The Life and Second Life of Charlie Brackwood (The Brackwood Series Book 2) (7 page)

Adam 2003, first day of university.

I flipped the page over and found a picture of a young woman, around the same age as Adam would have been in the previous photograph. The caption at the bottom told me she was Adam’s wife, Emma, and that this photo had also been taken in the year 2003. As Adam had described in his diary, Emma had long, glossy red hair that fell straight as an arrow and was striking against her alabaster skin. She was laughing at something happening behind the camera, making it appear as though she had been taken by surprise in the midst of a funny joke or action. Her eyes crinkled in joy and her perfectly straight teeth were a dentist’s dream. She had high cheekbones and a sharp jawline. Her eyes were an unusual shape, almost feline, and drew an onlooker in as though they held some sort of secret.

She was an attractive woman, I didn’t mind admitting that, but I couldn’t help but think she was out of Adam’s league. One hand was raised to sweep her lustrous hair back, and the other was placed on her right hip. The photo was mesmerising and I wondered whether the photographer had captured a glimpse of her carefree spirit or if the pose had been staged.

Seeing her image lent life to her for me, as if I had known her myself. I turned the page again and found a picture of Adam and Emma as bride and groom, smiling outside the local church as guests showered them in rose petals.

I skimmed past the next few photos that appeared to be more wedding shots, including holiday snaps that saw them posing outside various temples and extravagant buildings, a hint that these were memories of their honeymoon. I stopped at a picture of them both smiling while Emma held a pink and seemingly wriggly infant, swaddled in soft cloth. I could tell by the surroundings, as well as Emma’s obvious exhaustion, that the picture had been taken at the hospital. Proud parents showing off a new-born Ben. I smiled at the image and wondered what had gone so dismally wrong for them both.

The next few pictures captured Ben as a toddler, growing fast and reaching various milestones: first smile, first laugh, first crawl, first step. The last photo saw him at around three years old. He had a small lunchbox in hand and the caption read: ‘Ben’s first day at nursery’.

There were pages left blank in the album, enough space for many more photographs. I wondered if this was the last stage in their relationship. The last time someone had bothered to capture their lives together. The last time someone cared. As I absentmindedly flicked through the blank pages I saw a thin piece of paper flutter in between the folds. I took it out for inspection. The paper was light pink with small blue flowers dotted around the edges that reminded me of the forget-me-nots that grew near the river. It was obvious by its layout that this was a letter.

Adam,

I’m leaving. A simple sentence but an important one. More specifically I’m leaving you, this house and our life together. I have to. I don’t know any other way to say it. I hope you don’t think me insensitive but I know that your anger is inevitable. We’ve been through so much and I have stuck by you through the worst of it, but my mental health is calling out for a respite, for relief.

My head aches with thoughts of you. Not just thoughts of the man you used to be but the couple we once were. Powerful, shatterproof… almost unstoppable. But the aching needs to cease and my mind needs to become peaceful again.

With everything that has happened at school I’m sure you understand why I’m doing this, why I’m moving out. I can’t risk the stigma attached to you having an effect on our son. I’m doing this to avoid malicious whispers and distorted facts. I had a choice to make: stand by you or protect our son. I choose Ben. I’m sure you understand wh
y.

Although this is farewell it is not goodbye. Please stay in touch, for Ben’s sake. There is no need to punish him for your mistakes.

Emma

The letter was heartfelt but with a cold undertone. I sympathised with Adam, I knew what it was like suddenly to lose everything. The question in this case, though, was why? Why did Adam and Emma’s marriage break down? What was the subject Emma was so afraid of becoming gossip? What had happened at Adam’s school? I was even more confused than I had been before.

I folded the letter neatly back into the album and carefully placed it back in the cupboard where I’d found it. I began to wonder why nobody had got in touch with Adam since I had taken over his life. Apart from Russ he had had no visitors, no phone calls, even the neighbours seemed uninterested in him.

I remembered the last page I’d read in the diary and decided it was time for another journey into Adam’s past. I got changed into a pair of tartan pyjama bottoms and crawled beneath the soft sheets of the four-poster bed. I drew my knees to my chest and balanced the diary on top.

2 August 2012

I am full of regret on this sweltering summer’s evening. If life came with a remote control the rewind button on mine would surely be forever broken due to overuse. I seem to have a constant need to reverse time and re-run events in my life that bring me shame. The heat and humidity make it hard for me to concentrate but I will try to recall this evening’s events with as much clarity as I can muster.

A month ago Emma casually mentioned a dinner party we had both been invited to. The hosts were a couple I had met on three occasions in total. Evie and Geoff are both professionals. They live in a large Victorian home with their two children, the youngest is the same age as Ben. Emma had met Evie at a parent and toddler event held weekly at the church hall and when I came home from work one evening I found my ears ringing with Emma’s admiration for her. It was easy to see she had been taken in by Evie.

I was running late on the evening of the dinner party due to a detention I was required to organise for a group of year tens who’d decided it was a great idea to deface a school wall with spray paint. When I came home it was clear that Emma was stressed. She stumbled down the stairs half-dressed as I stepped into the hallway.

“Have you seen my diamond earrings?” she asked, somewhat desperately.

“No, I thought you kept them in your jewellery box?”

“I took them out of there, don’t you remember? I wore them to our anniversary meal.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Never mind,” she interrupted, “just go and get dressed.”

It was clear she was in a frenzy, brought on by the desperate urge to impress her new friends. She would often become needy and eager for acceptance when she met new people; it was a need I never really understood but put down to her upbringing and the many years of watching her own mother behave in the same way. I absent-mindedly put on the nearest shirt I came across in the wardrobe. Emma entered the bedroom, adjusting a newly found diamond earring in her right ear.

