The Lost Wife: An uplifting page-turner about grief, love and friendship

by Mansell, Anna

  Our eyes meet.

  ‘I am truly, totally and overwhelmingly sorry. I will always be sorry. University didn’t see me invent the time-travel car in which I could go back and fix it all.’ She relaxes visibly, just a little. ‘Four years and all I got was a certificate and a job on your doorstep. That wasn’t in the plan.’

  She twists her glass on the table and I wish I’d never suggested we meet up. She looks down at her shoes and a sadness outwardly takes over; it swims around her like cartoon smoke that might magic her away any moment. It’s a sadness that, as I sit here, seeps into me too. Into my heart. Because, actually, there was a moment, back then, when I thought maybe we might have been friends. At a time when others around me said all the wrong things, she knew the right things to say. She knew loss, she still does; perhaps that is why it hurt so much and I just hadn’t realised it before.

  ‘You let me down, Rachel,’ I whisper.

  Despite the late-summer evening turning to dusk, and the inside of the pub seeming hazy, I see Rachel’s eyes fill. Kirsty MacColl sings out on the jukebox. I feel like shit.

  ‘I know I did,’ she answers. ‘I know.’

  The woman whose arms I’ve openly cried in is sitting before me, hands clasping her drink, refusing to give in to the emotion I can see that she feels. The woman who was there for Oli when I needed her to be. The woman I called upon to help me when I confronted Simon. And I realise that not only did she let me down by looking in Ellie’s box, but she let me down by doing something that made me lose faith in her. In an outsider. The only person at the time who might have had an impartial opinion. Who wasn’t coloured by family history. Someone who I hadn’t realised was important on some scale or other because I was too busy grieving to notice her quietly, carefully, being there. And maybe now, with the benefit of time and distance, I can see that. Does that make me feel differently? Does that quash any anger?

  ‘He comes out soon,’ I say carefully.

  ‘Simon?’

  I nod.

  She stares into her glass. ‘Have you seen him?’ I shake my head. ‘Lisa?’ I flick my eyes up to her. ‘Have you seen her?’

  ‘Not since the court hearing. Not since I saw you.’ It’s my turn to stare vacantly at my drink for a moment. ‘I tried to see Simon, but he wouldn’t have it. He rejected my visitation request, he ignored my letters, so I had to leave it.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he see you?’ she asks.

  ‘Guilt?’ I say. ‘Trying to hide something?’ I add. ‘Shame?’

  Rachel runs a finger around the base of her glass. She looks sad and tired and older. ‘Do you think...’ She stops herself briefly, before just coming right out with it. Again. ‘Did you ever do the test?’

  ‘No!’

  She stares at me.

  ‘Why would I? What good could it have done?’ I lean back in the chair, studying her face, wondering why she asks. ‘Simon had gone to prison. Even if Oli wasn’t my son, he was still Ellie’s.’ I sigh. ‘He is Ellie’s. He is mine. I feel it.’

  Our eye contact is broken by Rachel’s phone ringing out again. ‘Sorry, it’s Mo. Again. I’ll call her in a bit.’ She drains her glass. ‘I need another, you?’ she asks. I offer up my almost full glass by way of answer.

  By the time she comes back, I realise there’s only one question I’ve ever wanted to ask her. Only one question that could ever make a difference to any of this. To us. Not that there needs to be an ‘us’, but if she’s going to teach my son for the next year I need to be able to look at her without my thoughts flashing back to my bedroom, the DNA test in my hand, her face when she realised what she’d said. What she’d done.

  ‘Would you have told me?’

  She pauses before sitting back down. ‘I think so. Eventually. Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘What’s complicated about it?’

  ‘Look.’ She sits up in her seat. Her eyes fleetingly meet mine, then dart away again. ‘I could explain, but it doesn’t change things. I’d like to think I would have told you but honestly, when I think about it, I don’t know. I don’t know if I would have wanted to be the person to rock you that way. You know? To hurt you. Your opinion of me… it mattered.’

  ‘My opinion!’

  ‘Yes. Okay. It mattered. It was stupid. To be honest, I didn’t even realise until Mo pointed it out.’

  ‘Pointed what out?’

