Worn Out Wife Seeks New Life Read online

It was a long conversation between mother and daughter. It was emotional and then quite fraught. Natalie wanted to know all about Bella’s death and cried down the line, which made Tess cry too.

  ‘Oh, I just can’t stop myself at the moment…’ Tess declared. ‘I’m a permanent bloody water feature… and another really upsetting thing is that Alex doesn’t seem to want to come on the full holiday. He’s talking about only coming for the last ten days at most.’

  Tess had certainly expected Natalie to be upset about Bella. But she had not expected the long, guilty pause she heard now. Followed by: ‘Mum… I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the holiday. I think three weeks is going to be too long for me.’

  For a few moments, Tess was too taken aback to speak, then came a rush of angry thoughts. Meaning to talk to me? Just when was she planning to mention it? Too long? Three weeks was too long? Was she planning to just pop over to Thailand for the weekend of a lifetime maybe? And all this time and money I’ve spent already!

  ‘You know that this trip starts in three weeks’ time and I’ve been planning it for months? You do know that, don’t you?’ Tess asked, trying not to lose her cool. ‘You know that it’s all booked and every last detail is sorted and paid for and you could have just mentioned ages and ages ago that you weren’t happy with the three-week plan.’

  Natalie was having such a good time and so determined to stay for the whole summer that Tess was beginning to suspect there was a romantic reason for wanting to ditch the family holiday.

  ‘I mean I can’t just go cancelling and rearranging and spoiling everything because you’ve got a passing whim to go and do something else,’ Tess added, realising that staying cool and calm was going to be just about impossible.

  ‘Well… I just think a week or two-week commitment for a family holiday would be a bit more normal…’ Natalie went on. ‘Mum, three weeks, plus all the days of jetlag… that’s a lot of time to give up for…’

  ‘Give up?’ Tess was really trying to rein in her anger now.

  ‘You and Dad should go,’ Natalie added. ‘You both deserve a break. Treat it like a second honeymoon…’

  ‘I thought we’d all agreed to go on this holiday,’ Tess said, not sure if she was more upset than angry, ‘I thought we were all really excited about it… I thought we’d all have an amazing time…’ she heard the dry sob in her voice and felt that she had run out of tears.

  Now she could hear Dave calling for her and she really had to finish this call and go to give him a hand. Good grief, this day was turning almost as bad as yesterday.

  ‘Natalie, I have to go now. Please think hard about this and I’ll speak to you tomorrow, okay?’ With a final, ‘Loads of love,’ Tess ended the call.

  She got up from the sofa, thinking general ‘ungrateful bloody wretches’ thoughts about her children and stomped into the hallway. She turned to head up the narrow staircase to the upper floor, and just as she rounded the corner to the attic landing, she saw that Dave had, despite her instructions, taken the wonky old wooden ladder, and not the weighty metal one. He was already at the top of it with Bella’s large dog bed in both of his hands and, to Tess, that bloody ladder looked a little unbalanced.

  ‘Dave, for God’s sake,’ she complained.

  Unbelievably irritated with him, she hurried forward to take a steadying hold of the rungs, just as the cardboard patch smoothing out the floorboard underneath the rug finally squashed under the weight of the ladder, and sank just a sudden half a centimetre.

  Tess saw the movement and quickly grabbed hold of the ladder, but this only added to Dave’s sense of unbalance. The dog’s basket flew out of his hands and then his arms flailed as he tried to rebalance and she attempted to grab him, but with an alarmed, ‘Whoooaaaaaaahh!’ which she thought was pretty restrained, considering, he span backwards off the ladder, crashed straight into the wobbly bannister, which promptly collapsed and sent him over the edge of the landing and onto the stairs below.

  ‘Dave!’ she screamed.

  9

  ‘He’s fractured three ribs and broken his ankle. He also has concussion. He can’t remember who Donald Trump is. He can’t remember Donald Trump… can you imagine? That was one of the scariest things…’ Tess realised she was talking at high speed in a jumbled rush to Alex and maybe he needed her to slow down, so he could take this all in. ‘He’s going to be okay,’ she said, pausing to make sure that bit was sinking in, ‘that’s the main thing. He’s definitely going to be okay… on crutches for few weeks… but… okay.’

