The Wife's Revenge

by Deirdre Palmer

  I’d been facing a few challenges at the time – who doesn’t? I’d just lost my parents in one hit – not in a tragic way; they’d sold up the family home in Essex and moved to New Zealand to join my sister, Natalie, and her family. Although in one way, it was a tragedy and caused me many sleepless nights while I raged internally with resentment and sadness that my parents had chosen to live with my sister on the other side of the world and not here, with me.

  On top of that, my beautiful, clever Caitlin had at the age of seven been diagnosed with a high-functioning form of autism – Asperger’s, we learned, after many rounds of tests and consultations. I thought we were lucky she’d been diagnosed at such a young age, but Hector shocked me by refusing to accept that Caitlin was anything but a sensitive, quirky little girl going through a difficult phase. Rather than having my husband irrefutably in my corner, my struggle to understand Caitlin and her condition was magnified by my dismay at his head-in-the-sand attitude. Even now, although Hec has come to accept that Caitlin is different, he still believes she’ll come through it, and that the best way of handling the situation is to parent her in exactly the same way as our other daughters.

  So, life wasn’t easy at the time, but that didn’t give me permission to behave so disgracefully. I’ll never forgive myself for that.

  Ben gave us a lift home after ballet. Our house is no more than a ten-minute stroll from the village community hall, but he politely insisted, and I politely refused, fearful of what came next. Fearful of myself.

  The two girls had never met before – his family had not long moved to Oakheart from Brighton, and although Ben’s daughter had joined Hazel’s school, she was in a different class. It was obvious they’d taken to one another straight away. I hid a smile when I noticed Hazel, at nine-and-a-half, giving her bossy nature an airing as she explained to Zoe the whereabouts of the toilets and exactly how her hair must be done. No plaits, no partings, just a plain bun with a net over it. I sensed a budding friendship, as did Ben. He seemed delighted by it. I’d have preferred it if they’d hated each other on sight.

  The girls disregarded my protests that a lift was not needed and clambered happily into the back of the silver Peugeot, leaving me to give in gracefully and climb into the front passenger seat. It was then that Ben formally introduced himself and his daughter as Ben and Zoe Grammaticus, and told me his wife’s name was Tessa. I wondered afterwards if he’d been testing me by mentioning his wife; checking whether I knew her – I didn’t – and making his status clear, so there were no misunderstandings from the start.

  Whatever, the introduction seemed so superfluous by that time it was laughable. Except I wasn’t laughing. Smiling, yes. I couldn’t help that, while my legs trembled like an un-set strawberry jelly.

  ‘I couldn’t stop looking at you, back there,’ he said quietly, once the jabbering in the back seat filled the car. ‘And you were looking at me, so, I wondered if we’d met before?’

  I pretended to be thinking about this, while pushing from my mind every bad romantic film I’d ever seen. ‘Nope, pretty sure we haven’t.’

  He smiled into the driving mirror at me. ‘You’d have remembered, right?’

  ‘That’s a bit presumptuous.’

  ‘I know. I’m out of practice.’

  ‘So I should hope.’

  I asked him to drop us at the corner of our road, by the British Legion club, but he took no notice and bumped right on down the uneven stretch of private road which forms Woodside Villas.

  ‘When can I see you, Francesca Oliver?’ he said, as I wordlessly pointed out our house. A seventies picture-windowed box, erected in somebody’s garden and nothing like the characterful older properties in the rest of the road, it sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb.

  ‘Fran. It’s Fran.’ Only my mother calls me Francesca. Nevertheless, that was apparently the name I’d given him, only I couldn’t remember saying it. I rushed on, my voice barely above a whisper. ‘And the answer’s never, not in the way you mean, or rather I think you might mean, only right at this moment I have no idea what’s happening here.’

  He stopped the car, idling the engine, and smiled directly at me. ‘I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. We’re too old to play games. Correction: I’m too old.’

  ‘Thanks for the compliment. I think.’

  ‘So, when?’

  The jabbering in the back was flagging. I shot a warning look at Ben, folded my mouth into a firm line and shook my head. The warring factions inside my brain drew swords. The side I wanted to win – needed desperately to win – was losing its grip faster than snow sliding off a sun-struck roof.

