The Marriage Mender (19 page)

‘Right, I guess that’s it, then,’ she said. ‘For our sessions, I mean. We’ve been a spectacular failure, really, haven’t we? I mean, your job’s supposed to be keeping people together, isn’t it?’

‘Not if it’s not the best thing for them,’ I said. ‘And certainly not if one person is violent towards the other one.’

‘Well, as long as I’m not going to get you a black mark from your bosses.’

‘Not at all. In fact, I’m prouder of how you’ve resolved things than of any other case I’ve had.’

‘Good,’ she said.

I got out one of my business cards and wrote my mobile number on the back before handing it to her. ‘Ring me any time,’ I said, ‘if there’s anything I can do to help you. Or simply if you want to talk. As a friend.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, taking it and slipping it into her handbag.

I noticed her nail varnish. It wasn’t chipped at all today. It was a strong red colour. It suited her.

* * *

I phoned the police on my mobile a few minutes after Catherine had gone. It was as if she had left some of her strength in the room with me. I dialled the number for non-emergencies, knowing full well that it wouldn’t be anything even remotely approaching an emergency to them. It was only in my world that alarms were ringing.

It took a while for someone to answer.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’d like to report a missing person.’

‘Just a minute,’ said the voice on the other end of the line. ‘I need to pull up the form.’

* * *

Barbara lived in a two-bedroom terrace on the edge of Todmorden, close to the Lancashire border. But not, as she put it, too close. She still didn’t think of herself as a ‘bottom-dweller’, having spent her childhood on the tops above Walsden, but I was glad she did live on the valley bottom now. It had made things a little easier for her since Ken died. Easier to get about, at least.

The house appeared pretty much as it had been before
he died. Not in the way that some people refuse to move their loved ones’ things after they’ve gone, but in the sense that Ken had seemed so much a part of the structure of it that simply removing his walking stick and cap from the hall hadn’t really done anything to remove the sense that he was still present.

I loved Barbara’s house. The flagstone floor in the hall, the little mullioned windows. But most of all I loved the fact that it was part of Chris’s past. A part of it which I could actually access, which allowed me to build up a picture of his life before I knew him. There were photos, for a start. An awful lot of them. Pictures of a baby about six months old with laughing eyes and dark hair. And later, a wiry boy with bruised knees and scuffed shoes – the results of too much time spent scrambling up the hillside, according to Barbara.

I knocked on the door and went in. She never locked it, no matter how many times Chris and I told her to do so. Always said that we were being daft and that ‘There’s nowt worth taking any rate’.

‘Hello, Barbara, it’s only me,’ I called out.

‘Hello, love,’ she said, coming out of the front room. ‘Everything all right?’

I smiled at her, unable to say anything in reply.

‘I’ll put kettle on, shall I?’ she said.

I followed her into the kitchen, taking deep breaths as she filled the kettle and put it on to boil. There was no easy way to say it. And I wasn’t going to insult her intelligence by repeating the ‘big adventure’ line.

‘Josh left home yesterday morning,’ I said.

She stared at me, the softness gone from her face. ‘Whatever for?’

‘Lydia came back,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid it all got rather horrible. A lot of things were said.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘She admitted she’d slept with Josh’s friend Tom. She said she’d had no idea who he was. Tom didn’t either, apparently, until he saw Josh’s photo in her room afterwards.’

‘Tom? The quiet lad with fair hair? I remember him from Josh’s parties.’

‘He works part-time in a bar in Hebden now,’ I said.

‘Don’t make excuses for her, Alison. He’s still a wee lad to me.’

I nodded. I understood what she was saying.

‘I’m afraid that’s not all of it, though,’ I said. ‘She came to apologise. She was drunk, of course. Chris came home while she was there and it all got a bit out of hand. She claimed that he wasn’t Josh’s father. That she’d had a one-night stand with some guy in a band.’

Barbara stared at me. The moistness in her eyes was no longer that which elderly ladies seem to collect for no obvious reason.

‘She’s lying.’ Her voice was firm and steely.

‘I think so too.’

‘But Josh didn’t?’

‘I tried to reassure him. He was pretty shaken up, though. He wasn’t really thinking straight. He left a note. I didn’t find it until yesterday morning. He took clothes with him. And a rucksack.’

I noticed Barbara’s hand on the top of the kitchen counter. Her fingers were shaking.

‘You go and sit down,’ I said. ‘I’ll bring the tea in.’

Barbara went without arguing. Her usually steady gait was looking decidedly shaky. I put two sugars in her tea, even though she usually only had one. And popped a custard cream from the biscuit barrel on to the saucer. I took them in to her. She was sitting in the armchair, staring at a photo of Josh sitting on Chris’s lap when he was about four years old. She probably took it herself.

