‘Oh, I couldn’t.’ I held it close to me, feeling the soft fabric. Then I caught a glimpse of the designer label. The dress probably cost half my monthly salary. ‘I’ll give it back to you next week.’
Claire shrugged. ‘Whatever. But really, if you decide you like it, keep it.’
I wondered what it must be like, to be able to give away such an expensive dress without a thought. To be able to move through life unworried. I almost wanted to hate Claire, but I couldn’t.
Downstairs, Mackenzie went back to watching TV and chatting unselfconsciously with the screen, and I had a glass of wine while Claire put the finishing touches to a salad.
‘We’ll eat as soon as Daddy gets home,’ she said to Mackenzie, and I found I was quite nervous to meet her husband. I wasn’t sure what I’d say to a bossy, hulking Viking who routinely threatened to dispossess his wife and daughter of their clothes and toys, and who came from a place where they tramped to school in the snow.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t stay,’ I said. ‘It’s family time. I’m intruding.’
‘Nonsense.’ Claire looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. ‘I’ve told him so much about you. He’d be furious if you left.’
That didn’t make me feel any better about Claire’s beast of a husband, and I took a great slug of wine, hoping I’d be inoffensive enough to him that he wouldn’t forbid Claire from seeing me.
Then I heard a door slam and Mackenzie’s feet running down the hall.
‘Daddy!’ she yelled. ‘Daddy’s home. Daddy’s home.’ She sounded relieved. Maybe he routinely threatened to leave.
I put down my glass and eyed the door warily. Claire, on the other hand, bent over the oven to poke at a chicken pie.
But what came through the door made no sense at all. A dishevelled man wearing jeans and an untucked collared shirt was carrying Mackenzie as well as a briefcase with papers and what seemed to be a giant lollipop sticking out of it, and a bunch of flowers that was almost obscuring my view of the man. But not quite. He had dark hair and a nose that was much too large for his face. This couldn’t possibly be Claire’s tyrannical husband.
He stopped when he saw me, and gave Mackenzie a resounding kiss on the head before putting her down.
‘And who is this?’ he said, indicating me but speaking to Mackenzie.
Mackenzie looked at me, and shrugged. ‘She’s stealing Mum’s clothes.’
‘Ah,’ said the man, ‘then you are Julia. What a delight to meet you. Claire’s told me that you and she have a marvellous time potting.’ He somehow disentangled himself from his briefcase, and plonked down the flowers on the counter. Taking my hand in both of his, he shook it firmly.
‘I’m Daniel,’ he said. ‘Claire’s husband and Mackenzie’s father. And I’m sure I’ll be your friend.’ He looked at me from under hooded eyelids with freckled green eyes that were only slightly higher than my own. I felt like I was stepping into a forest.
Then suddenly his beam of light was diverted off me and he picked up the flowers. ‘These are for you, Claire-my-sweet,’ he said. When he walked over to her, I saw my initial impression was correct – he was slightly shorter than her, only slightly taller than me. I would never have expected that.
Claire took the flowers and thrust them into the sink with some water. I noticed she didn’t kiss him.
‘Idiot,’ she said. ‘Bringing flowers to show off to Julia. She’s going to think you’re so silly.’
Daniel laughed and it was a sound that danced along my nerves straight to my bones. I wanted to hear it again and again. He turned to me.
‘I am silly, Julia,’ he said seriously. ‘I am very silly. If silly’s not your game, then I will have to change. Should I change?’ He looked at me, and then at Claire.
Claire sighed, but I was enchanted. ‘Silly is fine,’ I said. ‘Silly is magnificent.’ I giggled, partly from enjoyment, partly from relief. ‘You’re not at all what I expected.’
‘I hope I’m better.’ Daniel put an arm around Claire, who pulled away and bent to get the pie out of the oven.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
Helen
I met Mike when I was twenty-three, and after that there was nobody else for me.