  It was Monday, almost lunchtime, and everything felt almost all right and quite manageable again after the turmoil of yesterday evening. But she couldn’t help replaying the events over and over again in her mind. Crouching beside Dave on the stairs, calling his name, feeling certain he was dead… or about to die.

  For a few moments, he’d made no sound at all. And all she could think was, don’t die, don’t die, please just do not die. And in those moments, literally nothing else had mattered. She had just wanted her loving husband, Alex and Natalie’s wonderful dad, to please, please be alive.

  Then very quiet groans had followed.

  She’d tried to remember anything at all useful about first aid, but could only come up with: ‘Don’t move the patient if broken bones are suspected.’ She was very glad that his head was higher up the stairs than his body. If he’d been the other way round, she would have had no idea whether she was supposed to move him or not.

  She’d got 999 on the phone and they’d been just as calming, useful and reassuring as she could possibly have wanted. But it had still felt like a very long wait for the ambulance. And getting Dave, in a neck brace, on the edge of consciousness, and in so much pain, down the narrow staircase had been excruciating.

  ‘What’s your name, then?’ they’d asked cheerily to keep him talking. ‘And what were you up to in the attic, then?’

  ‘I’m Dave… Who are you? Where are we going?’

  Even when they gave him answers, he would ask the same questions again after a few moments, revealing his confusion and disorientation, as Tess had panicked about brain swellings and severe head injuries.

  For the next seven hours, every one of her thoughts had been about Dave and was he going to be OK, until finally, just before 4 a.m., a surprisingly chirpy A&E doctor had come to talk to her in the little inner sanctum waiting room about X-ray results, blood tests and the head scan.

  ‘He’s most likely going to be just fine…’ the doctor had told her and she’d felt almost faint with relief.

  ‘But sore and not very mobile for a few weeks. He’s going to have a plaster cast, crutches, the works. He won’t be absolutely back on his feet for about two months. So you’re going to have to think about how to cope with that. Do you have a downstairs bathroom?’

  ‘Mum, that sounds terrible,’ Alex said, interrupting her stream of thoughts, ‘for you and for Dad.’

  ‘Yes… it was… it is.’ Tess was still reeling. This was her second call. She’d already relayed the full accident story to a sleepy and astonished Natalie, who almost certainly had someone in bed beside her – a detail that Tess couldn’t really think about right now. She was trying to park the thought, telling herself she would come back to it later.

  ‘I still can’t believe it’s happened,’ she told her son.

  ‘Dad’s definitely doing okay?’

  ‘Yes… he is… he’s on a load of painkillers, very drowsy, so I’ve not been able to get much out of him. But I’ll be back at the hospital later and I’ll report back. Or give him a call yourself.’

  ‘Yeah… of course. Bloody hell,’ he repeated. ‘So I suppose the holiday’s completely off then?’

  The holiday.

  The holiday…

  ‘The holiday…’ she whispered.

  She hadn’t even got that far in her thoughts. She took this as a sign of how shocked she’d been by what had happened.

  ‘The holiday?’ she repeated.
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br />   The holiday? Was there any way? Any chance?

  ‘Oh my God…’ she whispered.

  At first, her mind scrambled for solutions, as she tried to come up with ways to make this still possible. Surely people could fly with plaster casts? And hotels must have facilities for people on crutches… or would a wheelchair be better? But then… what about the planned white-water rafting? Or the week of trekking into the hills and travelling through the jungle? Even enjoying the wonderful sandy beaches of Thailand…

  It was going to be impossible for Dave.

  All that time spent planning, all those late-night internet trawls, booking a string of special places and experiences and all kinds of lovely things to treat her family with.

  All those careful, lovingly made plans were just crumpled up and gone now.

  The sugary sand, the turquoise sea, the ancient temples…

  ‘Alex…’ she wailed, ‘it’s all ruined…’

  ‘Mum… it’s going to be okay. Don’t worry about it.’