‘You couldn’t separate them,’ said Barbara. ‘I always used to say when Chris went up on the tops with Josh in one of those carrier things on his back that it looked like they were joined together.’

‘I know. I think that’s what has made it worse. How close they were.’

‘Have you reported him missing?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They’re going to put a description out, although they’re a bit limited in what they can do. What with him being sixteen.’

‘If any harm comes to him –’

‘It won’t. He’s good at keeping out of trouble.’

Barbara looked at me. That wasn’t what she meant. I knew that.

‘Where’s Chris?’ Barbara asked, as if suddenly noticing his absence from the room.

‘At work. He’s going to pick Matilda up from school in a bit.’

‘Is he talking at all?’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Not to me, anyway.’

Barbara looked at me more intently.

‘This is all my fault,’ I said. ‘I knew Josh was seeing Lydia again. He asked me not to tell Chris.’

She nodded slowly.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know it was wrong. I was trying to keep them both happy.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ she said.

‘Try telling that to Chris.’

‘I will do, when I see him. There’s only one person to blame here. And we all know who that is.’

‘I thought she’d changed. I really did.’

‘You’re too trusting, Alison. That’s your trouble. She’s nasty. Manipulative. I should never have let her get her claws into Chris in the first place. I always told him she were trouble. He wouldn’t listen, see. Too taken in by her. Well, it’s obvious what he were taken in by. That’s the trouble with sons. They’re weak when it comes to women. They stop using their heads.’

‘He spent most of yesterday up on the moor,’ I said. ‘And today he’s refusing to talk about it.’

‘He’s wounded, Alison. That’s why he’s lashing out at you. He’s like an injured animal. If you get too close, he’ll bite.’

‘He’ll come round, though, won’t he?’

Barbara shrugged. ‘I don’t know. This is going to really hit him hard.’

I stared at Barbara. The tone of her voice was unnerving me. ‘Lydia knows, you see,’ said Barbara.

‘Knows what?’ I asked.

Barbara hesitated for a moment. ‘Knows exactly how to hurt him.’

I nodded. Though I suspected that Lydia knew something far more than that. Something which Chris had never found it in himself to tell me.

I know it sounds stupid if I say it were Christmas tree what did it, but it were last straw, you know? Every single thing I do is wrong, nothing is ever good enough for her, and I never say a word, I just take it.

So one morning she were out shopping and I thought I’d surprise her and put up Christmas tree, I spent ages making it look really nice, and when she comes home she takes one look at it and tuts and shakes her head. So I goes out to shed for a bit and when I come back in she’s taken lights and tinsel and every single bauble off and has started doing it from scratch. And I asks her what she’s doing, like, and she says I’d done it wrong. Like there’s some bloody manual on it and only one way it can be done.

I took one of baubles off tree and stamped on it right in front of her. Told her it were in wrong place. I’m not proud of what I done, it were a nice bauble and that, but sometimes a man reaches end of his tether and I guess that bauble just happened to be in wrong place at wrong time.

The knock on the door was bang on time. Matilda rushed to get it before I had the chance to dry my hands on the tea towel. I hurried through to the hall to see Caitlin standing there, her sleeveless summer dress showing off her tan, her violin case under her arm.

‘Hi,’ I said, stepping forward to give her a hug and drag Matilda off her at the same time. ‘It’s so good to see you.’

She had insisted on keeping her promise. Said she wanted to do it. That there was no way she was going to let Josh’s little sister down. I’d offered to bring Matilda to her house, thought it might be easier for her. But she’d said she wanted to come here. Even insisted on walking up the hill from the bus stop. I suspected she’d thought it would be cathartic. Although, looking at her face right now, it appeared that wasn’t the case at all.

‘And you,’ she said, forcing a smile.

We’d kept in touch, of course. Emailing or texting every day at first and, more lately, weekly. She’d told me how her revision was going. Bits and pieces about stuff going on at school. But mostly just about how much she was missing Josh. How she thought about him all the time. Wondered where he was, what he was doing. How chuffed he must be that he’d managed to get out of doing his exams. She’d said it with a smiley face emoticon, clearly trying to do her bit to raise my spirits. But she’d still texted me a few minutes after sending it. Worried that I might have taken it the wrong way.

‘Matilda, you go up and make sure your bedroom’s tidy. And clear a proper space for Caitlin. She’ll be up in a minute.’

Matilda nodded, for once not bothering to argue about the need to tidy her room, and bounded upstairs.

