The Silenced Wife

by Collette Heather

  With a little help from her mother, of course.

  I was in the kitchen with my mum, watching her stirring together the ingredients of a fruitcake for the WI. Becky was outside, playing in the garden. I loved my mum’s kitchen, for her taste wasn’t so dissimilar to my own. It was a big room, with large French doors that led out to a high-walled, beautifully kept garden that would make Monty Don proud. The kitchen itself was all shiny white cupboards and sleek aluminium surfaces. Her choice of modern kitchen always amused me, because it seemed so at odds with her more traditional personality.

  My mum stopped stirring the cake mixture for a moment and hurried over to the huge, aluminium fridge. She was always such a busy woman, and if she wasn’t baking, she was knitting, or gardening, or attending church-related events. I was an atheist, but it didn’t bother her.

  Mostly.

  Mainly, I loved living with my mum. After James’s tragic death, I had put our London flat on the market and moved in with her. It had seemed like the most logical option at the time. She was my only family, as my dad had died of a heart attack when I was twelve. I was heavily pregnant when James was cruelly taken from me, and I needed family around me. Another factor was that Mum had early stage Alzheimer’s, so it was inevitable that I would have to move in with her eventually to look after her, anyway. As it was, she showed very few symptoms. Either that, or she hid it very well. In many ways, it was strange to be back in my childhood home. Strange, but good. Mostly, it felt right.

  Mostly.

  ‘So, I met this guy today,’ I tried to say as casually as humanly possible.

  But I wasn’t fooling anyone and she was having none of it. She lowered her wooden spoon and mixing bowl and paused mid-mix, peering at me incredulously over her glasses.

  ‘A man? You got chatted up by a man?’

  ‘Christ, there’s no need to look quite so surprised.’

  She ignored my blaspheming. I knew it was a mild annoyance, but she did her best not to let me know that. Probably because then she knew I’d say it even more. My mother and I had a good relationship, but that wasn’t to say that we weren’t entirely non-antagonistic to each other at all times.

  ‘Well, if I am surprised, it’s a good kind of surprised. Aren’t I the one that’s always saying that you should get out there and have some fun? So who is this mysterious man and how did you meet him?’

  I got up off the chrome, breakfast bar stool and headed over to the patio windows to look out at Becky playing in the back garden. It was a big garden, high-walled and safe, and as the patio windows were so wide, it was impossible for Becky to slip from view, or, heaven forbid, out of the garden.

  Buster was inside, asleep in his basket in a corner of the kitchen, oblivious to his fate. I was pleased about that because I knew Mum would have kittens when she found out that Buster had bitten a stranger. It was still something I was having difficulty getting my head round – Buster simply wasn’t that type of a dog and it was going to break my heart to let him go. I didn’t even want to think about what it would do to Becky. She loved that damn dog.

  ‘It’s kind of a funny story, actually,’ I said with my back to my mum so I might have a chance of hiding the crack in my voice. I was watching Becky through the glass, who was crouched down at the end of garden, peering into my mum’s currently flowerless flowerbed. ‘When me and Becky were taking Buster for a walk, he got overexcited and he bit someone.’

  ‘He did what?’

  Now Mum had given up all pretences of mixing her cake and I flinched when I head the plastic mixing-bowl clatter on the countertop.

  I turned round to face her. ‘He didn’t mean it,’ I said in a rush. ‘He was just overexcited.’

  ‘So he sunk his teeth into somebody? Good grief, what if he bites Becky? Oh dear, we’re going to have to get him put down, aren’t we?’

  ‘No, no, it’s not that bad,’ I said quickly. ‘The man he bit, you know, the man I was telling you about, he was pretty cool about it and he said that he would take Buster, you know, to go and live with him.’

  My mum stared at me, open-mouthed. ‘The man that asked you out?’

  ‘I never told you that he asked me out.’

  ‘You didn’t have to. Buster bit him?’ she repeated stupidly.

  ‘Yes. On the hand. On the beach. He’s a surgeon,’ I added, as if that somehow had relevance and made it all okay.