  ‘Do you have a mobile?’

  I nodded. He held out his hand. My internal battle heated up. The balance shifted, shifted back again, several times. I took my phone from my bag and gave it to him. It came back with his number in it. I waited, expecting to be given his phone to enter my number. Nothing happened.

  ‘Ring or text me, when–’

  ‘I won’t, but thank you.’ I smiled.

  ‘What for?’ His tone was amused, and mildly curious.

  I shrugged, embarrassed. I got out of the car and released Hazel from the back.

  ‘We can fix a playdate, now you’ve got Zoe’s dad’s number,’ she said, performing a jeté beside the car. ‘Yay!’

  Hector never knew about Ben and me, and the girls certainly didn’t. I was never found out in that way. In every other way, I’m found out every minute of every day. My mind plays tricks, making me believe that Ben was no more than a crazy moment of physical longing, a dangerous dance of my imagination. Then I have to pull back sharply to the truth in case in some obscure way my manner gives away the secret.

  Oakheart calls itself a village but has the footprint of a small town. Its core of ancient, picture-perfect architecture, the sleepy square with its massive oak tree at the centre, remains intact, a draw for the tourists, a meeting place for the locals. But beyond the original village, ribboning developments from all decades unroll through fields and woodland to the foothills of the South Downs in one direction and the plains of the River Adur in another. Because of its unruly sprawl, Oakheart is not, therefore, a village where everybody knows everybody else and gossip is its lifeblood. We felt safe, Ben and I. Safe from the eyes of the village, if not from ourselves.

  Six

  FRAN

  ‘Where are we going on holiday?’

  Hector and I exchange looks as Caitlin throws this question across the dinner table.

  ‘New Zealand?’ I say, with a laugh to show I’m not serious, although actually I’m very serious indeed.

  ‘One day.’ Hector smiles, his brown eyes full of warmth and sympathy finding mine. ‘One day.’

  ‘Yes.’ I nod, and smile back.

  Hector has suggested several times that I make the trip on my own to see my parents and sister, but I couldn’t do that. Aside from the cost, I don’t want to go on a dream trip and leave my family behind, even though none of them would raise the slightest objection and they’d be perfectly fine without me.

  ‘I’ve been looking at the Maldives,’ Kitty says, following this with a long, wistful sigh. ‘The beaches are to die for.’

  ‘Again, one day,’ Hector says brightly.

  Caitlin’s carefully constructed forkful of spaghetti unwinds itself and slides back onto her plate. She frowns at Kitty. ‘How can you have been looking at the Maldives? It’s miles away, isn’t it, Mum? Where is the Maldives?’

  ‘On-line, of course. On the screen. Why must you take everything so literally?’ Kitty puts down her fork and throws her head back, raking her fingers through the sides of her pale gold hair, the same colour as Hector’s and Caitlin’s, before letting it fall forward again.

  ‘Don’t do that over the table, please,’ I say. ‘Yes, Caitlin, the Maldives are miles away. Hundreds of miles. They’re a group of islands in the Indian Ocean.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Hazel says. ‘I b
et it’ll be the same old, same old, though.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Kitty lifts her eyes dramatically. ‘With the same old rain.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with a fortnight in a cottage by the sea,’ Hector says. ‘And it didn’t rain once in Cornwall last year, as you well know. It was a glorious summer. When I was a kid, we didn’t go on holiday at all, so count yourselves lucky.’

  It isn’t true that Hector’s childhood didn’t feature holidays, albeit modest ones; the girls know that, but it fits the tone of the conversation and Hazel and Kitty immediately lift virtual violins to their chins and la-la a plaintive tune, making Caitlin giggle.

  ‘We should sort something out, though,’ I say. ‘It’s already May. Everywhere will be booked up soon.’ I stand up to clear away the dinner plates and fetch the strawberry cheesecake from the fridge. ‘Perhaps we could stretch to a hotel this year, a package holiday in Spain or somewhere.’

  Hazel and Kitty exclaim in delight at the idea of abroad, while Caitlin weighs it up in her head and stays silent. Hotels are not her ideal environment; too much risk of sensory overload with all those people and activity. She would manage, with our help, and she would never complain, but Caitlin is happiest where she can be guaranteed her own quiet space whenever she needs it.