We met on what was basically a blind date. Neither of us had ever been on a blind date before and neither of us wanted to go on a blind date. It wasn’t like it is now, where people happily meet up with complete strangers they find on an app. Back then, there was something a bit embarrassing about going on a blind date. But my friend Kerry was going out with Mike’s friend James, and Kerry had decided that I needed to be fixed up with someone. James mentioned that his friend Mike had just got back from a two-year stint in London and had broken up with his long-time girlfriend, and Kerry seemed to think that because we were both only children – the only two she knew – we would be a good match, and the next thing we knew, they’d set up a double date.
I didn’t want to go. I told Kerry that my job (as a nurse) was time consuming and the last thing I needed was a boyfriend. All my previous relationships had ended because of my strange hours and almost constant exhaustion. We nurses knew the only way it could work was to marry a doctor, because they are the only other people who understand the stress. So I had sworn off men until a suitable doctor appeared – and so far, one hadn’t.
Mike was not a doctor. Mike was an engineer. I had dated an engineering student a few years before. I did not want to meet Mike.
But Kerry told me she would look a fool if I didn’t turn up, so in the end I said yes. Kerry had always been a good friend to me, and she really wanted it to work with James. Also, I presumed the men would pay, and I was always hungry in those days.
Mike told me later that he’d begged James to let him off. He’d come out of a relationship with his high school girlfriend, who’d chosen to stay in London. And he wanted to be single for a while and play the field. James eventually convinced him that meeting me was playing the field.
But then, half an hour before the date, Kerry and James broke up. And this was the eighties – you couldn’t get hold of people on the spur of the moment. So Mike and I rocked up at the restaurant, and found the table booked for four under Kerry’s name, and introduced ourselves. At first, we joked about whether Kerry and James were actually late, or slyly giving us a few minutes alone. But after an hour – during which we drank a bottle of wine between us and told the waiter about fifteen times we were ‘just waiting for our friends’ – we got worried. I used the restaurant’s phone to call Kerry, who sobbed something about a blonde and a sports car and a receipt that shouldn’t have existed.
‘All men are rubbish, Helen – you should stay away from them,’ she informed me before hanging up.
I walked slowly back to the table and told Mike what had happened, in so far as I understood it, and then politely said that I quite understood if he wanted to call it a night, although by then I already knew he was the funniest, nicest man I had ever met and I wanted the night to last forever.
Mike shrugged and said, ‘Well, we’re here now, aren’t we? Seems a pity to leave.’
So we ordered some food and carried on talking, and before we knew it, the restaurant was empty and the chairs were all upside-down on the tables and staff were mopping the floor, and still we didn’t want to go.
Finally, after the last waiter told us we had to leave or we’d be locked in, we stood up.
‘I don’t want tonight to end,’ I said, and then cringed because maybe Mike didn’t feel that way at all. I could not believe I’d said something so stupid.
‘Tonight is never going to end,’ said Mike, reaching for my hand and pulling me towards him. ‘Tonight is forever.’
Well, I wasn’t sure if he was just trying to get me into bed, but I didn’t care. I knew I would take every minute I could get with this man, because as far as I was concerned, he was the best one.
We had the words ‘Tonight is forever’ engraved on our wedding ri
ngs the following year. But nobody could have foreseen what our ‘forever’ would mean. Nobody could have known how unhappy I would be.
Julia
Late morning, Daniel phones and asks me to fetch Mackenzie from school at one. I can’t say no because that’d be another point against me.
‘Where do I go?’ I ask.
‘To the school,’ he says, like I’m stupid.
‘Yes, but where in the school?’
‘To her class, obviously.’
‘Daniel, I’ve never picked her up before. Where’s the classroom? What do I say to the teacher? Do I have to sign her out? Where must I take her afterwards? Will she have bags?’ I can feel my voice rising so I pause and let my voice adjust. ‘I just need some details, love,’ I say in what I secretly think of as my best Claire voice.
‘You must take her back to the house. You’ll figure out the rest. I don’t have time now.’ He hangs up.