  And then, possibly trying to cheer her up, he added: ‘Knowing you, you had totally fantastic insurance.’

  ‘Oh… that’s so… so… not the point!’ There was a lump in her throat and the heat of tears welling in her eyes.

  ‘Well, it’s quite a good point, Mum. Now you get a full refund and you’ve got three months off work to look after Dad.’

  She absolutely loved her son, would walk barefoot to the ends of the earth for him. But in that exact moment, she could quite cheerfully have throttled him.

  ‘Alex, I wanted us all to have an amazing holiday. An unforgettable holiday. The…’

  ‘Holiday of a lifetime, I know, Mum. I’m sure we will, sometime.’

  Sometime! Now she wanted to laugh. Sometime…

  He made it sound as if one summer was as good as the next, as if there would always be another time. When she was certain that this was it, this was the last chance for it to be just the four of them and that was it, already gone.

  Their last summer as a foursome would now be last year, when they went to Croatia and Natalie was grumpy for the entire ten days because her boyfriend had broken his phone and couldn’t talk to her and she’d burned to a crisp on day two, plus Alex had sulked in his room because he’d got a 2.2 in his degree and couldn’t understand why, and thought it was the worst fate to befall anyone ever.

  ‘I’m really very upset about this,’ she told her son. ‘I mean I’m upset about Dad, of course I’m upset about Dad and for Dad… but he had to use that bloody wooden ladder, didn’t he? Had to use the wooden one… I’m going to drive the bloody thing to the dump later today. No, I’m going to personally smash it up into pieces and burn it in the garden chimenea.’

  She heard the wobble in her voice and felt very sorry for herself. Several weeks at home looking after Dave… well, of course she would have to do it… or… four weeks at the very least, then maybe forget about the sabbatical and return to work early. It certainly wasn’t what she had planned. Not for the first time, her family had made sure she wasn’t doing what she had planned to be doing.

  ‘Are you okay, Mum?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Oh… I’ll be fine. Just have to get on with it, I suppose. How about you, Alex, are you okay?’

  ‘Me? Totally fine.’

  ‘It’s not easy, your first proper job. You’re allowed not to be okay all of the time.’

  ‘I’m fine… really.’

  ‘Okay, I love you and I’ll see you soon. Maybe you’d like to come up and visit your dad.’

  ‘Yeah… of course… I’ll call him. You take care…’

  Alex ended the call and stared for a moment or two at the phone in his hand. How could he say what was really on his mind?

  How could Alex tell his mother how bad things were? How could he soften the blow and stop her heart from breaking? Especially now that she had this Dad disaster to deal with.

  He sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, which was decorated with a brown stain of damp. He was twenty-two years old, and his life was falling apart.

  Alex lived by himself in a tiny bedsit on the outskirts of Croydon. Well, he was sub-letting this bedsit from someone he’d met on Gumtree. The guy was travelling for five months and wanted to make sure the bedsit wouldn’t gain an unwelcome squatter while he was away. His room contained a single bed, a small desk probably bought from Ikea at least twenty years ago, and a flimsy wardrobe with his clothes. There was a small window that overlooked a construction site. Beyond the door of his room was a small kitchenette and a barely functioning shared bathroom.

  His parents did not know he had moved to this place. His parents did not know that he had left his job only nine weeks after he’d started it, because it was unbearable. Everything about his life right now was unbearable. He was supposed to be on the first rung of a respectable career, but actually he was living on meagre benefits in a shambles.

  At night, the orange glare of streetlights bored into the room, filling it with dark shadows, and a huge, hulking metal crane blocked the view of the horizon. Every time Alex saw this crane, he was reminded of a toy he’d had as a child, a wooden crane that could pick up objects with a magnet. That was a nice little toy, red and made of wood, with a little lever to pull things up. I really liked it. Not like this one – so huge and rusted and faceless, and horrible to look at.

  He was now sure that this was how life was: things started out so simple, then snarled up and became so complicated and twisted. Look at the way this thing blocks out the sky! God, how did things get like this?

