The Other Life of Charlotte Evans

by Louisa George

  Charlotte wrapped him closer. ‘I miss you too. I hate hearing the sirens and thinking it could be you out there, chasing, hurting… I hate hearing the news…’

  He silenced her with another kiss. This was one conversation they’d had countless times and there was no answer to it. It was his job and he loved it; she could no more ask him to give it up than contemplate giving up her dancing. So they were stuck – or just had to make the most of it.

  She ran her thumb down his cheek. ‘Let’s never go to work again. Let’s just stay here for ever and do this. We’ll feast on marshmallows and salt and vinegar crisps and drink buckets of ice-cold chardonnay. For breakfast, lunch and dinner.’

  ‘Always. Just you and me, in here.’ His fingers played over her left breast and she curled against him, wanting him. Loving him.

  ‘No one else.’ It was a game they’d played since they first met – since that very first party. He’d asked her if she wanted to go somewhere… quieter… and she’d agreed, liking the way he looked and the damned cheek of him for asking her outright and knowing exactly what he wanted: her. In bed.

  They’d nipped out from the party and bought a bag of crisps and marshmallows from the all-night store and staggered back to his place. Had a competition to see who could fit the most fluffy sweets into their mouths. Then downed it all with white wine – out of the bottle. He’d let her win and made her laugh and made her feel sexy and funny and likeable.

  Just after their first – unforgettable – kiss he’d said something like let’s stop the world and get off. And she’d thought I could do that. No intrusions. No other commitments. I could make a world with him.

  And they had.

  His words were whispers against her ear. ‘Until we have to pay the mortgage, obviously… then I’ll send you out to teach and just lie here waiting for you to come home and service me as required.’

  ‘Watch it, mate. Serviced? You’ll be lucky.’ She slapped his backside gently and then squeezed – because, God, she loved that bum. ‘Slave driver.’

  ‘You bet.’ He shifted a little against her and his mouth nuzzled her neck, this time his hand cupping her right breast. Soft. Caressing. A playful tweak of her nipple, another caress as she arched against him, relishing the way he managed to find all her sensitive parts and make them sing for his attention.

  His hand went to her left breast again and he squeezed. She moved against him. He squeezed again, fingers stepping across her skin, skimming over to her right breast. He was certainly giving them lots of attention today.

  Yummy.

  Then he went completely still.

  It was a strange kind of still. As if someone had flicked an off switch.

  ‘Hey?’ She wriggled against him, feeling his heat through his jeans. Stroking his back. Stroking the soft skin and rubbing against it, because she suddenly felt a strange and unwelcome need for comfort. ‘Hey? Benjamin Niall Murphy, don’t tell me you’ve fallen asleep on me?’

  There was a moment where she felt him inhale deeply. Then she felt the soft breeze on her shoulder as he blew the breath out and he pulled away. Definitely not like him. Ben was a man who liked to finish what he started.

  ‘Ben?’ She peered at him, holding his face in her palms. ‘You okay?’

  He had a small, uncertain smile on that gorgeous face. The kind of smile he’d had when she’d told him about her father dying. And about the confusion and pain she’d felt when her parents had told her she was adopted – and how them telling her she’d been chosen was supposed to somehow help her get over discovering she’d been rejected by her birth mother. It hadn’t.

  And like the time he’d told her he’d tried to save a jumper’s life on the Tube… and failed. It was a brave smile. He was being brave.

  What the hell?

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Her heart started to thump hard and fast against her ribcage. Why would he do the whole smexy thing and then stop midway? So many things ran through her head, but none of them made sense. ‘Ben. What’s the matter? You’re scaring me.’

  ‘It’s okay. I mean…’ He took both of her hands in his and a sudden cool wind came from nowhere, lifting goosebumps onto her flesh, stripping the heat she’d felt inside and out. ‘Baby, it’s probably nothing, but…’

  ‘But, what?’ The thumping in her heart doubled and there was white noise in her head.