  She lets out a massive sigh. ‘You know what, nothing. It’s not relevant. I hope I would have told you, but I can’t promise that I would have. If that’s what you want me to do? I can’t promise it. Now, excuse me a minute, I need the ladies’.’ She knocks her drink back, then disappears into the back of the pub.

  Fifty

  Rachel

  ‘Fucking hell,’ I say, then apologise to the girl coming out of the toilet. ‘Not you – sorry.’ Oh God.

  I kick the bathroom wall, annoyed at being such an idiot. It’s fine. It’s all fine. ‘It’s all fine,’ I tell my reflection, splashing my face with ice-cold water from the tap. ‘Rachel,’ I say to my reflection, reapplying some make-up, putting the mask back on. ‘You have to teach the man’s son. Don’t play with fire. Move on or... move on.’ I stare at myself, my chest heavy with the rise and fall of breathlessness. My eyes sting. My heart pounds. There’s a fuzzy edge to my mind, the wine beginning to filter through my bloodstream. Perhaps it’s time I left.

  But when I get back, he’s bought me another drink. ‘I don’t know if you wanted it, but there you go.’

  I look down at the glass, full and waiting. He sits, back resting against the sofa, staring at the sofa where I’d been sat. I don’t know what else he wants from me. I’m not sure what more I can say. My phone rings out again, Mo’s number flashing up. ‘That’s the third time,’ he says.

  ‘Mo?’ Heavy breath comes down the phone line. ‘Mo! Are you okay?’

  She breathes in and out three more times before saying, ‘No. My waters have broken and Greg is currently stuck on the A1 somewhere near Edinburgh.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Yes. And also bollocks.’

  ‘Okay, don’t panic.’

  ‘I’m not… well, I’m trying not to. Oh fuck it, I am! I am panicking. What happens if he doesn’t get here, Rach? What happens if I have to give birth alone. On the bathroom floor. With only an Egyptian cotton towel and some Dettol.’ I want to laugh, but can sense she’s being dramatic to hide the fear. ‘How would I even cut the cord?’

  ‘Chip away with your tweezers?’

  ‘They’re gold-plated, Rachel!’

  ‘Okay. Come on then, you need to get to the hospital.’

  ‘How! Have you ever had a contraction, Rachel? They may only be every seven or eight minutes, but dear God they smart.’ She starts heavy-breathing again.

  ‘Mo, that’s not seven or eight minutes.’

  ‘I know. They do keep getting a bit closer.’

  ‘Right, you need to call an ambulance, or a taxi. Or a neighbour.’ I look at my watch, then the empty glasses of wine that prevent me from getting in my car to be by her side. ‘You going to Queen’s?’

  Ed puts his drink down, moving to the edge of the sofa. ‘Everything okay?’ he mouths. I shake my head.

  ‘Yes, Queen’s. Rach, I need you.’

  ‘I know, chuck, I’m coming. Cross your legs for at least an hour, okay?’ I get up, looking around. ‘Can you call me a taxi?’ I shout over to the bar.

  Ed jumps up. ‘Come on, my car’s outside.’

  ‘It’s fine, really. I’ll get a cab.’ Mo lets out a heavy breath and a swear. ‘I’m on my way, Mo. Okay?’

  ‘That’ll cost a fortune and you have to wait until it arrives. Come on, I’ll take you,’ Ed says.

  Not really having much alternative, with Mo crying down the phone about being on her own and frightened and annoyed with Greg because she told him he shouldn’t be so far away when she was so close to her due date, I relent, fol
lowing Ed out to the car. I put the phone on speaker, resting it on my knee, as I buckle up. ‘Right, I’m on my way, Mo. Ed’s bringing me.’

  ‘Ed?’ she asks. ‘Ed… Ed…?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I fumble with a twist in the strap that stops me pulling it across my body, then struggle to snap it in place.

  ‘As in the man you have just spent the last four years trying to get over… Ed?’ The seat belt snaps in and I rush to try to take her off speaker, but the belt tightening and a sudden lurch forward means I knock my phone into the footwell. ‘Rach, what are you doing…’ She pauses to breathe as I fumble to release the seat belt so that I can rescue my phone, which is as far away from reach in the footwell as any phone can be, especially when you don’t want a conversation to be overheard. ‘Rachel, teaching the child of a man you were in love with is one thing – fucking hell this hurts – but going out with him?’ She stops and breathes through her pain and I wish I could do the same as I feel Ed staring at me, his elbow touching mine, so small is his car.