  ‘I can’t imagine Buster doing such a thing,’ she said, looking over at the snoring dog.

  ‘No, me neither.’

  ‘And you saw Buster bite him?’

  Now that she mentioned it, I realised that I hadn’t actually seen the incident. ‘I saw the blood.’

  ‘Oh, good God, I think I need to sit down. What on earth are we going to tell Becky?’

  For Mum to say “God” so casually, things must have been bad. She plopped herself down onto the nearest breakfast stool, her face blanched white.

  ‘I haven’t figured that out, yet. He said that we would talk about it over dinner tonight. I think the loose plan is that he’ll take him tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re meeting him tonight?’

  ‘Is that okay? Have you made plans?’

  Half of me was hoping that she would say yes.

  ‘No, no, it’s just, I don’t know, huge things happening in such a short space of time.’

  My thoughts exactly.

  ‘Hardly. It’s only dinner to talk about Buster.’

  ‘But I don’t understand. If Buster bit him, then surely he should just push for him to be put down? If Buster is dangerous, then why would it matter if he lives here with us or with this man?’

  ‘He says he’ll put him into obedience classes, and that he lives in a big house near Morvah. It’s got acres of garden and Buster will never have to leave the house.’

  I could feel that I was speed-talking like a teenager and I promptly shut my mouth.

  ‘Well, this mysterious man certainly has this all thought out, doesn’t he? I thought you said he was a surgeon. What’s he going to do with Buster when he’s working?’

  That, I conceded, was a good point, and one we hadn’t discussed.

  ‘I don’t know everything yet, I guess I’ll find out more tonight.’

  ‘If he changes his mind and starts insisting that we put Buster down, we’ll have to comply with his wishes. In fact, even if he hadn’t offered such a thing, I think we’d have to, anyway.’

  It broke my heart to agree with her, but there was no escaping the truth of her words. ‘I know.’

  ‘Is he handsome, your surgeon?’

  The question caught me off-guard, and I felt my face heating up. ‘I suppose some might say so.’

  ‘You’re blushing!’

  ‘I am not. And anyway, this meal is purely business.’

  ‘Where’s he taking you?’

  ‘Shelley’s.’

  ‘Shelley’s? How long did you say you’ve known him? It’s impossible to get a table there.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Oh, why would you do that, Buster?’ she sighed, staring imploringly over at the sleeping dog. ‘I am okay with it, you know,’ she said.

  ‘Okay with what?’ I asked, unsure of what she meant.

  ‘With you dating other men. Perhaps even meeting someone and remarrying.’

  ‘Remarrying? Christ, he bought me a coffee and Becky an ice cream, and you’re already picking out your hat?’

  ‘I’m serious, sweetheart. When James died and you were all alone, it made sense for you to move in with me. But you’re healing now, and maybe it’s not the best thing for you to be living with your mother.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Becky loves being near you, and so do I. You know I’m going to end up here one day, anyway,’ I said, wincing slightly at how blunt that sounded.

  ‘Doctors aren’t always right, you know. I haven’t got any worse since they diagnosed me three years ago. As much as I love having you and Becky around, I don’t ne
ed you here. And I’m never going to need you. When the time comes, they’ll be nurses for that, and ultimately care homes in my future.’

  ‘Please don’t talk like that,’ I said thoroughly depressed talking about my mum’s bleak future.

  Yet as much as I didn’t want to even think about it, much less discuss it, perhaps she had a point. Our futures were as yet unwritten. And she certainly looked healthy and full of life. Of course, I knew that the way a person looked outwardly had little to do with what was going on inside, but my mum positively glowed with health. She was a handsome woman of sixty-eight but looked much younger. She kept herself in good shape and unlike me, she was tall and had the posture of a much younger woman. She wore her hair in a sleek, silver bob and still had the most amazingly strong bone structure. To be honest, I don’t even know how the doctors had picked up on her Alzheimer’s, because apart from being a little absent-minded sometimes, she was completely with it. Before retiring she had been an accountant, working for my dad who ran the fudge factory in St Ives, and her mind was still as sharp as ever. Well, I thought it was, anyway, but then, what did I know?

