Shannon wiped her nose on a bare goosepimpled arm, and Josie stared mindlessly at the shining snail trails she left behind.
‘Sorry,’ Josie muttered, more to Shannon than Shannon’s mother.
The girl turned her eyes down to the ground, pressed herself into her mum’s side, sniffed again.
‘I’m really, really sorry,’ Josie said, and then the wretched tears were back, spilling out of her. She dashed them away, but her eyes felt so sore, so gritty and tired and tender, that more tears just leaked down in their place.
There was an awkward pause. ‘Um . . . Is everything OK?’ the woman asked, her tone reduced from bollocking mode to merely gruff and embarrassed-sounding.
‘No,’ Josie replied. It was a relief to be honest at last, to let the truth tumble out of her. ‘No, everything is awful. Everything’s gone wrong. My husband—’
She stopped. What the hell was she doing? What was she saying?
Sam’s waving arm caught her eye and she pushed a smile on to her face automatically, felt her own arm lifting itself from the table to wave back. A pink, cold limb moving back and forth like a windscreen wiper. How odd to feel so completely detached from one’s own body, she found herself thinking. How peculiar that my arm knows what to do when the rest of me doesn’t.
‘Look at me, Mum!’ she heard his thin voice call, carried by the wind.
‘Well done, love!’ she bellowed back. She blew her nose, and glanced up cautiously to Shannon and her mum. ‘Sorry,’ she said again, and wiped her eyes. ‘I’m fine, honestly.’ Her voice was wobbling, and she drew breath and said it again, a little louder. ‘I am absolutely fine.’
Cornwall had been one of Josie’s best ever holidays. Forget the five-star luxury the other mums she knew yearned for. Forget the far-flung adventures she’d so recently been craving. Pure happiness for Josie had been that fortnight last July when the four of them had rented a little cottage in St Ives. It had been the first summer that the boys had been old enough to truly appreciate digging moats in the wet sand, squealing in excitement as the sea curled in ever nearer at the end of the day and dissolved their castle walls. It was the first time the boys and their armbands had been in the sea, too – and they’d loved it. Pete had bought a junior surfboard and spent ages teaching them to float on it, pushed along by the waves. Josie had watched them from the warmth of the beach, a fat sand-sprinkled novel in her hands, and had been filled to the brim with love and joy. This is as good as it gets, she had told herself. My husband, tanned and gorgeous in his trunks, making our boys shriek with laughter in the sea. Yes. As good as it gets.
The sun had shone down every day. They’d eaten out most evenings all together, before shoulder-riding the boys back up the hill to the cottage. And then she and Pete had drunk wine in the tiny, fragrant back garden as the sky reddened, their skin tingling from the day’s sunshine, crickets chirruping from the undergrowth.
They’d held hands over the wonky-legged white metal table, whose top was patterned like a doily, and had talked, really talked. They’d set the world to rights. They’d made plans. And they’d decided that they’d try for another baby.
Josie had fingered the petals of the cream shrub roses near her seat. ‘Do you like the name Rose, if it’s a girl?’ she’d asked.
‘Yes,’ Pete had replied.
And Josie had breathed in the perfume of the roses, and smiled across at her husband. ‘Let’s have us a Rose,’ she’d said.
The phone was ringing as they pulled into the drive later that afternoon. Josie was quite sure of it, could hear it over the dying mumble of the engine. She jerked on the handbrake, pushed the car door open and sprinted into the house. The hall was still as she rushed in, and something about the stillness forced her to stop dead. The air rearranged itself around her shape while the slow sliding tick of the grandmother clock cut into the quiet. She felt cheated, tricked. She could have sworn she’d heard the phone; had been positive Pete was trying to get through.
‘Mum!’ she heard the boys chorus from the car. ‘MU-U-U-UM!’
Josie cocked an ear and glanced up at the stairway. Had that been a creaking floorboard she’d heard up there? ‘Pete?’ she called breathlessly, head tilted towards the ceiling. ‘Is that you?’
