My Favourite Wife (32 page)

On the seventh day Bill could no longer keep his eyes open. He slumped forward in the chair by the bed, his head lolling, unable to believe that he could be so tired.

‘Go home,’ the old man wheezed. ‘Go home and get a good night’s kip.’

Bill was used to his father’s new voice by now. He had almost forgotten what the old voice sounded like. This was normal – the croaking voice, the lungs with no air, the unbearable pain of inhaling and exhaling. All normal now. Bill could hear every pitiful breath, every one of them as undeniable as a scar. But although Bill was fighting to keep his eyes open, his father seemed more awake than he had been for a long time. The pain had retreated for now, and with it the doses of morphine. The old man almost seemed restored to his former self. Giving his son orders, knowing what was best for him, and not willing to discuss it.

‘I mean it,’ the old man commanded. ‘Go get some kip.’

Bill stood up, stretched his back. ‘I might do that,’ he said. ‘I might get some kip, Dad. Come back in the morning.’

‘Good idea.’ His father was sitting up in bed. But then he was always sitting up, even when he was sleeping. The old man nodded encouragement, not so stern now. Just wanting what was best for his son.

‘Just for a few hours,’ Bill said, and he looked at his father’s freshly shaven face, smooth as a baby, and he suddenly remembered what he had to tell him. ‘Dad?’

The old man had sunk back into his pillow. There was no sign of the pain that seemed to suddenly paralyse every muscle in his face. He seemed peaceful. As though he were about to close his eyes and get some kip too. ‘What?’

It was so simple. And so obvious. And so necessary. ‘I love you, Dad,’ Bill said. And then he laughed with embarrassment.

The old man opened his eyes and smiled. ‘Yeah. I know you do. And I love you too. You know I do.’

Bill hung his head. ‘I’m so sorry, Dad.’

‘What for?’

‘That I never told you before.’

The old man smiled at his grown-up son. ‘Once is plenty.’

They called him in the morning to tell him that his father had died.

He knew what it was before he answered his mobile in the spare room of Sara’s house. He already knew. A world without his father in it.

It was a one-minute phone call from someone he had never met and who he would never meet. They were as sympathetic as they could possibly be, under the circumstances. Bill sat on the edge of the bed and stared at his phone. It was the most natural thing in the world, and the most momentous. The end of the old man’s life. It felt both ordinary and epic.

Bill went to the room’s small window, stared out at the suburban street and tried to feel something. But nothing came. He couldn’t even cry. All he could feel was a bleak relief that all that pain was over, and a nagging guilt that he had not been there at the end, and a gratitude that the old man had been his father.

He went downstairs to where he could hear voices. He didn’t feel like company but Sara was there with Becca in the kitchen. Becca looked at Bill and stood up and she knew, just got it straight away, and he went to her arms and let her hold him before breaking away with an apologetic smile. Sara touched his arm and slipped out of the room.

Becca pulled him close and he leaned against her, her blonde hair in his face, his mouth against her skin, and he revelled in his wife, he inhaled her, he wanted to get lost in her.

‘He was a lovely man,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry, Bill.’ She looked at his face. ‘You should sleep on for a bit.’

‘But there’s so much to do, Bec.’ Feeling giddy with the thought of it.

He had to collect his father’s things from the hospital. He had
to arrange a funeral. He had to tell everyone who knew and loved the old man that he was gone. He had to register the death. All the banal admin of death. He had to do all of that. And he had no idea how to do any of these things.

‘It can all wait a while,’ Becca told him, and she stroked his back as he held her. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know, Bill. But you’ve still got us.’

He nodded, turning away from her, hiding his face. In the hallway he bumped into Sara, rounding up her children. To get them out of the house, Bill thought. To give us space. They were girls of six and eight and a boy of ten. And then he was in Sara’s arms and he was touched by her tears, the tears that he couldn’t cry himself.

Sara was an older, sportier version of Becca, wearing a T-shirt advertising her Pilates class, and her cropped, dyed red hair was the only sign of any other life beyond the one she had now.

Becca had been right about Sara and Bill had been wrong. Sara had been through her adventures, and her changes, and come out the other side as a real sister to Becca, and a loving aunt to Holly, and a friend to Bill’s family, even though he had not known it until now.