“No, not that one,” she hissed, before reaching in front of me and grabbing a light blue Calvin Klein shirt with narrow stripes. I knew she had picked it for its designer label. I looked at her closely for the first time that evening.

“New dress?”

“Yes,” she said as she admired herself in the mirror.

“How much did it cost?”

“Oh, never mind that now.”

“Emma, we are new parents, we can’t afford luxuries like these.”

She shrugged. “I needed a new dress for tonight. It’s no big deal. Besides, you have your own extravagances,” she said sarcastically.

I chose to walk out of the room instead of answering her. As I checked on Ben the doorbell sounded and I made my way to the hallway to answer it. It was Emma’s mum, on babysitting duty.

“Hel-lo,” she sing-songed.

“Hi, Helen, thanks for doing this.”

“Oh, my pleasure,” she said cheerfully. “Where is the little mite?”

I gestured towards the living room and she waddled in that direction, pulling a small bag of sweets discreetly from her pocket as she pushed the door open. Emma and I have a strict no sweets policy and I sighed inwardly. This woman would not be told.

Emma came trotting downstairs, kissed her mum on the cheek and pulled me out of the front door. I could smell the sweet scent of her perfume as it mingled with the humid air; once again she had overdone it and I tried not to gag as the potent odour overwhelmed me.  

I drove carefully, not wanting to upset her, and she laid down some ground rules for me.

“Now, as you know, Evie and Geoff don’t really respond well to sarcasm so I would avoid it at all costs.”

“No jokes… got it,” I said sarcastically. She ignored me and continued.

“Please don’t ask for the leftovers, and don’t talk with your mouth full. Plus you have this terrible habit of fidgeting with your cutlery between courses, don’t do that. Also, Lara and John will be there.”

“The lawyers?” I sighed loudly. Lara and John had even less of a sense of humour than our hosts, Evie and Geoff. The handful of times I have encountered them, they have gone on and on about the large Edwardian house they’re renovating. A subject that I would normally find interesting was made less so by them dragging it out through all three courses, plus coffee and mints. I wasn’t sure I could take much more of: “Oh, but you simply must install an antique roll top bath,” or, “A house is not a home without an orangery, I’m afraid.” It just seems pretentious to me and I knew from our first encounter that Emma and I are too different from them to slot easily into their world, something I knew my wife was secretly hoping to do.

I parked on the driveway outside Evie and Geoff’s monstrosity of a house and as I listened to our shoes crunch their way along the gravel driveway I had a sudden desire to flee. I had made it clear enough to Emma that I would rather spend my evenings with her and Ben, not at an oversized table desperately trying to make small talk with people obsessed with materialism, so what were we doing here?

We were greeted by Evie, pleasant and elegantly dressed. We followed her through the grand hallway, complete with overstuffed, red velvet armchairs and oil paintings of stern-looking women with distinctly male features. My feeling of dread increased.

We joined the rest of the party in the sitting room and the usual pleasantries were exchanged, false words and forced smiles. Eventually we sat down for the first course.

“Wine, Adam?” Geoff asked. “You’ll like this one, brought it all the way back from the French Riviera and kept in our wine cellar for the past few years. You can’t beat a good French red. Worth every penny.” His grin was almost manic.

I nodded in agreement. I know nothing about wine and don’t particularly enjoy it but I was trying to be polite. Emma gave me a stern look and once again I was reminded of the promise I’d made to her two months ago, the day she disappeared and abandoned our child. The day she discovered what I’d spent the best part of a year hiding from her. I looked at her and offered a small shrug, my way of saying I didn’t have much of a choice. As Emma’s eyes bored into mine Geoff’s voice droned on. The hostility between Emma and me was apparently lost on the others.

Geoff’s lesson on the origin of the red substance with which he had filled my glass to the brim was interrupted by his complaint that I had not yet sampled this magnificent specimen, this life-altering, pleasure-inducing grape juice that almost the entire table were raving about.

“Come on, Adam, don’t let a good red go to waste,” said Geoff, and as I looked up I realised I was being stared at by everyone. Was this my initiation? Did my admission into this secret society depend on my view of this ridiculously expensive wine?

They all continued to watch me intently. I had two options: drink the wine and break my promise to Emma or refuse to drink the wine and ruin Emma’s chances of being accepted by a group whose approval was obviously incredibly important to her. I decided to do what was best for her: I sipped the wine. I had only intended to drink a drop of it but throughout the night Geoff would give me unwelcome top ups and before I realised it I had drunk a few glasses.

We didn’t stay for coffee or the fabulous mints that were also a topic of conversation. Emma’s hostility towards me became more apparent as the night continued. Of course, she would never reveal the reason for her sudden irritation to the rest of the party; doing so would almost certainly render us outcasts. As I expected, on the way home an argument erupted.

“Don’t ever make me a promise again, Adam,” Emma spat. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that drinking the wine was the correct option. I thought that’s the one you’d want me to go with.”

“Why in a million years would I want you to do that?”

“Because you and I both know that if I didn’t drink that wine it would be seen as some kind of insult and we’d never be invited back.”

“Oh, what do you care? You don’t like them anyway.”

“I care because you care.” I raised my voice. “I try and do my best by you, I try to make decisions based on which option will best please you. But I’m beginning to think that isn’t possible. Nothing pleases you anymore, Emma.” She looked at me, horrified. “I understand you’ve suffered with post-natal depression and I can’t imagine what that felt like, but lately it seems like you’re regressing back into the depression you’ve only just overcome.”

She scoffed, “What about you? You’re an alcoholic, Adam, and no matter how many promises you make it seems you just can’t curb the habit. You’re a slave to drink and you sneak around, hiding bottles here and there, keeping it all from your own
wife.
If I hadn’t stumbled upon your stash, would you ever have told me you had a problem?”