  I finally manage to take Mo off speaker phone. ‘Mo, call an ambulance,’ I say flatly. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. Okay?’ I hang up, turning to face him. ‘I can get a taxi,’ I say. But he shakes his head, and backs out of the car park in silence.

  Fifty-One

  Ed

  A man she was in love with? Is that what Mo said? It’s one thing to teach the child of a man she was in love with…

  Is that what Rachel meant when she said it was complicated?

  Is Mo right…? She’s in labour; Ellie spouted all sorts of nonsense in the depths of labour and childbirth. It’s probably nonsense.

  Except that Rachel is staring out of the window, arms folded, silent. Distant. Wiping a tear away.

  ‘You don’t have to do this you know,’ she says, pulling a tissue out of her bag. ‘I can still get a cab.’

  ‘It’s fine. She obviously needs you.’

  ‘She needs something,’ Rachel answers. She flips through her phone, opening and closing apps, scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. She switches it off, tapping it on her hand, her knee, staring out of the window as we drive the flat roads through Lincolnshire. She sighs, shifts in her seat, she groans. ‘Look—’ she begins.

  ‘Don’t… you don’t have to—’

  ‘I know, and… well, I just… it was a long time ago. I was a different person, I didn’t even… It’s not like I knew. It was Mo who pointed it out and it was too late by then and I think saying I loved you was an overstatement, anyway. I just maybe felt sorry for you, or empathised or… I don’t know. Look’ – she groans into her hands – ‘okay, I think I probably did have feelings, but not any more, okay? So don’t panic.’

  I pin my eyes on the road ahead.

  ‘And I don’t for a second expect you to feel positive about any of this so I’ll move schools. Leave Oli where he is. I’ll go. This is all too close for comfort and though it didn’t mean anything – doesn’t mean anything – let’s face it, it’s just a bit awkward, so it’s fine. Just drop me in Nottingham. Thanks for the lift, I appreciate it – Mo will appreciate it – but leave me there. I’ll sort everything else out. You don’t have to see me again.’

  She pulls her bag into her stomach, staring out of the side window again.

  ‘Rachel—’

  ‘Don’t.’ She holds her hand up. ‘Please. This is awful enough as it is.’ She rests her elbow on the side of the door, wiping her eyes in such a way that I think she thinks I don’t notice. She chews on her cheek, her finger, her top lip. She leans her head back into the chair, hugging her handbag like her life, this journey, depends on it. I feel bad for her.

  We travel for an hour in silence, neither knowing what to say. Maybe neither wanting to say anything. But her demeanour changes as we take the ring road down to the hospital. Pulling into the car park, she turns to face me, not quite looking, but not avoiding eye contact either.

  ‘You know,’ she begins, quietly, uncertainly, ‘I don’t know what it’s like when you lose a partner, I can’t imagine it.’

  I wish that I couldn’t.

  ‘But, I’ve realised… maybe in the last few years, I don’t know, maybe in the last few minutes… I’ve realised that losing a parent skews your view of love. Of life, maybe. You probably can’t ever imagine loving again… a partner, I mean. The idea must be too painful. I don’t know.’

  A barrier up ahead bounces in its holder each time it drops closed after a car passes through.

  ‘I think. It skews your view of love. Of life, maybe. Love becomes everything we need. It’s as though we seek it out, that depth of feeling, that need. That emotional black spot needs filling. When Mum died, it was Mo. She got me through that time. I loved Mo so much, I still do… despite this, now… I mean, right now I could throttle her and her unborn child. But then… it was like her friendship was the only thing to keep me breathing. And maybe it’s the same with work, with the kids at nursery and now at school… you want to be needed, to be loved almost. You need to fill your heart with things that mean something… a love, of sorts. I don’t know. I’m rambling. I guess… I just think… maybe I thought I had feelings because we shared loss. Maybe I did have feelings, because we shared loss. Whatever it was, it was no excuse for my behaviour and I don’t expect you to forgive me. I’d hoped we might be able to find a way to work things out, but perhaps that was naive, or maybe now it’s untenable. But don’t worry, I don’t expect anything from you. Just know that I am sorry. For everything. Truly.’ Her eyes fill up again, but she blinks the tears away. ‘Thanks for the lift, I appreciate it. I’ll talk to the school, I’ll make it right.’

