by Fiona Harper
Jennie’s gaze drifted down to her hands, splayed on the balustrade. He took her silence as an invitation to keep going.
‘A few minor faux pas at some important functions only worsened matters. When she finally came to the end of her tether, she flung it all at me—how they all looked down on her, how alone she felt when I was always having to cancel nights out for a last minute meeting or was “obsessed” by a case for days, if not weeks, at a time.’ He held a breath and then let it out slowly. ‘After that she got really low. The doctor said she was suffering from depression.’
What he remembered most about that time, apart from the week-long silences, was the anger. The way Becky had looked at him as if he was something she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoe. Becky had blamed him. He’d put her in this situation. He’d wanted this life, so in her eyes it was all his fault.
And, yes, there’d been some blame to lay at his door, but not for doing what most people did. It was normal to want to make a success of yourself, to try to have a nice life. But he’d understood that Becky hadn’t had much normal in her life. He’d tried to understand, tried to help the only way he’d known how.
‘We got her help. We both went to counselling sessions. She saw a psychotherapist on her own… And for a while things seemed to get better.’
He stopped. Well, things had seemed better. Becky had been smiling again. He’d encouraged her to make new friends to widen her support system, and had been pleased when she’d taken his advice. He hadn’t felt quite so guilty about all the times his job demanded he work into the evening or be away overnight. Okay, yes, he’d sensed an odd kind of distance between him and Becky, but he’d put it down to the aftermath of her breakdown. They’d even started trying for a family. He hadn’t been sure they’d been ready for it, but Becky had seemed so set on the idea he’d gone along with it, hoping that having a baby to care for would give her something positive, something life-affirming to focus on. He’d known she’d make a good mother. Yes, she had her problems, but she had a heart of gold underneath.
At least, that was what he’d thought at the time. The things that had come to light after her death had put a huge question mark over that. He’d never imagined she could be so cruel or so selfish.
‘Alex?’
Jennie’s soft question brought him back to the present. He stood up and opened the balcony door. She must be freezing. Jennie nodded and walked back inside, rubbing her arms with her hands. He wanted to offer her his jacket, but it felt too intimate a gesture—an imposition rather than a courtesy—so instead he picked up a chenille throw that he spotted draped over the back of one of the chairs and handed it to her. She draped it over her shoulders and sat herself back down in the same chair.
‘But things obviously didn’t stay better for you and Becky,’ she said, looking at him from under the sweep of her side parting.
He couldn’t quite bring himself to cosy back down on the sofa. He needed to walk, to think. ‘No. Things got quite a lot worse.’
There must have been something in the hoarseness of his voice that got to her. While he’d been talking he’d got the impression that Jennie had been adding layer upon layer of distance between them—something he found ridiculously easy to identify second time around—but she turned her head to look at him and he saw unexpected warmth in her eyes. This couldn’t be easy for her, listening to all of this, but she was generous enough to let herself feel compassion for the woman who had claimed his heart first. The two flickering Jennies who had been dizzying him all evening stood still for a second and, slowly, one started to fade.
‘It wasn’t long before her behaviour began to change,’ he said. ‘I found out she was missing her therapy sessions. Her new friends lived a really fast lifestyle, I later discovered. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but it became obvious that she was using again.’
Jennie put her hands over her mouth. ‘Oh, Alex! That’s awful!’
He’d been devastated when he’d worked it all out. He’d known she was stronger than that. She didn’t have to just…give in…and run away into a chemical world. They could have sorted things out together. But she hadn’t trusted him to be strong for her.
Jennie pulled the throw tighter around her shoulders and tucked her hands away inside it. ‘What did you do?’
He shrugged. ‘I confronted her about it.’
‘Did it do any good?’
He shook his head, partly to answer her question, partly because he still couldn’t believe the way Becky had erupted that night. The simmering resentment that he’d been able to taste in the air each time he’d come home had ignited like petrol vapour.
‘I suspected she was under the influence of something because she just went crazy, blaming me for everything—even the fact that she wasn’t pregnant yet. Apparently, I was a useless husband, too interested in his career to be any use to a woman. She even said she’d do better to look elsewhere for a father for her children.’
Jennie’s eyes widened. He knew the question behind her look: had she?
Not even fit enough to be a sperm donor, that was what Becky had said to him. A deep hole opened up inside him, but he sucked it closed again by sheer willpower.
‘I don’t know,’ he said in reply to Jennie’s silent question. ‘At the time I thought she was just venting, but later I started to wonder if she’d already started her search.’
And recent events had confirmed his suspicions. He opened his mouth, ready to tell her everything, ready to reveal the vital detail he’d left out of the conversation until now, but hesitated. While Jennie had stopped looking daggers at him, he wasn’t sure she was ready to hear it. Emotional women needed to be handled with kid gloves. He’d learned that the hard way with Becky. And Jennie could be unpredictable. He didn’t want to scare her away again by revealing too much too soon. He needed to lay more groundwork, make sure she understood everything first.
Jennie shuffled forward in her chair. ‘What made you think that?’