  He let one of her hands drop and his fingers found their way to her left breast. The white noise stopped, time stopped, and his words seemed to echo through the silence. ‘Here. Here, baby. I’m sorry. I don’t know…’ She’d never seen her confident, decisive, soon-to-be husband so stuck for words, and that made her fear escalate a thousand times more. ‘There’s a lump.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘What do you mean? A lump? No. Don’t be silly. I know what my breasts are like.’ Small. Barely there. Just enough, Ben always said. More than a handful and all that…

  But Charlotte could tell by the way he was looking, by the way he was pressing on her breast, that he was being far from silly.

  She followed his fingers with her own. Eyes closed. Heart now completely stalled as her stomach rolled and rolled. She pressed the soft skin of her breast. At the edge of her fingertip she felt something. Maybe.

  Something. She moved a half inch over.

  There.

  There, above her nipple. Towards the left. A hard, round lump.

  He was staring at her as if she’d broken his heart… as if his heart was breaking. ‘Can you feel it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Yes. She crawled away from him, but fought the urge to fold herself into a fetal ball. ‘It’s probably nothing, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He didn’t look convinced. ‘It’s probably nothing. Just a…’ His shoulders heaved up and down and he curled his fingers and stroked them down her cheek. ‘Something and nothing. It’s probably just the way you’re made and we haven’t noticed it before.’

  Because, it wasn’t there before. ‘Maybe it’s… I don’t know. I’m too young for it to be anything serious, right?’ Her fingers jabbed against the hard ridge on her breast again. Found the lump. It was something. Not nothing.

  ‘Sure thing. We’ll sort it. You’ll be fine.’ He pulled her towards him and wrapped her tight into his embrace. Hauled her against his chest and she let him stroke her back and rock her a little.

  A lump. That could be… she couldn’t bring herself to think the word, never mind say it out loud. Scenarios ran through her head – images she’d seen on social media, shaved heads, pink ribbons.

  Twenty-five is too young for all that. She wasn’t going to panic. She wasn’t going to be dramatic.

  She felt the lump again.

  No. She wasn’t going to be dramatic. She was going to suck it up and be brave and adult and sensible. ‘So, should we get on and do some painting?’

  ‘What? Now? After this?’ Ben’s eyes burned with compassion. And something else. Pity?

  Please don’t look at me like that. Like I’m suddenly something less. ‘Yes, we were going to do some painting, right? So let’s do it. Life has to go on.’ She hauled herself from the bed, dragged her bra back on – taking one more moment to check. Yes. It was something. Something she didn’t want to think about or talk about or acknowledge, like her fear. Another hard lump, this time in her gut. She clenched her fists tight, squeezed her fingernails into her palms until the pain overrode her panic. Then she took three deep breaths, the way she did when she was just about to go onstage – harnessing the fear and the rapid beat of her heart. Breathing it out.

  She was too young. It was nothing serious. I’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. I’ll be okay.

  And then she went to put the kettle on, stepping over her paint-stained teaching top on the stairs, which had the handprint that seemed to mock her.

  She could hear him on the phone, his voice starting out all authoritarian and police-procedure and then rapidly going downhill. ‘What do you mean, there’s nothing available until
Tuesday? She’s going to have to wait over the weekend? Yes, she can see the trainee. Any bloody doctor – they’re all medically trained, right? Yes. She needs a check-up and a referral. Any bloody one will do just to write the damned form out.’

  ‘Ben!’ Charlotte ran through to the lounge and hissed at him, gestured at him to calm down.

  He threw the phone onto the plastic-covered sofa, clearly harnessing his fear into anger and action. ‘I don’t believe this. They can’t see you until Tuesday. Three-forty.’

  The panic gave over to numbness. She had a lump and she was going to have to wait to find out what it was. Her stomach contracted, twisted, and she had to be honest: she was scared. It might be serious. ‘But I can’t do three-forty. I have a class starting then and more all afternoon.’

  ‘Not now you don’t. Lissa can take them. Or phone Shelley. You’re going to see the doctor on Tuesday.’ He rifled through a pile of things on the floor and picked out his black work notebook, scribbled something onto it, then tore off a sheet and handed it to her. ‘Here, so we don’t forget. Dr Montford or something. Tuesday. We’ll get it sorted, love. It’ll be nothing. And if you don’t phone Shelley, I will.’