  A hotel, wherever it is, would make a nice change for me, though, and for Hector, too – he does his share of the shopping and food preparation. But hotels are expensive, wherever they are; the house needs some attention, Caitlin’s school fees are going up again in September, and I wish I hadn’t said anything now.

  ‘I only said perhaps.’ I doll out wedges of cheesecake and put the tub of ice cream on the table with a spoon.

  ‘We’ll have to see,’ Hector says, eliciting told-you-so groans from our eldest daughters. He’s probably thinking about school fees, too, though he will refrain from saying so, at least in front of the girls.

  ‘Zoe’s going to Italy,’ Hazel says, conversationally. ‘She’s not looking forward to it because she’ll be dragged round art galleries and old ruins, and only get to go to the beach if her mum can sit in the shade.’

  I give a little start at the oblique mention of Tessa. She seems to be invading my life just now, in ways I don’t like.

  Hector laughs. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. It would never do to spoil her porcelain skin with anything as common as a suntan.’

  ‘Ha, you’re right there.’ I grin, feigning a casualness I don’t feel.

  ‘I could put up with a couple of old ruins,’ muses Kitty, ‘if I could be at the pool or the beach most of the time.’

  My mind arrows straight to Ben, and I realise I have no idea if art galleries and historic buildings form part of his holiday wishlist, or whether he does it to please Tessa – assuming Zoe has not made that up for effect. Ben and I talked, when we gave ourselves the chance, but that kind of basic information, his likes and dislikes, eludes me, which seems odd, looking back. I told him plenty about me, though; that I do remember. He asked a lot of questions which I answered readily, happy to have somebody take a fresh interest.

  I’m mulling over this imbalance, in a distant sort of way, when Hazel changes the subject to one which I find no less disturbing than the conversation involving the Grammaticus family.

  ‘The mad cat lady spoke to me, when I came past her house on the way home,’ she says, retrieving a shard of cheesecake that’s shot off her plate as she’s chiselled into it.

  We all know who Hazel means. I put down my spoon and sit up straight. ‘Did she?’ Everyone turns to look at me, as if I’ve overreacted. I temper it with a little laugh. ‘You shouldn’t call her that, Hazel. It’s not kind.’

  ‘She is, though,’ Kitty chips in. ‘She’s got cats and she’s not right, up here.’ She taps her temple.

  ‘Your mother’s right,’ Hector says. ‘You mustn’t go around calling people mad. What did she say to you, Hazel?’

  Hazel shrugs. ‘Nothing much. She was by her gate with a cat in her arms, and I stopped to stroke it and she asked me if I’d had a nice day at school.’

  ‘Is that all?’ I ask.

  ‘Yep. Oh, she asked me if I had ever seen some old film with somebody called Doris Day in it, and I said I didn’t think so. Then as I was going, she said something about me not having far to walk to Woodside Villas.’

  Mirabelle Hayward knows where we live. Of course she does.

  ‘I wouldn’t get too involved in conversation with her, Hazel,’ I say. ‘We see enough of her at the vets’ surgery, nice as pie one minute then saying all sorts the next. She can turn on a sixpence, that one.’

  Hector raises an eyebrow but says nothing. I never told the girls about Humphrey’s demise and Mirabelle’s complaint against me, mostly for Caitlin’s sake. I did mention the incident in passing to Hector, making light of it, but he’s clearly remembering now.

  I’m almost tempted to blurt out my suspicions about Mirabelle playing ‘tricks’ on me, but I don’t because that ship has sailed, and Hector would want to know why I’ve not said anything before. He might even march along to Graylings, knock on her door, and demand to know what she thinks she’s playing at, which would be awful if it wasn’t her at all.

  ‘Doris Day? Who’s she?’ Kitty nods forcefully. ‘I rest my case. She’s as mad as cheese.’

  This time we don’t pick her up on it.

  ‘You don’t know where you are with someone like that, that’s all,’ I say.

  ‘I expect she felt lonely and wanted somebody to talk to. That’s why she was standing by her gate with the cat,’ Caitlin says, displaying one of her flashes of insight that always delight and surprise us.