He exhaled sharply. ‘We argued for hours, but eventually she promised she’d keep her therapy appointments, that we’d try to put what had been going wrong in our marriage right, but the next day, when I came home from work, she was gone. I don’t think she’d have done that if she hadn’t had somewhere to go to, someone to go to.’
‘Gone?’ Jennie sat up so straight so quickly that the throw slipped off her shoulders. She didn’t seem to notice.
Alex rubbed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. ‘She’d taken her car, cleared out her wardrobe—and the savings account.’
Jennie just shook her head, mirroring the confusion he’d felt when he’d finally pieced it all together, then she got up and came to stand close to him. Not too close, though. ‘Why did she do that? Take the money?’
Alex shrugged. He’d made himself crazy trying to work that one out. The only thing he’d come up with was that she must have been very, very angry. ‘I think she wanted to punish me.’
All he’d ever wanted was to look after Becky. How had he got it so wrong?
He stopped pacing and looked bleakly at Jennie. He could tell she was chewing it all over. She looked sad for him, but he didn’t deserve her compassion. He should have paid attention to what was going on sooner. Good husbands were supposed to notice whether their wives were happy or not. He paused for a moment, trying to assimilate the revelation that had sneaked into his mind while he’d been looking at Jennie. It seemed he hadn’t learnt as much as he should have done from the whole Becky fiasco. He was making the same mistakes all over again.
When he’d proposed to Jennie, he’d really thought he’d never have to worry about her being emotionally vulnerable. She was warm and giving—tough, he’d thought. And she was sophisticated and charming, born to the world he now lived in, navigating it with ease. Why would there have been a problem? She was nothing like Becky.
That was why her departure from the hotel in Paris had been such a shock; he just hadn’t seen it
coming, had thought Jennie would cope marvelously, as she always did. Standing in the hotel lobby, he’d felt sick and empty. His new wife had done a disappearing act, just like the first one. For a man who was supposed to be a textbook definition of a runaway success, two runaway wives was not a good track record.
‘Oh, Alex,’ she said softly. ‘Why couldn’t you share any of this with me? I would have understood.’
He clamped his lips together and thought about her question. It hadn’t seemed necessary to fill her in on the details of his past. It wasn’t something he liked to talk about. It had taken him quite some time to glue himself back together, to feel normal again. Okay, maybe not normal, exactly, but stable. He’d eventually managed to squash all the deep, dark things he’d been feeling into a compartment at the back of his mind. Sure, he’d had to lock a lot of other things away with them—hope, joy, peace—but he was feeling cynical about those things anyway, and the loss was bearable because he hadn’t had to deal with those darker emotions.
So when the divorce papers had arrived at his home a year later he’d been ready for them. He’d clinically been able to accept that whatever his first wife had felt for him was dead…and he was the one who’d killed it.
For a long time after that he’d shied away from relationships, but then he’d met Jennie and she’d filled his life with sunshine. Childish of him, perhaps, not to have told her more, but he’d just wanted to leave that compartment shut, enjoy her warmth uninterrupted for a while, had just wanted to be happy.
He delved into his consciousness for the right answer. ‘I was ashamed,’ he finally admitted. ‘I’m not proud of how I handled the situation with Becky, or happy that she made a complete and utter fool of me. And I thought it had nothing to do with our future together.’
Jennie started pacing now, all the while keeping her eyes on him. ‘Well, since it almost blew our future to smithereens, I’d say you were a little short-sighted on that point.’
Touché.
‘If I’d understood the situation,’ she said, looking exasperated, ‘if I’d known all about Becky, I might have been less—melodramatic—about the whole thing. A good relationship requires communication, Alex—not telepathy! If we don’t start to talk to each other, this marriage will never survive.’
He looked at his hands. She was right. He’d been blind, made another bad call, when he’d been so convinced he’d been doing the right thing. He’d spent so long walking on eggshells around Becky, protecting her from anything that might upset her fragile balance, that he’d got used to keeping everything to himself. But Jennie wasn’t like that, hadn’t needed his babying. He thought about her words again and had a sudden second surge of hope.
‘Are you saying you want this marriage to survive?’
She bit her lip, nibbling at a loose bit of skin. ‘Maybe,’ she replied, almost whispering.
When he’d arrived at the hotel this evening he wasn’t sure he’d even wanted to hear that. He’d been too angry to think straight. But underneath that anger—and possibly fuelling it a little—had been an ache to see her again. To be with her. To know this had all been a horrible nightmare.
He walked over to her, touched her cheeks tenderly with both hands and then kissed her, briefly, with aching softness. Jennie closed her eyes and tears slid down her face again. She pulled away, looked at him in confusion.
‘I don’t know, Alex. I just don’t know. You turning up again, all this information, in just a few hours… It’s a lot to deal with. I’m exhausted…’
She was shaking under his fingers. He’d never seen her like this, so close to the edge of losing her ever-present sophisticated cool. He didn’t want to be reminded of Becky at this point, but he had to allow for the fact that he might be pushing too hard, too fast, not considering Jennie’s feelings.
‘Why don’t you get some sleep?’ he said softly and nodded to the vast bedroom.
‘What about you?’ she said, hugging herself with both arms.