  ‘But we have to talk about. All I’m saying is, don’t pass up on a second chance at love on my account. Your happiness is all that matters to me. None of us know what’s around the corner and you need to live your life. Heaven knows, I was so worried about you after James’s died, I couldn’t bear for you to go down the same path you did as a teenager.’

  I cringed at the memory of the messed-up girl I had once been. I had even spent a long month in a mental asylum after a suicide attempt at the age of sixteen. I had found it hard coping after Dad died, but I figured that was a long way behind me; I wasn’t sure that it was entirely fair for my mother to bring that stuff up. I mean, I had got through it and come out the other side stronger. Amazingly, it hadn’t affected my schooling and I had made good grades at every stage of my education.

  Also, given my mum’s Alzheimer’s, neither did I want to acknowledge the fact that mental illness was potentially in my blood.

  ‘I’m not the girl I once was, Mum. I’ve grown up.’

  ‘I know you have, sweetheart, you’ve coped with the past few years admirably well. I’m so proud of you, you’ve been so brave.’

  I could feel a lump rising in my throat, and hastily I swallowed it down. There were too many emotions, vying for attention in my fevered brain.

  ‘Well, this cake isn’t going to bake itself,’ Mum said, going back over to her discarded mixing bowl. Her movements were a little jerky, and I could tell that she was upset. ‘I have a WI meeting late afternoon, but I’ll be back in time for you to go out later.’

  My gaze swivelled to beyond the patio doors, and I watched as Becky ran up to the kitchen. She exploded inside in a flurry of childish energy, running straight up to me and hugging my legs.

  ‘Mummy,’ she sighed contentedly, and for some reason, I felt dangerously close to tears.

  Gently, I prised her off my legs and peered down into her little face. ‘Shall we go and watch Mr Tumble and do some colouring?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking genuinely excited at the prospect.

  I took her hand and led her into the living-room, determined to devote all my emotional energy onto my daughter for the rest of the day.

  But not tonight though. I realised with a fluttering heart that tonight was going to be a whole other story.

  FIVE

  After a shower, I got dressed for my date a few hours later with constantly shifting emotions, feeling very much like Buster’s executioner. I kept on having to remind myself that I wasn’t sending him to his death, that he was just going to a new home, that was all.

  Somehow, it didn’t make me feel any better.

  It was now eight p.m. and Becky was tucked-up in bed. Mum and Buster were in the living-room – Mum watching her soaps and Buster curled up next to her on the sofa.

  I think Mum was going to miss Buster as much as Becky was. After I put Becky down of an evening, I quite often retired to my bedroom ‘to write’. Sometimes, I worked on my novel, but mainly, I just cried. That meant Mum and Buster were mostly left alone, company for each other.

  I stared at my reflection in the mirror, wondering why a gorgeous man like Aaron Bailey would ask me out. Objectively, I assessed myself. I wouldn’t say I was ugly, far from it, but neither was I a raging beauty, not by society’s standards, anyway. I had what you might call a kind face. I didn’t consider myself an especially altruistic person, but my face begged to differ. I was often told that I had kind eyes, and it was true that random strangers would tell me their life stories and problems in the most unlikely of places, from supermarket queues to waiting in line at the post office.

  I squinted at my face in the mirror. My complexion was too pale, no matter how much sun it saw, and I hated my skin. I wasn’t the victim of freckles, but too much sun turned me the hue of a boiled lobster, before dying down and reverting back to white a few days later. My eyes were dark brown, wide-set and round. I suppose, objectively, my features were good with my small, narrow nose which slightly turned up at the end, and my pouting mouth that I was secretly quite fond of. It was my face-shape that I thought let me down. I didn’t have any bones in my cheeks that remotely resembled cheekbones and my jaw was weak. My strawberry blonde curls seemed to clash with my dark eyes and my eyebrows were near non-existent. Considering the current trend for big brows, I felt woefully inadequate in the brow department. I also thought my forehead was too big, which the lack of eyebrows emphasised.