  And as she walks away, I realise that she already has.

  She didn’t need time travel after all.

  Fifty-Two

  Rachel

  I’ve just spent the last ten minutes breathless sobbing in the bathroom. The kind of crying I haven’t done in years. The kind of crying that makes one of the cleaners push their trolley up to the door, tap gently and ask if you are okay. The kind of crying that makes you hiccup a ‘yes’ like you really think you can pass it off as the truth. And now I’m making my way to the delivery suite, desperately trying to put my emotions in a box so that I can adopt the role of birth partner… should Greg not make it back in time.

  ‘This way,’ summons a nurse, when I explain who I am. ‘She’s getting pretty close. In here.’

  I follow the nurse into a room empty of other people except for Mo, who crumbles into a snotty mess at the sight of me. ‘Oh my God,’ she wheezes. ‘You’re here, you’re here!’ She’s leant over the bed, waving her arse from side to side. She grabs hold of my hand, growling into it, and I resist the urge to ask her to go steady as her nails dig into the fleshy part of my thumb. ‘Greg’s going to miss this,’ she says. ‘The fucking idiot.’ Not so close to delivery that she’s lost her ability to be cross, then. ‘I told him, I told him not to go today. I just knew.’

  ‘But you’ve still got a week left,’ I say, rubbing her back. ‘Don’t they say first babies are always late?’

  ‘Of course they do, but since when have you known me to do things the way everyone else does? And please stop rubbing my back,’ she growls. A nurse crouches beneath her, her arm lost up the blue of the hospital gown that barely covers Mo’s modesty. If there’s any left.

  ‘Wow, childbirth is dignified,’ I say, averting my eyes.

  ‘Funny, when your contractions hammer through your womb every ninety seconds, dignity is the last thing on your…’ But she can’t finish her sentence; another wave of pain consumes her, taking her inside of herself and, without warning, her growl turns into some kind of grunt.

  ‘That’s it, love. That’s it,’ says the nurse, now positioned on the floor beneath Mo. ‘Baby’s on its way,’ she says to me, briefly lifting her head from beneath the gown before going back to focus on the task in hand. Mo crouches and grunts and pushes, pulling on the bed, squeezing my hand. I�
��m so wrapped up in the moment, the ferocity of it, the grit, that I lose all sense of self-control, my head next to hers. I tell her that she’s amazing, that I love her, that I can’t believe she is doing this and how proud I am of her until, finally, with one final grunt, bend and downward push, the nurse declares, ‘That’s the head!’

  And I think, The head! Is that all we’ve got after all of that?

  After a moment to breathe, a moment in which I can’t bring myself to look anywhere other than at Mo’s face, eyes closed, cheeks pink with effort, the nurse says, ‘Okay, one more push.’ And Mo pushes, she pushes and breathes, she judders and, in a final flinch, my best friend in the whole wide world becomes a mother as a tiny, purple, bloody, creamy baby is placed into her arms and she collapses, exhausted, onto the side of the bed. ‘Welcome to the world, little girl,’ says the nurse, rubbing at her chest and face to clear it of childbirth goo.

  Mo looks down at this tiny person wriggling on her bare chest, then up to me. ‘I fucking did it!’ she says, through tears and exhaustion, her baby letting out a cry. ‘Look! Look, Rach! I fucking did it!’ she says again, gazing down, completely and totally in love. The nurse guides her onto the bed, but Mo doesn’t take her eyes off the baby for a single second. And I don’t take mine off Mo, aware that I’ll never again witness anything so beautiful, significant and so terrifying in equal measure.

  ‘You bloody well did,’ I sob. Moving to her side, taking the baby’s tiny, curled up fingers into mine. ‘And look Mo, she’s so beautiful. She is so….’ But I can’t finish what I was going to say, because I realise that I am looking at the face of the most incredible, precious gift anyone can have, and I love her. With all of my broken, stupid heart, I love her.