  ‘I will. I will.’ Her mind was racing, chasing words, images, feelings and grasping none of them.

  ‘Come and sit down, you look very pale.’ He took her by the shoulders and sat her down on the plastic-covered sofa. ‘Do you want to call your mum? Talk it through?’

  Charlotte imagined her mum’s reaction; the fallen face, the probability of tears and pain, and her stomach recoiled in panic. The usual instinctive response of making sure she never did anything to upset her mother.

  Anyway, there was no point bothering her when all they had was a possibility and a hunch. Nothing concrete. ‘No. No, let’s keep it between us two, shall we? No point in jumping the gun. It’ll be nothing, and then we’ll have upset her for no reason.’

  Keeping secrets from her mum had never been easy – although she’d perfected it eventually. But now, two days later, Eileen was watching her with a concerned expression and a question in her eyes. Charlotte looked across her mother’s lovely, familiar, comfortable lounge and met her gaze, gave her a, hopefully, reassuring smile and tried to focus over the noisy chatter and giggling.

  Planning a hen weekend away had sounded like a lot of fun – a welcome distraction from Charlotte’s black thoughts too, she’d hoped – but getting seven women from different generations to decide on one single destination was like trying to get the United Nations to agree on a Middle East peace deal. In other words, never going to happen.

  And, to be honest, planning something a couple of months ahead wasn’t on her radar right now. Because even though she’d decided to ram the whole lump thing to the back of her mind, she simply couldn’t stop it from jumping out every now and then, taking her unawares. Even though her head told her it would be fine, her body had started to fizz in panic at the mere thought of her breasts.

  Stop being so bloody dramatic.

  ‘Charlie? You okay?’ It was Lissa, who was wearing the same expression as Eileen. There was definitely no hiding her emotions from her best friend.

  Charlotte shook herself. ‘Sorry? What? Yes, I’m fine.’ She hadn’t told anyone. Not even Lissa, because saying it out loud would make it real, and she wasn’t willing to do that.

  Lissa topped up Charlotte’s now-empty glass. ‘Have you had too much champers already, you lush? I asked you if there was anywhere particular you fancied going.’

  ‘Oh. Anywhere. I’m easy. Whatever works.’

  ‘Ibiza sounds perfect. Honestly, Tasha went there for hers and they had a ball. Partying all night and sunbathing during the day – what’s not to love about that?’ Lissa was scrolling through package deals and images so quickly it made Charlotte dizzy. Sea. Sand. Bottles of wine. Waving hands in a nightclub. Foam.

  She felt distanced from it all. From making decisions. From even joining in the conversation. Would she even be going on a hen weekend, or would she be recovering from an operation? Treatment?

  ‘What about Tenerife?’ Shelley, another of the dance teachers at the studio, and bridesmaid number three, took a sip of champagne then pointed her glass to the screen. ‘Look, it says the average temperature’s twenty-one and there’s less chance of rain, only two per cent compared to seventeen in Ibiza.’

  ‘Anything’s better than London, that’s for sure,’ added Mia, Lissa’s younger sister, who felt like a kid sister of Charlotte too, they’d spent so much time together over the years. Bridesmaid number two. ‘What about Benidorm? Disneyland? Dublin?’

  ‘Can’t go to Dublin, that’s where Ben’s going. Definitely off limits.’ Europe had so many exciting, vibrant cities… who knew it’d be so hard to choose just one to visit?

  Eileen shook her head. ‘I’ve always fancied going to Prague. It looks so lovely and there’s a lot of history and culture there.’

  ‘History? Culture? On a hen weekend? Are you serious?’ Lissa’s eyes widened, as if that was the most ridiculous idea anyone had ever had. She nudged Charlotte’s mum and winked. ‘Hey, you never know what could happen – you might find a man, Eileen.’