Sara’s partner came down the stairs. He shook Bill’s hand, offered his condolences and told Sara’s children they were going to the park. He was a tall, quiet man in a track suit, some sort of personal trainer. Bill had been wrong about him too.

Here was the little family that had looked after Holly when Becca was nursing her own father, and they were clearly all such decent people, and so smitten with Holly, and so sorry to hear of the death of Bill’s dad, that Bill felt a flush of shame. Not only for what he had thought of them, but what he had thought of his wife. How could he have believed that Becca would ever leave Holly somewhere she wasn’t safe and loved? How could he have imagined that? What was wrong with him?

‘Thank you,’ Bill said to them. ‘For everything. I’ll go to see Holly.’

She was watching a Wonder Pets DVD in the living room. He picked her up but she squirmed out of his arms, her eyes not leaving the TV screen.

‘I want to watch this,’ she said.

The room was cool and dark and the only light came from the screen where the Wonder Pets were rescuing some sort of egg.

‘But when are they going to have the happy ending?’ Holly asked him.

He smiled. ‘I’m sure they’ll get there in the end,’ he said, standing up and lifting his daughter with him. Heavy, he thought. Heavier all the time. But always his baby girl. She peeped at the DVD over his shoulder. He wanted to get it out of the way. He wanted to be beyond this moment.

‘Darling, your granddad’s in heaven now.’ He didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t know how to explain death to a four-year-old. He didn’t know where to begin. ‘He loved you so much. Just so much. And he will always be looking down on you, and he will never stop loving you.’

‘I know,’ she said, turning her blue eyes from the television to her father. ‘Granddad was here.’

‘Yes, Granddad Joe is always here for you, and he loves you too,’ Bill said. ‘I’m not talking about Mummy’s daddy. I’m not talking about Granddad Joe.’

Holly shook her head impatiently. ‘Me neither. Not Granddad Joe. My other Granddad. The one that died.’ She looked at him now and did not turn away her clear, unwavering gaze. ‘Your daddy. He was here. And he smiled at me.’ Holly nodded once, as if it was all settled. ‘It’s true, you know.’

He looked at her for a moment and then he held her tighter than he had ever held her before. Winter sunshine was pouring into the room, the windows of the suburban London house turning to blocks of blazing gold, and Bill had to close his eyes against it.

‘I know it’s true,’ he whispered to his daughter, and his heart
was full of love and grief and an edge of fear that he could not deny.

The key turned in the lock and Bill had to press hard against the door to move all the junk mail.

Becca followed him into the darkness and stale air of his father’s house, watching his face as he paused and looked around, as if seeing the place where he had grown up for the first time.

She found a switch and turned on some lights.

‘You okay?’ she said, touching his arm.

He nodded. ‘You can’t breathe in here,’ he said.

‘I’ll open some windows,’ she said.

She looked around for a key to the back door and found it under the mat that said
Our Home
in florid, faded letters. She threw open the back door and looked out at the scrubby patch of neglected garden, filling her lungs with air that didn’t taste of tobacco and illness.

Bill was in the living room, peering at the bookcase. Under one arm he carried a stack of flat-packed cardboard boxes and in the other hand he had a thick black roll of rubbish bags. That was their job today. To decide what went to Oxfam and what was thrown away.

‘Remember this?’ he said, and she was glad to see him smile.

He was looking at a photograph of Holly. She was three years old, holding a thick pink crayon like a miniature javelin and grinning at the tiny black girl standing next to her.

‘First day of nursery,’ Becca said. Their eyes scanned the bookcase. It was a bookcase that contained no books, just a few ragged copies of
Reader’s Digest
and
National Geographic
, some souvenirs of foreign holidays – Spanish castanets, a Chinese doll – and shelf after shelf of family photographs.

Bill’s parents on their wedding day. Bill as a baby in the arms of his mother. Bill as a crop-haired toddler with his father down
on one knee beside him, the boy standing on his father’s thigh. Bill and Becca on their wedding day. And Holly everywhere, from birth to now. If Becca looked quickly along the shelves, it was like watching her daughter grow up before her eyes. ‘He was lonely,’ Bill said.