  ‘Well done, love.’ Hector smiles. ‘I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.’

  Caitlin frowns. ‘This is not about a nail. Dad, you can’t say that because…’

  Kitty and Hazel exchange a here-we-go-again look, and immediately scrape back their chairs and leave the table. Hector steers Caitlin away from the subject by asking if she’d like to share the last piece of cheesecake with him, and I take the opportunity to leave the table, too. Upstairs, I stand at our bedroom window, looking out at the rosy evening sky between the chimneys opposite and wondering if I will ever feel normal again.

  I can hear Caitlin chatting away to her father as they clear up after the meal, and I know I can stay up here for a while. On the wall above the chest of drawers is a group of framed photos which Hector calls the ‘rogues’ gallery’. It’s all family photos, of us and the girls at various stages of our lives. My gaze alights on a picture taken at our wedding reception in October 2001 – a cobbled-together, jolly affair held in the back room of a pub in Hammersmith after a civil ceremony. Hector is wearing a white shirt and red silk tie with a grey suit he borrowed from a mate – the first time I’d seen him in anything approaching formal dress – his smile a mixture of elation and resignation at being asked to pose yet again for my father’s camera. I’m pressed against Hector, a proprietorial hand draped across his shoulder. I’m wearing a sunset pink dress with lace inserts, from the Monsoon sale; my long, cinnamon-brown hair is loose, brushed shiny, with a flower pinned to one side. My face is mobile with the effort of restraining an outbreak of giggles.

  A rushed wedding, for no other reason than we were desperate to be shackled together for life as fast as possible.

  My mother stalwartly held her tongue, after her hopeful suggestion that we marry in church in my home town in Essex was quashed by my insistence that the only thing we cared about was getting hitched, with the minimum of fuss and frills. Hector’s mother had died two years earlier, and his sweet, easy-going father was only too happy to run with our plans and turn up as instructed, whenever and wherever.

  Our relationship had been on fast-forward from our first date; it stood to reason that the wedding would go the same way. Many people say that their wedding day was the happiest day of their life. For me, it was the day I watched Hector deftly changing places with a woman i
n the coffee shop queue so that he would be the next customer I served.

  Having recently given up teaching English in a comprehensive, through sheer disillusionment and the blatant knowledge that teaching and me were never going to gel, I was working as a barista while I took stock of my life and worked out where it went next. Hector was a postgrad student at the London School of Economics. The coffee shop was near his campus, and enjoyed a steady trade of students and academics.

  According to Hector, the very first words I spoke to him were, ‘Are you having it in or out?’ His reply – ‘Oh, definitely in’ – made me blush. This is Hector’s version, and whether true or not, it has become fact by being absorbed into our history.

  I was twenty-seven when we met; Hector was twenty-five. We were getting on, we told each other, with rueful grins, in which case we’d better speed things up. And so we were married within ten months of that first meeting, while we were still in the heady throes of world-conquering, forever love.

  I appraise the image of myself in the photo now and try to see beyond the love-struck, triumphant girl beginning the most exciting adventure of her life. I try to see that girl – woman – reach the point where the desire to run her finger along the sharp edges of life and taste the blood of exquisite danger triumphs over loyalty and honesty and real, lasting love. But I can’t; I’m blinded by the dazzle.

  The head-rush I experienced when I first set eyes on Ben mirrored the sensation that doubled my heartrate in the coffee shop on that long-ago day. Was my brain – or, more pertinently, my body – urging me to reignite that feeling without my conscious input? Was my life so flat that I craved a high, at whatever cost? I don’t think so. I mentioned excuses before; this sounds like another, and as such it must be ignored. I am not a good person. It’s that simple.

  I didn’t use the mobile number Ben gave me. Not that I didn’t think about it, dream about it, my mind leapfrogging to a fantasy world where we were both young, free, and single. But of course, we weren’t. I took up running, the soles of my ancient Nikes slapping the pavements of Oakheart every morning before breakfast, as if I believed that forcing the air out of my body would also expel my treacherous thoughts about Ben. Hector and the girls found my apparent attempt at keeping fit hilarious, and after a fortnight or so, I gave in, none too graciously, and consigned the trainers to the bin.