She struggled to remember if the door had been double-locked when she’d opened it. She’d been in such a hurry to get to the phone, she couldn’t think clearly. Or had she left the mortice unlocked herself? Probably. She’d been in such a daze that morning, it was surprising she hadn’t left the bacon pan on the stove, smoking away over the cheerful blue flame.
Josie put her arms around herself and shivered. Pete’s car wasn’t in the driveway so of course he wasn’t here. He’d still be at work, remember, stupid? It was Monday afternoon. Life was going on everywhere else in the world, children traipsing home from school, office workers surreptitiously looking at their watches and sighing, babies being born, husbands cheating on wives . . .
Wake up, Josie! Just because she was out of sync with the world didn’t mean that everyone else was too.
‘Mu-um! Mu-um!’
‘In a minute,’ she called tonelessly without moving. ‘Just coming.’
The house seemed dead, a mere receptacle of dust motes and static objects, with no life or movement, just the creeping of time. Just the slow withering and dying of plants, the desiccation to brown husks of flowers in their vases, just the leftover food slowly growing mould in the fridge to show that hours and days were passing by.
‘MUM! Let us
out
!’
Josie turned and went to unstrap her children, both straining wildly against their seatbelts, red-faced and indignant at being left. The house needed them more than ever, running through its rooms, stirring up the stale air, knocking and dislodging things in their rushing wake.
She locked the car, double-checking all the windows were shut. She hadn’t even switched the headlights on, but she checked that they were off anyway. Handbrake on? Check. Was the boot locked? Emptied of all valuables? Yes. Keep it together, keep it together, she told herself. If the car was safe, that was one less thing to worry about. It was the kind of comfort she needed right now.
While the boys embarked on a noisy game downstairs, Josie went up to her bedroom, just to make sure that everything was the same as she’d left it. She was pretty sure Pete wouldn’t do anything as cowardly as sneak into the house when it was empty to collect his things without contacting her first, but who could say what he’d do now? She’d never dreamed that he could even give the eye to somebody else, let alone sleep with them, become so bewitched by them that he left her, his wife of seven years, and their children. Nothing would ever surprise her again, she thought, tramping heavily up the stairs. Nothing.
She pushed open their bedroom door. It only took a cursory glance to take in his half-read thriller still by the bedside table, the alarm clock turned towards his side of the bed, for her to realize he hadn’t been. She sank down into the softness of their quilt, relieved that she hadn’t missed him.
Then relief became doubt. So if he hadn’t come by today, when
would
he? What did it mean, him not coming to collect more of his things? Maybe he’d had second thoughts, and was planning to come home that evening. Or maybe he and Sabine were joking about him having to borrow pairs of her knickers, her dressing gown, her toiletries. Was it more of a thrill, casting off his possessions temporarily? Casting off his whole
life
?
Josie sank backwards on to the bed. Calm down, she told herself. He was at work, that was all. Pete wouldn’t take time off for something so trivial as his marriage breaking down. She should have known that.
She rolled on to her front so she could smell him on the covers. Pete. There was just a trace of his aftershave lingering on his pillow, and she wrapped her arms around it tightly. Come home, she urged him. Come back.
Josie swallowed hard – and there it was. The metallic taste in her mouth that only meant one thing. She was ovulating. She imagined her milky white egg faithfully rolling along its path where it would lie and wait for fertilization . . .
Right. Like that was going to happen now.
‘Three more to go and we’ve got a five-a-side team,’ Pete had joked the day the boys had been born. He’d been crouching low to look at her, a proud protective arm – a dad’s arm! – laid across her in the operating theatre.
‘Three more, eh?’ she’d laughed. ‘I think these two will be enough to get on with for now.’
The comment had come back to her time and time again over the next six months as she’d entered the twilight zombie world of twin babies: endless night feeds, puke-cleaning, bum-wiping and heaving double-buggy manoeuvres. Three more? Not likely, a voice muttered in her head. Never again would she put herself through all of this. Not for anybody. Never ever
ever
. . .