‘He had a lot of people who loved him,’ she said. ‘You saw that at the funeral.’

Bill picked up a
TV Guide
on the coffee table, still open at the day his father had been rushed to hospital. His finger traced the favourite programmes ringed in red ink. Cop shows, hospital dramas, sport.

‘Shall we make a start?’ Becca said. ‘Or do you want to do it some other time?’ He shook his head.

After she had filled a few rubbish sacks with the contents of the kitchen cupboards, much of it with a use-by date from the last century, Becca went upstairs. Bill was in the bedroom, sitting on the bed with a green box file on his lap. She sat down next to him. He was holding a photograph clipped from a magazine, a picture of Bill in black tie with Becca in an evening gown by his side. They held champagne flutes and each other, smiling uncertainly.

‘Our first Burns night at the firm. We look so young.’

He nodded but said nothing, and she saw that the box on his lap was full of cuttings from trade papers. Bill made no move to touch them so, very carefully, Becca began to leaf through them, as if afraid they might disintegrate in her hands.

‘Look,’ she said, showing Bill a torn and sellotaped certificate with his name on it that said, LEGAL WEEK AWARDS – SECOND RUNNER UP – HIGHLY COMMENDED.

‘All the crap he kept,’ Bill said. He shook his head and covered his face with his hands. ‘I just wanted to make him proud of me.’

Becca put her arm around his shoulders. ‘Look around,’ she said. ‘You did.’

He kept his hands over his face. ‘Don’t give up on me, Bec,’ he said.

She laughed at the thought. ‘Why would I do that?’ she said.

The three of them stood at the foot of the hill, waiting. The only sounds were the distant buzz of the late-afternoon traffic, the voices of small children playing in the park, and the wind whipping through the bare branches of the trees up on Primrose Hill.

Holly yawned. Bill looked at Becca.

‘It’s not going to happen,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

Becca shook her head.

‘Wait. Let’s wait just a little bit longer.’

Holly sighed elaborately. ‘Oh, come
on
, Mummy,’ she said, her shoulders slumping theatrically to convey her exhaustion.
‘Please.’

‘One more minute,’ Becca said, not budging. She felt her husband and her daughter exchange exasperated looks, and ignored them. She had faith.

Then she saw it. While Bill and Holly were still fidgeting with irritation and looking elsewhere, Becca saw the giraffe suddenly sway into view above the tree line, looking at the three of them out of the corner of its eye, ruminatively chewing a mouthful of leaves, and before she could cry out there was another, and then another, all of them gazing down on the little family with quizzical disdain.

‘Look, look, look!’ Becca was crying, afraid that her grumpy companions would miss them, but by then Bill and Holly were laughing too, squinting up into the pale winter sunshine and applauding wildly at the sight of the secret giraffes.

Bill wanted them to check into a hotel, but Sara would not hear of it.

Holly was in with the two girls and Becca and Bill were in the
guest room. Becca knew it was not what he wanted. Bill was anxious to be alone with his family again, and to close the door on the rest of the world. On his last night, he watched her as she came towards the bed in just her panties and a T-shirt, and she knew that look. She stood by the side of the bed, smiling at him.

‘Bill, I’ll be back in Shanghai next week,’ she said. ‘And these walls are really, really thin.’

He shrugged. ‘We could just have a cuddle.’

‘Yeah, right. I know your cuddles.’ She slid into bed beside him and he wrapped his arms around her as if he had been waiting for a long time. He whispered her name, and then said it again.

‘We would have to be really, really quiet,’ she said, stifling a laugh. ‘I mean it, Bill.’

He nodded, ready to promise anything, pushing up her T-shirt. ‘I’ll put on my silencer,’ he said, and she felt his mouth on her lips, and on her face, and on her ribs, and she could feel how much he wanted her, and it felt familiar and new all at once.

Later he lay on his back and she lay on her side in his arms, the pair of them drifting away to sleep, the way they always used to.

Becca wondered – when had they stopped sleeping like this? After they were married? After Holly was born? When had sleeping in his arms become something that she no longer did?

‘Come back with me,’ he whispered. ‘In the morning. The pair of you. I can get you on my flight. It’s not too late, Bec.’

‘Soon,’ she said, patting his chest. ‘Very soon.’