I look at my phone like I’m dreaming, and consider sending him a message just saying ‘no’. But it’s quite a big deal to trust me to pick up his child. So I do what I did when I first met Claire – I ask myself what she would do.
My first hurdle is explaining to my boss that I might be late back from lunch.
‘I’m not saying I will be, just that I might be,’ I say. I don’t know why I’m even telling him – he probably wouldn’t have noticed. I realise that Claire would’ve just gone and done what she needed to do. But I’m Julia, and I know about people not being available, and I don’t just disappear from work in the middle of the day.
‘What about the Madison deadline?’ says my boss, looking hurt and confused, like I’ve just resigned.
‘I sent it to you this morning,’ I say.
‘Where?’ He looks around his desk and even picks up a beige folder, as if I might have hidden the report underneath just to confuse him.
‘By email,’ I say. ‘It’s attached to an email I sent you.’
Gerald looks at his computer like it has personally affronted him. I leave him to it, thinking that I really need to find a job in an accountancy firm that has moved into this century.
It’s lucky that I warned Gerald, because things start going wrong almost immediately.
First, I can’t find the bloody school. It’s a well-known, exclusive girls’ school, and I think I know where it is. As it turns out, I don’t. So I have to put on my satnav, but the entrances to a whole lot of roads have been closed off that my satnav knows nothing about, and I keep almost going through stop signs hidden behind ridiculously leafy vegetation. I’m ten minutes late when I arrive, and of course the security guard needs to stop me to ask what I’m doing there. When I say I’ve come to fetch Mackenzie, he looks me up and down and tells me that I’m not Mackenzie’s mother. Like I didn’t already know that. So I hiss that I am Mackenzie’s father’s girlfriend, and he gives me a completely different look – not a very nice one. I had no idea school security guards were so judgemental. On a positive note, he lets me in.
Then I don’t know where to go, so I start popping my head into all the classrooms – most of which are still full of older girls. The teachers glare at me, and finally one steps outside and asks if she can help me.
‘I’m here to fetch Mackenzie Marshall,’ I say. ‘She’s in grade 1.’
‘Which grade 1 class?’ asks the teacher, but I don’t know.
She sighs, and gives me a list of instructions like ‘go up the stairs and turn right at the statue’, which seems to make perfect sense except that the school is brimming with both stairs and statues. I finally make my way to a classroom where Mackenzie is the only child left waiting and the teacher looks stony-faced.
Mackenzie takes one look at me and bursts into tears and says she’s not getting into a car with me. Rich coming from the child who watched Frozen with me seven times the last time she visited us. This leads the teacher to phone Claire, who is not available, and then Daniel, who is not available, and then we have to sit there because the stupid teacher refuses to let Mackenzie leave with me until one of the parents has confirmed.
‘It’s not like she even seems to know who you are.’
‘She knows who I am,’ I hiss, trying to sound calm.
The teacher raises her eyebrows. I know that I shouldn’t be, but I’m fed up, and the whole thing should be out in the open by now, and I’ve already told the security guard, who’s probably sent out some sort of all-points school-security bulletin, and anyway what did Daniel think sending me here. ‘I’m her father’s girlfriend,’ I say.
The teacher raises her eyebrows again, and this time she looks faintly amused by my claim, but then her phone rings and it’s Claire so she takes it, and moves outside where I can just hear her saying, ‘There’s a woman here claiming . . .’ before she’s out of earshot. And I know Claire’s going to be furious, and so is Daniel, and I want to cry.
At last the teacher comes back in, and she won’t make eye contact. She gives her phone to Mackenzie, and apparently Claire persuades her to go with me, because Mackenzie gets up but also won’t make eye contact with me, and we leave. I try to chat with Mackenzie in the car, but she sits in total silence. Which takes quite an act of will, because usually she talks a lot. Utter nonsense, to be honest, but right now I’d take her inane chatter.
When I drop her off at Claire’s place, Thandi, the domestic helper and childminder, holds out her hand as if I’m supposed to give her something.
‘What?’ I say.
‘School bag.’
Thandi knows who I am. It’s clear what she thinks about me.
I sigh. ‘I’ll go back and get it.’
I drive back to the school where the bag is parked outside the classroom door like an accusation.
By the time I get back to work there are three urgent messages for me. None from Daniel.
Helen
From the moment we met, we became Mike-and-Helen. We both had two types of friends: those who wanted to be friends with Mike-and-Helen, and those who didn’t. Before I met Mike, I didn’t think I would be one of those couples. I thought I’d be able to have friendships separate from my husband. I thought he’d have friendships separate from me – maybe he’d play golf with his friends, or poker, or go and watch sport in bars. And I would meet friends for a drink or coffee or lunch, and have a book club and maybe a sewing circle or something. That’s the sort of married person I thought I would be. But it didn’t turn out that way.
We liked each other. We liked doing things together. Mike did play golf – but I took lessons and we made up a four-ball with another couple. I did join a book club – but it was one that couples belonged to, and Mike sat next to me. We did all the things we both wanted to do, but we did them together. And so we lost friends. Because there were people who didn’t really understand us, and Mike had friends who didn’t like me and thought that Mike was henpecked, and I had friends who didn’t like Mike and thought he was controlling. Kerry, who was responsible for us meeting, she was one of them, even though she was a bridesmaid at our wedding. She told me eventually she didn’t like that she never saw me alone any more. I tried to meet her for coffee occasionally, but it just felt stupid being there when I could be with Mike, and our arrangements fizzled out.
We didn’t really care about the friends we lost. We told each other they couldn’t have been such good friends in the first place if they were so happy to end the friendship. And the truth was that we were entirely happy just in each other’s company. It was enough. The friends we did keep were a bonus.
People said it would change when we had a baby. But they were wrong. When our baby came, we realised we really were different. We still loved being together – and we loved our little family. We were the real deal. The ones who would actually live happily ever after.
The Accident changed everything.
The thing is, by then we were friends only with people who wanted to be friends with Mike-and-Helen Blake, the loved-up couple. After The Accident, I
needed friends who wanted to be friends with Just Helen.
I’m not saying people didn’t try, that people weren’t good to me. They all visited in hospital and told me to be strong and that they were there for me, and they did things like offer to look after Julia and bring meals and all the things you are supposed to do. And when I first came home, and later when Julia and I started our new lives, just the two of us, they visited. They invited us. They tried.
But we weren’t Mike-and-Helen any more, and I was barely even Helen. I was the shadow of a person who had once been alive, and Julia was a traumatised two-year-old. I had very little inside me to give, and what I had, I gave to Julia. The rest of the world was covered in dark shadows. Slowly but surely, most of our friends dropped away. I suppose I should have made new friends, people at the school, parents of Julia’s friends. But I just didn’t have the energy.
I had one friend for a while after The Accident. The most unlikely friend. But I lost her too.
I don’t really mind – I don’t like being with people much. It’s very tiring. You have to pretend to be interested, and you have to act like someone who is okay. When Julia was that age when I had to go along to the parties, I found it exhausting. I’d have to sleep for hours afterwards. Julia was probably the first girl in her class whose mum just dropped her at the house. I don’t think either of us minded. I felt like the other mums judged me a bit. ‘Sure you won’t stay?’ they’d ask. And, ‘Wow, she’s so brave to let you leave at this age.’ But to be honest, it’s not like Julia was missing much. And I was always willing to take her and fetch her. But I didn’t make friends with the other mums. They were nice enough; I have only myself to blame.
Now, sometimes, I wish I had a friend. Someone I could phone and tell how excited I am about Julia’s news. And we could speculate about what it is, if it’s what I’m hoping for. And this friend of mine would come up with some ideas, and we’d enjoy the excitement together.
Except that if I had a real friend, she would want to know why I am so uncharacteristically excited. And if she was a real friend, she would be upset to learn that I’m hoping Julia’s news brings me closer to suicide.
The Aftermath Page 3
