where my thoughts lead, I shake it all off and push the diary back in place, but something’s in the way.

  A packet slips down, its contents tumble out: a DNA test.

  Then I hear the front door opening. Ed has returned.

  My body turns to stone, the weight of what sits in my lap, plus the sound of his return, all combine to push me down, my knees heavy in the thick pile of his bedroom carpet. Oxygen abandons my body and my blood runs ice cold. Ed calls out, his voice moving from hallway to kitchen and I know that I have about four seconds to shove the test into the envelope, get everything that should be in the box back where I found it, then get out.

  My hands shake as I let the wardrobe door slip shut and take three long, tiptoed steps out of his room. I hold my breath a second until I know I’m out and his bedroom door is closed behind me. Adopt calm. Adopt cool. Buy yourself time to think. If only I had time to go back and take out that envelope, hide it about my person. He doesn’t need to see that. I wipe clammy hands down my jeans, tiptoeing back downstairs.

  ‘You’re back sooner than I was expecting.’ I try to keep my voice light, but look over my shoulder in a not altogether innocent fashion. I wonder if I sound as guilty as I feel. I was trying to help. I’ve gone too far.

  Ed bustles towards me and we meet awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs, my position on the last step bringing me perfectly up to his height, eye to eye, nowhere to hide.

  ‘You were upstairs, is Oli okay?’ He flings his coat on the bannister, looking past me. His eyes search for a potential problem, his voice is constricted.

  ‘He’s fine – I just… I heard a murmur, that’s all. He was a bit unsettled, teething I think. I gave him some Calpol, I hope that’s okay?’ An itch and heat has spread across my chest. I reach to my neck, placing my hand at the bottom of my neck as a fear grows. Did I shut Ed's bedroom door? Have I changed anything in his room from how it was? Was the box in or out of the wardrobe? Was the door to the wardrobe open? How did I find any of it?

  I can’t picture how things were when I found them. I need to leave before he goes up there. I can’t stand in front of him, trying to find a lie that fits with what he might find. So I push past him, more forcefully than I intend, apologising as I collect the still full mug of now cold tea from the lounge and busy myself through to the kitchen. Mug rinsed out and put on the drainer. ‘Must have got distracted,’ I explain about the tea. I straighten out the tea towels on the cooker handle. I fuss.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he says, dropping into a kitchen chair.

  I keep my back to him, wiping down the crumbless worktops. ‘The fire was a treat, we used to have one at home.’ Is it still lit? ‘Dad used to hate how often Mum had it on, but she just loved it. She’d keep it burning for as long as she could get away with it. Well past spring, given the chance.’ I ramble my way around a few jobs, then look around to make sure I’ve not missed anything. Searching for my handbag.

  Ed sits with his head in his hands. I daren’t ask if he’s okay, or what’s wrong. At any other time I would have done.

  ‘Oh, now then, what time is it?’ I check a watch I’m not wearing, tapping my arm then pulling my jumper sleeve down. ‘I’ll make a quick bottle before I go. If you dream feed him, you might get a longer sleep.’ Ed doesn’t move, he doesn’t even acknowledge what I’m saying. He gets up, then drops back down again. ‘Ed… is everything…?’

  But before I can leave, or ask him the question, he’s lost all control. I watch as he sobs into the kitchen table. I can’t move, I can’t speak. I can’t do anything until he’s ready.

  I’m not sure how much time passes until he’s got enough control to acknowledge I’m still here. ‘I’m sorry, Rachel. Sorry this…’ He reaches for the kitchen roll, pulling off sheets and burying his face into them. He wipes his eyes, red-rimmed and bloodshot. ‘I just… I tried to… I’m sorry, I…’

  But as he breaks aga
in, so do I. Rational thought has left the building and I move to cradle him, his head pulled into my chest, holding him close to try and fix him. And this – despite being more for me than for him – takes down his guard. The sound of his grief breaks through and as he loses total control of his tears, I’m unable to hold back my own. Tears for what I have just found; tears of anger and self-hatred for looking; tears for abusing his trust; and tears for Ed and this moment. His whole body shakes, he tightens his grasp of my arm, and his fingers dig into my clothes as if he’s desperate for something to cling on to, something to steady him in the moment. I haven’t heard the sound of a man suffering debilitating heartache like this since my dad. But the memory of a sound I’ve blocked out returns louder in my heart than ever before. Dad, in his own room, crying into his bed in the hope it might swallow the sound. It didn’t.