  Alex was a tall, thin and thoughtful young man, with wavy strawberry blonde hair, and a permanently anxious expression. He had the look of someone who had once been good looking, but hadn’t been able to take care of himself. His skin was pale from lack of time outside, his hair was dry and stuck up at odd angles. His clothes weren’t old, but they were overworn and underwashed.

  Every morning he woke up late, stayed in bed for a few hours watching movies on his phone, then finally got up, and having missed breakfast, went straight to the shopping centre to find some lunch. He only ever ordered something horrible, a Subway or a McDonalds, and he would chew through this disgusting lunch on his own on a park bench, looking the perfect picture of misery, and sincerely wishing he hadn’t wasted his fiver, and had instead gone hungry.

  After this, he rolled by Tesco to pick up some drink. He often bought wine, because his parents used to let him drink it, and it reminded him of home. Then he would spend the evening watching obscure movies, or reading even more obscure books, and desperately trying to drink enough to forget who he was and what he was doing. Or what he wasn’t doing. He definitely wasn’t working in that oh-so promising graduate trainee job with that oh-so impressive city firm. And he wasn’t doing anything else instead… because he had no idea what else to do and he couldn’t face all the busy-ness and business of working life. For five miserable weeks, he’d sat in that swanky London office, enduring the insultingly menial tasks he was given. He wanted to shout at his po-faced manager: ‘I’ve written a 20,000-word dissertation on the macro-economic consequences of Bitcoin!’ as he was handed another photocopying task.

  And finally, one lunch break, he went out for a sandwich and realised he didn’t have to go back. So he didn’t. He never phoned in to explain and he never answered any calls from the place either. Let them figure it out.

  Usually, he went to bed without dinner, but there was hardly any point in going to bed, because at night, he couldn’t sleep.

  This was not at all how he had imagined his big move to London would be.

  His grown-up life, as he’d pictured it, was filled with so much more promise and opportunity. He always used to hope for adventure, excitement and a future full of good things, or at the very least, days spent doing something worthwhile.

  As soon as he finally put away his phone, turned off the light, laid his head on the pillow and tried to drift off, after his lethargic and monot
onous day of doing so little, he could find no peace. The most awful thoughts drifted out of the darkness. He saw his parents arguing and shouting at him years ago, when it looked as if he was going to do badly in his A Levels. They’d found him tutors; they’d helped him into uni, and in his final, stressful uni year, they’d stepped in again to make sure he got through it. He imagined how furious they would be with him, if after all their efforts to get him into this career opening, they found out that he’d failed at it.

  And of course, he thought of death. Death, death, death, he could not escape it.

  ‘What will it feel like?’ he wondered. ‘What comes next?’

  ‘Is this really all there is? Will I really just have another sixty years of sitting around eating Chinese food and pissing about, before it’s all over? What kind of madness is this?’

  Alex couldn’t stand these questions and usually threw off his grimy duvet and paced around the room, waiting for dawn, when all of this might go away. And usually when the first light began to creep in through the window, he felt calmer, and was able to drift off at about five in the morning.

  He was so alone. His head ached with the pain and the embarrassment of his condition. No help. No help from anywhere. What was he going to do?

  So now that the call to his mother was over, he sat perfectly still on his bed. The giant crane loomed over the room, its great iron bars casting unnatural, triangular shadows on the walls.

  Alex felt trapped in a cage.

  10

  River was having breakfast in one of her regular places, a chic and sunny café only a block from her apartment. But the grapefruit was too tart and her coffee was lukewarm and weak, weak… was there a worse crime than making coffee too weak? And even with sunglasses on, the glare of the early morning light was hurting her head.

  She was pecking at her laptop and looking with dread at her financial spreadsheet. She was waiting for two outstanding payments to come in, including the one from Phillip Renfield, which still had not made land. But a very substantial tax bill was due. How could she have earned so little in the past year and yet owe so much tax? She’d already called Irma and had an angry, baffling conversation about past earnings and rollovers and accumulated taxes, which had been just unimaginably awful. And handsome Dylan, who had said he would look after her dogs when she was in England, had just messaged to say: