My Husband's Wife (32 page)

Naomi broke into a run the second she saw her. ‘Mummy!’ she screamed, literally screamed, at the top of her voice.

The entire playground looked in their direction – not that Rosie cared or even noticed. She was intent only on grabbing that child and holding her close. Naomi fell into her, burying her face in her mum’s neck as she cried.

‘Ssshhh... It’s okay, my little one. I’ve got you.’

‘My mummy,’ she breathed, as if just to be able to say the word was a blessed relief.

They stayed there for some minutes, with Rosie kneeling on the grey London pavement, holding her little Devon maid tightly in her arms while they both gave in to the tears that flowed.

‘I missed you so much!’ Rosie whispered.

Naomi held her tightly, almost as if she were afraid to let her go.

Rosie ran her fingers up her daughter’s back and felt the ends of the blunt bob that sat beneath her chin. She would talk to Phil about it later; this was not the time for anything other than reconnecting.

Leona stood by her dad’s side, burying her face in his jeans and stealing glimpses of her mum.

‘It’s okay, Leo,’ she cooed, over Naomi’s shoulder. ‘It’s only me! I look a bit different, don’t I?’ She smiled, swiping at her tears with the flat of her fingers.

Leona nodded and turned her face back into her dad’s leg.

Naomi unhooked her arms from around her mum’s neck and placed them on either side of her face.

‘They got rid of Truffle. They sent him to a farm.’ She spoke with such maturity and sadness, it was almost unbearable. ‘But Melody said they probably gave him an injection that killed him, that’s what happened to her dog who was old. And Tilda said that might be true and I asked Daddy and he said I was being stupid, but he did that looking-at-the-wall thing he does when he’s telling me a fib, like “Oh, sure, you can have a party” or like when I asked him if he could get One Direction to babysit for us. Do you know what I mean, Mum?’ Naomi kept her face inches from Rosie’s, as if only this proximity would suffice.

‘Yes.’ She knew exactly what she meant. ‘But I don’t think Daddy would do that. I really don’t.’ Again, she prayed this was the truth.

Naomi nodded, clearly hoping so too. ‘You’ve got pinky-white funny bits on your face.’ She stuck the end of her index finger against the splotches near Rosie’s mouth and below her eye where the skin was shiny, taut and a little puckered in the centre.

‘I know.’

‘You look like...’ Naomi looked upwards, considering how best to describe her mum’s face. ‘You look like a patchy cow, but a baby cow whose skin is not brown and white but pink and white and a bit wrinkly.’

‘Thank you.’ She kissed her child, relieved and happy that Naomi had rationalised the way she looked now and wasn’t afraid to touch the affected areas.

Leona continued to hide. Rosie winked at her when she peeked from the side of her dad’s leg. In response, Leona closed her eyes.
Little Ostrich! Give her a bit of time, Rosie. It’s okay.

Phil opened the back door and the girls climbed in. ‘Who fancies pizza?’ he asked.

‘Me! Me! Me!’ Naomi shouted, bouncing up and down on the seat.

Leona buried her chin in her chest and kept her gaze pointing downwards.

Phil started the engine and indicated.

‘They’ve had their hair cut.’ Rosie spoke through gritted teeth.

‘Gerri said Daddy didn’t have time to do our hair in the morning and it was easier to get it cut off, so we did.’

Rosie turned to the girls and smiled to show that it was fine, not wanting to alarm them or fight with their dad in front of them.

‘It feels weird, Mum. I can’t do bunches and when I shake my head I can’t feel it on my back.’

‘You look lovely. You both do. Very grown-up.’ She knew it would be hard to explain to anyone other than the mother of a little girl just how important their hair had been. She swallowed the sorrow, not wanting to taint any of their precious time together.

‘Who fancies Venicci’s?’ Phil shouted.

‘Me!’ Naomi yelled and even Leona managed to raise a half-smile.

Rosie felt a spike of alienation, which persisted as they parked and then walked along a cobbled street at the back of High Street Kensington towards the little Italian restaurant that the girls were clearly familiar with. Naomi held her hand tightly, telling her how she could count to ten in French and going on to do just that, loudly. She stared at her daughter, who looked so much older without the tumble of baby curls around her face. Leona, too, looked more pointed, less rounded, as though she had grown up. Rosie didn’t like it one bit.

‘I’m sitting next to Mummy!’ Naomi shouted and pulled out one of two high-backed chairs.

Leona climbed onto the one opposite her mum. Rosie could feel her staring at her, but when she looked towards her, Leona closed her eyes.

A charming, portly, curly-haired man in a V-necked cashmere sweater and white shirt swooped over and slapped Phil on the back. ‘What’s going on here? You’ve traded in Miss Farmer already? I’ll tell her, you know!’ He laughed, winking at the girls to show it was all in jest, no harm done.

Rosie again felt her cheeks flush at the fact that she was an interloper. She pictured the four of them visiting the place with such regularity that her kids knew where to sit and the owner felt comfortable coming over to make physical contact with her husband.

‘Can I have garlic bread and some Coke and a Hawaiian pizza. Please,’ Naomi said without looking at a menu. She beamed at the man.

‘Of course, bella. And for you, shy little one?’ He looked towards Leona.

‘She’ll take the same.’ Phil smiled at his new friend.

Rosie registered the fact that she felt unable to answer for Leo, so quickly had she slipped from her role as primary carer. It didn’t matter how many times she told herself that it was temporary, the sense of loss was still acute.

Opening the menu, she stared not at the food on offer but at the prices. Twenty-four ninety-nine, eighteen pounds, forty-three pounds a bottle... She considered the fourteen pounds in her purse, the remains of the money her dad had given her, looked up at the girls’ neat, short hair and then at Phil, the man to whom she was married, and her sadness threatened to crush her. This was a world that was unfamiliar to her and the thought that followed almost knocked the breath from her.
They are leaving me behind and I can’t catch up even if I want to. I have a life of omelette and chips, eaten on my lap, of charity-shop bags and an uncertain future. I thought loving you was enough, but maybe it isn’t, maybe I was wrong.

‘Rosie?’ Phil prompted.

She looked up to see all four faces turned towards her. The man was holding the others’ menus aloft, waiting.

‘Sorry. Just a coffee, please.’

‘Have pizza, Mummy!’ Naomi urged.

‘I’m not hungry, darling,’ she lied, ‘but a nice coffee would be great.’ She handed the tall menu back to the man and placed her hands in her lap.

‘It was lovely to talk to you on the phone, Leo. And a little birdie told me that you lost a tooth?’ She bent her head low and caught her daughter’s eye.

Leona opened her mouth to show her mum the gap where her tooth used to be.

‘Wow! That’s so grown-up. Did you have to tie it to a piece of string and then a door handle and get someone to slam the door? That’s what we used to say was the best way to get your teeth to fall out, but we didn’t really do it.’

‘It came out in my apple.’ Her response was almost inaudible.

‘Goodness me, you could have swallowed it!’ She gasped.

‘Mum...’ Naomi swivelled on her seat. ‘Gerri said that it was you that put the money under my pillow and not the tooth fairy, is that true?’

Both girls were staring at her now, waiting for her response.

‘Well, sometimes there are things mummies and daddies do to make things exciting. You know, like when we used to build a tent in the lounge and eat our picnic in it. Or when we had pirate day and we could only use our pirate names.’

‘Aye aye, Captain Tipcott!’ Naomi showed she hadn’t forgotten.

‘Well, I guess it was a bit like that. We all pretended and it made us happy.’

Leona continued to stare at her mum. ‘They sent Truffle away.’ And then her tears fell, like droplets of glass sliding down her perfect skin.

‘Don’t cry, Leo. Don’t cry, little one.’

Rosie reached for her hand, but instead of taking it, Leona climbed down from her seat and walked round the table. Lifting her youngest child up onto her lap, Rosie held her fast, inhaling her scent and committing the feel of her to memory once again.

‘Oh, not this again.’ Phil sighed. ‘We’ve been over it so many times. It wasn’t fair on him. We travel and we’re out of the house all day and in the summer we’ll be away for months.’

The girls ignored him, as if this justification had not only worn thin but did little to ease their loss.

Rosie spoke over Leona’s head. ‘I think what is unfair is letting them fall in love with a pet, giving them the thing they had always wanted and then sending him away at a time when things were already new and uncertain for them.’

‘Well, thank you for that helpful insight.
I
think what’s unfair is talking about things in front of them that you know nothing about.’

She shrank back in the seat.

‘Gerri shouted at Daddy and he took Truffle to the farm.’ Naomi filled in some of the gaps.

Rosie watched as Phil rubbed his palm over his face. He didn’t look at all like a man who was living the life.

*

Saying goodbye to them at Paddington was harder than she could possibly have imagined. She held them tightly and whispered reassurances, as much for her benefit as theirs.

‘As soon as we can go home and the house is fixed, we’ll make it lovely and we can celebrate by going for a long walk on the beach.’

Naomi looked downcast as she held her one last time. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy,’ she whispered.

‘What are you sorry for?’

Naomi swallowed. ‘Because I talk too much and I am never quiet and I don’t give you a minute to think.’

The words she spoke were not her own and Rosie felt her heart constrict. ‘No! No, darling! You listen to me. Your noise, your chat and the way you laugh, those are the things I miss most. Don’t ever stop being you. I love you just the way you are, noise and all, and when we all get home, I want you to make as much noise as you can! Do you understand me?’

Naomi nodded. ‘I love you, Mummy.’

‘I love you too.’

‘I miss you, Mum.’ Leona joined in.

‘I miss you too.’

Standing on the concourse watching her children walk in the opposite direction left her distraught. She climbed onto the train and cared little that her tear-stained face and noisy sobs drew the stares and comments of her fellow commuters. They didn’t matter. Nothing did.

Arriving at Exeter St David’s, she found her dad standing in the ticket hall, rocking on his soft-soled shoes, his pale blue car coat zipped up under his chin as he waited for her on the other side of the ticket barrier. A group of carollers in bright scarves, gloves and hats, wrapped up against the evening chill, stood in a circle and were midway through ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’. The sound they made was beautiful, angelic, and Rosie found it quite unbearable.

She stumbled towards her dad and uncharacteristically fell into his arms and clung to him, all self-consciousness gone. She needed her dad and, this time, he was there for her.

Rosie had taken to her bed. Like the ladies of the Victorian era who simply retired upstairs with an undiagnosed malaise, refused visitors and spent their days prostrate with nothing but their thoughts for company, she lay there day after day, in deep reflection. Only this was no fictitious disorder; she was full of sadness that weighed her down mentally and physically. Her main preoccupation was wishing that time would go faster, faster.

Christmas was a miserable affair. Hearing the girls’ excited chatter down the line, as they described the vast Christmas tree in the grand hallway and a busy morning with Nanny Mo and Grandad Keith, the cooking of pancakes with bacon, and the rich haul of booty that Santa had delivered, was horrible. Not that she wasn’t delighted for her girls to be the proud owners of iPads, furry ear muffs and trainers with wheels in the base; it was more that their gifts emphasised both her inability to provide for them and her loneliness as she pictured the family that used to be hers gathered round the abundantly decorated tree of her imagination.

Mo had whispered her festive refrain a little awkwardly, obviously within earshot of Gerri and embarrassed by the absence of her daughter-in-law. Rosie had politely declined the offer of staying at Highthorne while Gerri, Phil and the girls were down for two days, knowing it was more than she could cope with. She now refused to leave the bedroom. Not even Shona’s offer of a bowlful of sherry trifle and first dip into the Quality Street tub was enough to tempt her.

Her dad spent the weeks ferrying cups of tea and slices of toast up and down the stairs. If think-positive clichés and self-help quotes could heal, she’d have been leaping about with joy after day two. The only glimmer of hope came in the form of a message from Phil informing her that Keith had spent another couple of days at Arlington Road; still the thought that the materials needed to be paid for gnawed away in her stomach.

She knew that even once the house was habitable again, she could not compete with iPads and Uggs? It felt hopeless. A year ago she would have pooh-poohed the materialism and said that the only things that mattered for her kids were her warm embrace and her unconditional love. Now, though, Leona’s initial reluctance to come to her and Naomi’s tears of apology replayed in her mind like a broken record and each time she went over it her spirits sank a little lower.

Her dad knocked gingerly on the door and entered the room. ‘Morning, Rosie. It’s a lovely bright day and you need to get up and get outside. There are plenty worse off than you.’

She glanced at him from the pillow, as if this reminder of how very fortunate she was could make the slightest bit of difference.
I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I want to go to sleep and never wake up. I want to disappear, like Laurel. I want to run away.