He gave her a wan smile. ‘Brain’s too busy. I’m going to stay out here. We can talk again in the morning.’
She nodded, and retreated into the bedroom. Before she shut the door, she turned. ‘Goodnight, Alex,’ she said, then closed it softly.
He sat on the sofa for a long time, trying to work out how to tell her everything else. He sighed. There was a shred of hope now that he might save this marriage, but only a tiny shred. One false move and he’d ruin everything again.
But what if they tried and it was all too much for her? What if she didn’t cope the way he’d thought she would? He’d made these assumptions before and his whole life had collapsed. He couldn’t ignore the fact that he could be setting both of them up for disaster.
Jennie woke for what seemed like the thousandth time in the last two weeks to find the bed too empty. She’d rebelled against that sensation at first, spreading herself out like a starfish as she went to sleep, filling as much of the space as she could, but she always woke to find herself curled up in a ball on her side of the bed, the flat cold space next to her a constant reminder. She hadn’t even bothered to try last night.
This morning every muscle in her body was stiff and uncooperative. She did her best to stretch out the kinks as she lay there, then slid out of bed and walked over to the dressing table to look in the mirror.
Oh, help.
Despite the fact she’d been physically and emotionally exhausted last night, she’d struggled to get past that drowsy first stage of sleep. Memories and fears, mixed with other random images, had danced round and round inside her head, leaving her dizzy and disoriented. To be honest, she wasn’t feeling much better now.
She blinked to try and clear the grit from her eyes, then scurried into the bathroom for a shower, an unwarranted sense of urgency chasing her. She emerged fresher, but hardly more relaxed. She hadn’t noticed it before, but Marion must have had her overnight bag transferred from her old room some time the previous evening, because it was sitting on the suitcase rack beside the wardrobe. She dressed in neutral tones, comfy trousers and a soft jumper, and brushed her hair into a low, short ponytail.
Alex had seen her all dishevelled and bare of make-up many times. It was silly to be smearing the foundation on, covering the purple smudges under her eyes with concealer, but last night she’d been a mess in every way possible and she felt the need to recover lost ground this morning.
When she’d finished getting ready she pushed the bedroom door open gently and peered into the living room, every nerve on alert. The silent winter light gave the room a frosty appearance. At first she thought he’d gone, maybe to pay her back for doing the same to him, but then she heard a soft breath and noticed an arm draped over the edge of the sofa.
She took a few steps forward, her eyes never leaving his sleeping form. He was crunched into a most uncomfortable-looking position, the elegant sofa too short to accommodate his long legs. Jennie didn’t know whether to be insulted that he hadn’t even tried to climb into the super king-sized bed next door with her, or to be impressed by his chivalry.
One of his fingers twitched and she took a step back, held her breath.
Alex opened his eyes. Not with the soft fluttering some people did. They were suddenly wide open, fully alert. He had the most irritating habit of making the transition from fully asleep to fully awake in a split-second, while it normally took Jennie a good hour and a couple of cups of cappuccino to reach full consciousness.
He found her instantly, and as his gaze met hers she didn’t doubt that she was fully in focus. Alex was a man who didn’t perceive blurred edges. Everything was off or on, right or wrong, black or white.
He gathered his limbs together in one smooth motion and stood up, ran his hand through hair so short it couldn’t possibly be messy.
‘Good morning,’ she said quietly. And then, because she was feeling too awkward to let the silence hang between them, she added, ‘Did you sleep well?’
He looked at the sofa and t
hen back at her. ‘I slept at some point. That’s enough.’
Jennie smiled nervously at him. What next? Where did they go from here?
She’d never been awkward around Alex, but it seemed so surreal, being in the same room as him after all this time. On some level they felt like strangers all over again. There was so much she didn’t know about her husband, but what he’d told her last night had just been history—people and dates and events. Just facts and figures when you boiled it all down. But the first time she’d met Alex she’d felt as if she’d really understood him on some instinctive, elemental level, almost as if she’d recognized him, even though they’d never met before. Did finding out all of this…history…of his change that? She’d have guessed not, but this morning everything felt different, and now she wasn’t sure.
She wanted to lick her lips, ask him casually where they were now, but her mouth had dried into a polite little smile.
So here they were in no-man’s-land—open hostility put off for the moment, but still a long way from where they once had been.
Alex opened his mouth, took a breath, but before he could make a sound there was a discreet knock on the door.
‘Come in,’ he called, sounding infuriatingly unbothered by the interruption.
Marion poked her head round the door and smiled approvingly at the pair of them. ‘Just wanted to let you know that we’re all meeting for brunch at ten-thirty in the dining room.’ She looked expectantly at them, smiling.
Jennie and Alex shared a look.
‘That’s very kind, Marion,’ he said, not once taking his eyes off Jennie, ‘but I think a quiet breakfast is more what we had in mind.’
Her stepmother’s smile upgraded itself into a beam. ‘Marvellous. We’ll see you both later, I expect.’ And, without waiting for goodbyes, she clicked the door closed.
Alex ran his fingers through his hair again and exhaled, showing the first sign that he was more agitated than Jennie had supposed.