‘How did your last exams go?’ I asked.

‘Pretty good, I think. I guess I’ll just have to wait for August to find out for sure.’

I smiled and nodded. I remembered how long that wait had seemed when I was her age. It wouldn’t really be a drag for her at all now. She had grown used to waiting. We all had.

‘You’re looking well, anyway,’ I said.

‘We went away at half term. My parents have got a place in Tuscany.’

‘Sounds wonderful,’ I said, suspecting Josh would have gone, had he still been here. That it would have been their first holiday together.

‘Yeah,’ she said, though I suspected it hadn’t been much of a holiday for her.

‘Can I get you a drink of anything before you start?’ I asked.

‘No, I’m fine, thanks. Honestly.’

‘Let’s go and see how she’s doing, then.’

Caitlin followed me upstairs.

I started to walk past Josh’s bedroom, then turned round, realising that Caitlin’s footsteps had faltered. She was staring at the closed door. All the light had disappeared from her face.

‘May I go in?’ she asked.

‘If you’re sure,’ I said.

She nodded.

I put my hand on the door knob and pushed it open for her, standing back to let her go inside. She stepped forward uncertainly, like a child who’d asked to go on a fairground ride but, now the request had been granted, was having second thoughts. I took her hand and walked in with her.

I could do it because I still went in most days. Opened the window, shut it again at night. Keeping things aired, that’s what I told myself. Though really it was my way of keeping the memories alive.

Everything was just as he’d left it. I understood why people did that now. It was like Mrs Darling leaving the nursery window open. You never knew when they might come back, and you wanted everything to be just as it had been, almost as if no time had passed at all. I hadn’t even
washed the sheets on the bed. So I could still kid myself that I could smell him.

Caitlin’s bottom lip started to tremble.

I squeezed her hand tighter. ‘He will come back,’ I said. ‘And when he does, everything will be waiting ready for him.’

‘It’s the not knowing I can’t handle,’ she said, a solitary tear running down her face. ‘Where he is or what he’s doing. Whether he’s even thinking about me.’

‘That’s the only thing I am sure of,’ I said, ‘that wherever he is, and whatever he’s doing, he’s thinking about you. And when he comes back, he’s not going to come back because of me, or his dad, or even Matilda. He’s going to come back because of you.’

I wiped the tears away from the corners of her eyes with my fingers.

‘You can come here whenever you want,’ I said. ‘If you simply want to sit in here and feel close to him, that’s fine. I do it all the time.’

‘Maybe when I come to do Matilda’s lessons,’ she said, ‘I could come a bit early or stay a little later.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Whatever helps.’

‘Mummy, when are we going to start?’ Matilda called from her bedroom.

Caitlin smiled.

‘Are you sure you’re up to doing this?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘I want to. I really do.’

I nodded and squeezed her hand one last time before she left the room. I stayed sitting there a while longer.
Heard the first tortured sounds emanate from Matilda’s room, Caitlin’s voice offering encouragement.

Josh would have been pissing himself laughing. And would have been very proud of them both at the same time.

* * *

Chris got home from work not long after Caitlin had left. He worked a lot of Saturdays these days. I wouldn’t have minded if he’d been genuinely busy, but that didn’t appear to be the case. I got the impression he was editing a lot of stuff on his Mac which could easily have been done at home. The phrase ‘avoidance tactic’ sprung to mind.

I couldn’t say that, of course. I couldn’t say anything to him. When you make a mistake as monumental as the one I had made, the price you paid was that you were rendered impotent on any matter of concern over the next six months, maybe longer. He didn’t even have to say it in so many words, he could simply look at me, a look which said, ‘Remind me again why I should listen to your opinion?’

‘Good day?’ I asked as he unpacked his gear in the downstairs study.

I didn’t mean ‘good’ as in normal people’s definition of the word. We didn’t have good days now, we hadn’t done for three months. What I actually meant was, ‘You look down. Did anything bad happen at work, or is it just your usual down?’

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘The family from last week only ordered one photo. The group I did today were hard work,
the kids kept messing around. And I’ve got very little booked in for next week.’

I nodded. Orders had been down for a while now. And bookings had fallen off a bit too. Our bank balance was looking far from healthy, although I knew better than to raise this with Chris.

‘Matilda’s had her violin lesson,’ I said, thinking that changing the subject might be the best idea. ‘Caitlin said she did really well.’

Chris nodded but said nothing. Even the mention of Caitlin’s name was enough to bring down the shutters on his face.

‘I’ll make you a tea,’ I said. ‘The kettle’s not long boiled.’