  One of Ed’s hands grips on to my arm. The other pushes against the kitchen table, forcing him closer into my chest. Everything about this moment makes me want to stay and leave in equal measure. It’s too personal. Too close. Too painful to hear when I know what sits in his wardrobe upstairs. I stroke his hair, holding him tight into my chest and I realise how completely and selfishly I am hurting too. Gradually, eventually, the sound of Ed’s grief starts to lessen. His hold loosens enough for me to stand back. Beyond the sound of our breathing, and the hum of the fridge, there is a silence; I wait until he is ready to break it.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Rachel. God, I am so...’ He trails off, still not able to look at me, shaking his head, his fists clenched on top of the table. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay, Ed. It’s okay.’

  Does he feel guilt at the closeness we’ve just shared? I know I do. I step back further, then return to making up a bottle. Guilt scratches at my conscience.

  ‘Tea?’ I offer, my last words before I'll take his silence as my cue to leave.

  ‘I'd prefer something a bit stronger,’ he says.

  ‘That's exactly why I am offering tea.’

  He smiles, sadly, and the cycle is broken. ‘I saw Simon, my brother.’ He’s talking. He’s talking to me. I swallow back the urge to go straight to him, instead planting my feet firmly at this distance, my hands palm down on the worktop. ‘And?’

  ‘We haven’t talked, since…’ I don't need him to explain. ‘He fell off the radar, disappeared. Started drinking. His wife… well, she said stuff. Made accusations.’ He shakes his head. ‘They’re poisoning my mind, Rachel. My memories. They’re splintering my heart and I need it to stop. I can’t go on thinking the most…’

  ‘What stuff?’ I ask, carefully.

  He shakes his head. ‘I feel like I don't know who she is any more.’

  ‘Who?’ I whisper.

  ‘Ellie. I feel like I don’t know Ellie any more. Like she’s a stranger to me. Can you imagine that? How that feels? To be faced with the loss of your wife and at that very moment question the validity of your marriage, your relationship? Everything that was supposedly stable, secure and future-proof is in pieces around me. Things don’t add up, Rachel. They don’t add up and he’s so pissed he can’t answer and she’s… not here.’ He takes a breath, a pause, regaining control. ‘I'm frightened, Rachel.’

  I wish I could tell him he shouldn’t be, but now I don’t know if that’s true. ‘I’m sure it’s… I mean, I don’t…’ I can’t. I can’t say anything because I don’t know the truth either.

  He gets up, reaching for a bottle of whisky before pausing, putting it back and sitting down. ‘I arrived at the hospital that afternoon… you know… I remember the smell… they have a particular smell, hospitals, don’t they? Like clean is trying to cover up death or something. I was distracted, though. People talk about living a nightmare, but it really did feel like that. Like I was in the worst possible dream. All noise seemed muffled, somehow… None of it was real. I don’t remember the specific details of what anyone said to me that day – conversations seemed to leave me as soon as I’d had them – yet I remember the strangest, smallest details of the little things around me.’

  ‘I remember that,’ I say, pulling a chair up. ‘Sitting in our lounge as Dad tried to explain what had happened. My schoolteacher was there – Mr Roberts – he brought me home from school when it happened. He sat in the background, out of place, and I remember wondering who was taking class if Sir was round at ours.’

  ‘When I think about the minutiae of it all, the random little details of open doors that should have been closed, or litter in the corridor. The very things that distracted me at the time are now the things that draw it all back and, suddenly, the muffled, cotton-wool sounds return.’ He pauses halfway through a breath, a memory interrupted. ‘As I walked down that corridor, to the room Ellie was in, I tried my hardest not to see, hear or feel anything going on around me. If I didn’t engage, none of it could be true. But the memories, the image, it’s crystal clear. I engaged. It came true.’

  This time I can’t not take his hand, and yet, as he holds mine back with both of his, I wish he wouldn’t, I wish I hadn’t.