  I turned away from the mirror with a sigh. It wasn’t like me at all to study my face in the mirror for so long. It was just that I hadn’t been on a date for years.

  Not since I had met James. Looking at myself in the mirror was like looking at a stranger.

  On the bed I had laid out my choice of outfit for the night. It was a long-sleeved, knee-length, dark navy-blue dress with a cute, but not-too-revealing sweetheart neckline that I intended to pair with shin-length, low-healed, black boots.

  I don’t think I had worn a dress since James’s funeral.

  No, don’t start crying.

  Assertively, I yanked the chunky-knit sweater over my head and unzipped my skinny jeans, sliding them down my legs and taking my socks with them.

  I hazarded a glance at the underwear-clad me in the full-length, wardrobe mirror opposite the bed. A little flutter of panic twisted in my guts. The was no way that I was up for sex. Just the thought of a man other than James touching me made my skin prickle in terror.

  He wouldn’t want you, anyway, a nasty little voice whispered in my mind. Look at the state of you.

  No, I knew I was being too hard on myself. Squinting, I tried to look at my body objectively – tried to imagine what Aaron might think of me, if he saw me naked.

  I stood up straighter and sucked in my gut. If I did that, my little pot flattened out completely. I wasn’t fat, but I could do with losing a pound or two. I kept most of the excess weight on my backside and hips, which I suppose was a good thing. I had near-enough regained my figure after having Becky, and my muscle tone had returned to what it had once been. I fancied that my breasts were a little larger and hung a little lower, but they weren’t saggy by any means. I mean, women were supposed to have a slight crease where breast met ribcage, and pre-Becky, James had likened my breasts to two, cone-shaped rocks. I guess I could live with the new, softer look. At least, I reasoned, my skin had snapped back. And as for the silverfish-style stretch-marks on my hips, all women had them, didn’t they?

  No they don’t. It’s just you.

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ I muttered to myself, reaching behind my back and unclipping my sturdy black bra. My C cup breasts spilled out of the bottom, definitely heavier than they used to be. I didn’t dare look at them in the mirror, for I knew it would depress me.

  From the underwear drawer, I fished out a slightly less frumpy set of underwear – not that Aaron would get to see them o
f course – which, by a minor miracle, matched.

  I stepped out of my flesh-coloured big knickers, and into the white ones which had significantly less material to them. The bra was one of those push-up jobs, and I felt like an imposter wearing it. I braved the mirror once more.

  I conceded that I didn’t look too bad, but there was no mistaking the fact that I had rocked two distinctly different adult bodies in my lifetime – the Pre-Becky-Body and the Post-Becky-Body.

  Pushing aside the dark thoughts that threatened to creep in and tear what little self-confidence I had to shreds, I quickly pulled the dress over my head.

  Warily, I eyed the woolly black tights in the drawer. I wasn’t really a stockings kind of a girl, and tights felt a little ‘mumsy’. I decided to brave the unseasonably cold March weather, bare legged in my boots.

  A sweep of blusher, concealer where needed, mascara, and a slick of lip-gloss later, I was ready to walk into town.

  SIX

  Shelley’s had a pleasant buzz about it. The place was always full, but somehow, Aaron had managed to get us a much-coveted window seat. The restaurant was on the second floor, which meant we had a panoramic view of St Ives harbour. As we chatted, I was soothed by the classy, all white décor and the soft lighting, my gaze occasionally shifting to the shadowy fishing boats gently bobbing on the rippled, black surface of the hightide.

  My gaze was also drawn to the bandage on his hand where Buster had bit him. Still, I was relieved to note that his hand looked the right colour and shape around the bandage, so the injury most likely wasn’t infected.

  By the time the first course was finished – mussels for him and the shellfish platter for me – I had found out that his full name was Aaron Albert Bailey, and that he was forty-three years old. I discovered that he shared my passion for art, although claiming to be calamitous with a paintbrush, and that he divided his time between his London flat and Cornish mansion.