People forget, though, don’t they? Mothers forget. Little things – car keys, sun hats, spare nappies. And big things – pain, sleepless nights, crying at breakfast every morning because she was so hideously exhausted. It had been hard, bloody hard. She had felt as if her whole identity had been sucked out of her as she battled through the days and weeks. She didn’t wear make-up for a whole year. She didn’t get a lie-in for even longer. She no longer yearned for new shoes or bags. She yearned only for sleep.
Yet it passed. And last summer, she’d felt that her batteries had finally been recharged. She was ready to do it all over again.
So they’d tried, Pete and Josie. How they’d tried to make Rose. Flat on her back, legs in the air, Josie would lie there each month, willing on the sperm to swim into the right area, to do the right thing. Sex became mechanical, something to be ticked off.
‘We have to do it tonight. I know you’re tired, but I’m sure this is the night, I’ve counted in my diary and . . .’
‘Wait, Pete! Let me put a pillow under my bum! Apparently it helps the sperm get there faster.’
‘Have you taken your zinc supplement? You know it’s good for your fertility, don’t you?’
She’d lie there afterwards, hoisting her bottom in the air, uncomfortable and sticky, not daring to move. Half an hour, it said in her book. Lie on your back, legs raised, for half an hour. If nothing else, she was getting her stomach muscles back, she joked. Pete’s smile never quite reached his eyes.
Then the finger-crossing would start. And the date consultations. Her last period had started on 22 February, so if she was pregnant now, the baby would be due on . . . She’d follow the line of dates in her pregnancy book. 28 November. Lovely! Just in time for Christmas!
The alcohol would stop. Just in case.
The positive thoughts would start. Just in case.
She’d dream about her daughter. Rose Winter. Beautiful, strong, feisty Rose! A baby in the family again. She’d have to dig out the high chair and baby clothes from the loft, buy a brand-new single pram. No more dark blue or red or khaki – for Rose it would be pink and lilac all the way. She’d need muslins and nursing pads, a new sterilizer, a nice girly mobile to hang above the cot . . . She would create the perfect world for her daughter to come into.
If only Rose would just hurry up and
come
!
That was the problem. Josie’s imaginary daughter was feisty enough not to come when she was called. She ignored
all
the calls, in fact, for month after month after month, until sex had become a chore and Josie’s period was a peak of sheer misery every four weeks.
Then the sex stopped altogether. Pete told her he felt depressed, that he couldn’t give her what she wanted. Maybe if they stopped trying so hard, had fun again, it would happen. Hence a carrier bag full of Agent Provocateur lingerie and what-have-you. Anything to get things going!
But now she’d have to face facts. The baby stuff gathering dust in the loft might as well go to the next playgroup jumble sale, or the charity shops. She wasn’t going to need it now, was she?
The phone jerked Josie out of her thoughts. A hiccup caught in her throat, and she passed a hand nervously through her hair. Right, OK. If it was Pete, what was she going to say?
She grabbed the receiver without thinking anything else. Better answer quick before he bottled it and hung up.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Barbara,’ announced a voice. ‘Is Pete there?’
Josie felt her whole body tense. Did her mother-in-law really have to be so damn rude on the phone? she wondered. No ‘Hello, Josie.’ No ‘How are you, Josie?’ Not even a ‘How are my darling grandsons, Josie?’
‘Hello, Barbara,’ Josie said, unable to stop the sarcasm sliding into her voice. Sod it. She could be as rude as she liked in return today. ‘I’m very well, thank you for asking. No, Pete
isn’t
home. Actually, I’m surprised you’re trying to get hold of him here. I thought he’d have told you himself.’
Silence. There, gotcha, Josie thought. Didn’t see that one coming, did you?
‘Told me what?’ Barbara asked.
‘That he’s left me!’ Josie replied. Her voice didn’t sound like her any more. It was a voice she’d put on for interviews in the past: tinny, artificially bright. Chirpy, even. ‘I can’t believe he hasn’t told you, Barbara. He’s left me and the boys for his new fancy woman. So why don’t you call him on his mobile and ask him to tell you all about it? I’m sure he’s dying to tell you what a spineless shit he really is. Goodbye!’ The word was practically a trill as she slammed the phone down, the breath panting out of her in hot painful spurts as if she’d just been running.