  ‘As I got closer, I noticed an old guy. Dirty, scruffy, he had cuts to his face, his arm was in a sling strapped up to his collarbone. As he was wheeled towards me, I made way to step aside and let him pass. Then I realised he wasn’t old, or dishevelled. He was Simon. It didn’t look like him, he looked... I don’t know. Maybe it was just the fact I was about to identify Ellie; maybe it was the situation that made him look this way; but he looked strange. Different.’

  He holds my hand tighter and I wonder if he knows he’s doing it.

  ‘When I saw him… the look on his face… time ground to a halt. As did I. And I knew, I just knew. He’d called me when it happened. The ambulance crew took the phone from him as he shouted down it, as he screamed out in pain. It wasn’t until I got to the hospital that I realised the pain he screamed was the realisation he was responsible. He was guilty.’

  ‘Oh, Ed.’

  He takes one hand away, rubbing the side of his face. ‘That same night, back home, my jaw ached from teeth clenched all afternoon, trying to stay strong, failing. I was fighting this urge, a sort of animal instinct, to hate him, to lash out.’

  He rubs his nose, then his face, one hand first, then both, leaving mine free to retreat to the safety of my jumper sleeve. I could tell him that things like that fade; that the memories of the pain are replaced with love. But I still remember it all too. It never goes.

  ‘I try to fight it sometimes. I don’t want to remember. It hurts and it won’t go, Rachel. It won’t go.’ He swallows, eyes focused on mine, until he stares back into middle-distant memories. ‘They gave me back Oli, you know – after. They said that he was fine. That Simon had managed to get him out of the car. And I remember thinking at the time, the last person to touch Oli wasn’t her.’

  I hug myself, the trace of her diaries still laced on my fingers.

  ‘Lisa thinks they were having an affair.’

  I stare at him.

  ‘I needed to know.’ His voice is low, controlled.

  ‘And?’ I say carefully.

  He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. And it’s killing me, Rachel.’

  And here comes the guilt, a great tidal rush of it coursing through my veins. Do I know? Do I know the truth? Should I tell him, despite what that ultimately means? The baby monitor flickers and the kitchen grows cold.

  I can’t tell him. Because I don’t know either. Not really. I’d be making assumptions, too, like he is. Like Lisa may have.

  ‘You need to try to sleep, Ed. You can’t face this, you can’t fight it, exhausted.’

  ‘How can I sleep?’ he asks. ‘When every time I close my eyes her body lies before me. Cold. Cut. Lifeless. Every time I close my eyes I can smell the diesel from her clothes, and the blood. That sticky, metallic smell that days before had been new life, a smell shared with Oli, and in that moment… it was death.’

  ‘Ed...’ We star
e at one another for a beat, before he nods, letting his head drop to the table.

  ‘I think you should go,’ he says. ‘If that’s okay.’

  ‘Of course,’ I say, jumping up to grab my bag, relieved for a chance to get away. ‘I’m so sorry, Ed,’ I say, wishing I could explain what I was sorry for.

  Ed gets up to follow me down the hallway. ‘I’ll see myself out,’ I say, but he’s there, right behind me. My skin tingles as he reaches beyond me for the door, his arm brushing against mine.

  ‘Ed. You’re all that matters to that little boy now. It’s important you remember that. Bitterness and anger, it changes nothing but our hearts. It makes us ill. Acceptance and learning to cope, to manage, to find a way to put on the face of someone who’s dealing with it on the days when you aren’t. That's what you need to find. You won’t get over this, having someone to blame or not. You will just get on with it. Because you have to. We all do.’

  He nods.

  ‘Look in her eyes,’ I say, pointing at the wedding photo by the door. ‘That look is what you have to hold on to.’

  I pick up my coat from the stand as Ed fumbles in his pocket, pulling out a ten pound note. ‘Please, I can’t. I’m just glad I could help.’ I say, guilt coating my words.

  I leave him staring at the photo of the day they thought the rest of their lives would be for each other. At least, I hope that’s what was in her mind. Please, God, don’t let that envelope have had anything to do with Ellie. Please, God, don’t let him realise what I’ve done.

  I couldn’t bear it if he hated me.

  Twenty-Eight

  Ed

  One heavy foot in front of the other, the stairs are mountainous, the whole house overwhelming. It’s too large and too full to be so empty and cold, but it’s just that. Without Ellie, it’s empty. Cold. It’s not home.