When I returned to the study with his mug a few minutes later, he was scrolling through some photos, presumably of the sitting earlier that day. I stood in the doorway behind him and watched as he pulled each one up in turn. They were sharp – Chris’s photos were always sharp – but they were not quirky or charming. They were joyless, going-through-the-motions photos, taken by a joyless, going-through-the-motions photographer.

‘Are these from today?’ I asked as I put down his mug.

He nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Happy with them?’

I didn’t say it to be nasty. I wanted to check whether he could see it himself, or whether he was too wrapped up in his own misery to notice.

‘They’re OK,’ he replied, not taking his eyes off the screen.

‘You always wanted to do better than OK,’ I said.

‘Look, the kids were being annoying. It wasn’t easy.’

‘Were they having fun?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Only you can’t see it in these photos. You can’t see any sense of fun or joy, like you usually can with your work.’

Chris turned to face me. ‘Well, thanks, Ali. That’s made me feel a whole lot better.’

‘I’m not having a go, love. I’m just saying it’s missing. And I totally understand why it’s missing. But the parents of these kids won’t, and maybe that’s why orders are down.’

‘So you’re saying I’m a crap photographer now?’

‘No, I’m saying you’re hurting and I can see your hurt in your photos.’

‘So what am I supposed to do about that exactly? Turn up for work in a clown outfit?’

‘Come on, I’m trying to help. I want you to let me in, instead of shutting me out like this. I’m hurting too, you know.’

‘Not as much as me, you’re not.’

‘Well, tell me, then. Tell me how you feel.’

‘Why?’ asked Chris. ‘So you can try to make me better? So you can fix me like you fixed everything else?’

I hovered in the doorway for a moment, feeling the knife twist inside me. I heard a sound in the hallway. I poked my head outside and saw Matilda standing there, tears streaming down her face.

‘You’re arguing again,’ she said. ‘Why can’t you both stop arguing?’

I crouched down and took hold of her, the words echoing inside. Her tears wet on my face. Merging into my own.

* * *

I almost felt bad for taking Bob’s money. Like some prostitute who he kept turning up to see, simply to talk. I was aware that he wasn’t getting his full entitlement. And that someone else might have been better qualified to help him.

But the fact was, Bob didn’t have anyone else. The only male friends he had were either husbands of Jayne’s friends or people he played golf with, and he clearly wasn’t going to discuss his marriage with any of them.

I’d asked him, of course, whether he was sure he wanted to carry on seeing me now that Jayne was refusing to come. I asked him every month when he came to see me, and he always answered the same way. That if one of them was still trying to save their marriage it had to be better than neither of them.

On this particular occasion, I knew as soon as he walked in that things were bad. He didn’t even go through the polite pretence of the cheerful greetings.

‘Jayne’s not good,’ he said, sitting straight down and looking at me. ‘She’s not good at all.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘She’s been to doctor. He’s got her on these antidepressants. Don’t agree with it myself, but she reckons it’s the only way to cope.’

‘Cope with what?’

‘Cassie’s pregnant.’

‘I thought that would be a good thing?’

Bob shook his head. ‘Jayne burst into tears the minute she told her. She pretended to Cassie that she were pleased for her – excited, like – but it didn’t look that way to me.’

‘I suppose it means Cassie won’t be over any time soon.’

‘Baby’s due in November, so there’s no way she’ll be over for Christmas, is there?’

‘But Jayne could go over, surely?’

‘She says she doesn’t want to. Not on her own.’

‘I take it you still don’t think you could fly there?’

Bob shook his head. ‘Makes me stomach turn just thinking about it. I know that must sound daft to you.’

‘It’s not daft. Lots of people have phobias. You can get help for it, though. There are fear of flying courses you can go on, hypnotherapy, all sorts of things.’

‘I couldn’t do it here, with you, like?’

I smiled at Bob. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Not something I’m qualified for.’

He nodded and looked down.

I was touched, to be honest. To have won his trust so much.

‘Have you got a computer?’ I asked. ‘You could get Skype set up or something. She’d be able to see the baby onscreen then. It’s not the same as holding it, I know, but it would be something.’

‘Aye, maybe we could look into that. Find someone who knows how to do it.’

‘Good. It might be a boost for Jayne. To feel that she’s connected. That she can still see her first grandchild.’

‘I’m quite chuffed myself,’ he said. ‘Becoming a grandad for first time. It’s a big deal. Just a pity I can’t really share excitement with Jayne.’

‘If there’s any way you can get her back here,’ I said. ‘Any way we can get her talking again.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Bob. ‘But I don’t hold out much hope.’