  ‘I’m quite sure I wouldn’t be looking for one, thank you.’ Her mum busied herself with clearing up the bits of foil and metal from the top of the fizz bottles and putting them into a little pile on the table, which she then pushed absentmindedly around on white tablecloth. Charlotte’s heart pinged; her mum was trying, really hard, to be part of this, but she had very different ideas about a weekend away. As an old-fashioned grammar-school English teacher she’d been exacting as regards standards of manners and behaviour and had set the bar high for her daughter and pupils alike. Foam nightclubs weren’t going to appeal.

  But Lissa wasn’t giving up. She’d spent a lot of time at Charlotte’s in her youth. Lissa’s mum hadn’t been too impressed with the hours Lissa kept or, often, the male company she entertained, so Charlotte’s house had been a safe haven, a buffer from the inevitable mother-daughter arguments. She was well versed in ways of winding Charlotte’s mum up – in the nicest possible sense. Just fun. ‘It’s been a long time, Eileen. Don’t you miss it?’

  ‘Miss what?’ Eileen’s cheeks went a deep red as she realised that, as was generally required, the hen talk was about men and sex. ‘Oh. Well. No. Well, yes. I miss him.’

  ‘Ignore them, Mum, they’re just trying to embarrass you.’ And it’s working, poor thing. Charlotte dove to the rescue, squeezing her into a hug, inhaling her familiar scent of Estée Lauder foundation, flowers and cupcakes. ‘Maybe we could compromise on somewhere like Amsterdam where there’s history and a good nightlife. We could hire bikes, maybe stay on houseboats or something?’

  But Mum didn’t look enamoured with that idea either. ‘Aren’t there a lot of drugs in Amsterdam? Could we go to Paris? Rome?’ Throwing up her hands in despair she shook her head. ‘Oh… you all decide. I’m not sure I can make that weekend anyway. You don’t want me cramping your style.’

  ‘Of course I want you there. Don’t be silly. We’ll make something work for all of us.’ Charlotte threw Lissa a look she hoped would quell any more men talk. Ever since Dad’s death there’d never been a hint of her mum wanting to find someone new.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m only joking. We can’t go without you. You’re the mother of the bride.’ Lissa filled up all the glasses and gave one to Charlotte’s mum. ‘Let’s keep looking. Come on, Eileen.’

  ‘Eileen tooloo rye aye!’ sang Sonja and Niamh, Ben’s older sisters, chinking glasses. ‘Come on! Eileen!’

  Uh-oh. The Prosecco was kicking in – and they hadn’t even left the house. God help them when they left the country. And even though it was all about celebrating her, Charlotte just didn’t feel the celebratory vibe. She had too many other things on her mind. ‘Hey, Mum, should we go grab those dips I brought?’

  She bustled her into the kitchen, which smelt, as ever, of baking and home. Ei
leen had always made sure her daughter was well cared for in every way. For a few moments they worked in silence, putting dirty plates into the dishwasher and tidying up a little, taking advantage of the quiet time to clear their heads. At least, Charlotte did.

  Eileen put down the tea towel she’d been using to wipe some plates dry and peered at her daughter, the previous fluster turning into concern. ‘Are you okay, Charlotte? You don’t seem yourself today.’

  ‘Just tired, thanks. I’m fine.’ Charlotte pulled out the taramasalata and spiced hummus from the fridge, along with the baby vegetables she’d brought for dipping, and started to arrange them on a large white platter. ‘We’ve finished the first coat of paint in the lounge, though, and it’s looking heaps better.’

  ‘You’re working too hard, love. Running the studio and then trying to do all that painting and decorating. Then there’s the wedding and all that entails. It’s making you thin. And tired. I’m starting to worry about you.’

  ‘I’m a dancer, mum. Thin’s my job.’ Bless her. She’d always showered her daughter with affection, been open about her emotions. Sometimes it felt a little too much – as if the entire weight of responsibility for her mother’s emotional wellbeing fell to Charlotte.

  Which made her feel vindicated for not sharing her lump discovery, because why needlessly upset her now?

  In her jeans back pocket she could feel the ridge of the folded paper with the appointment details on. Having shucked loose from her phone wallet where she’d slipped it after Ben gave it to her, it was sticking into her buttock. But she couldn’t talk about it here, with all their friends in the next room. And she certainly didn’t want to put a downer on the mood.