Letters to My Husband

by Stephanie Butland

  Don’t give it another thought. That’s the only way.

  ‘Another day, another council of war,’ Mel says grimly twenty-four hours later, as she, Blake and Andy face each other around the table again. ‘I haven’t seen her in twenty-four hours, I’ve spoken to her through the bedroom door, she’s refused everything, she’s called work and told them she won’t be in for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘Is she eating?’ Andy asks.

  ‘There was a cereal bowl washed up when I came down this morning, so I assume so,’ Mel says, ‘but she’s refused lunch and dinner and coffee. I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried taking stuff up to her, I’ve tried asking what she wants, I’ve pleaded with her to come out, I’ve offered to go out so she can come downstairs without having to talk to me.’

  ‘You haven’t done anything wrong,’ Andy says.

  ‘Guilt by association,’ Mel says.

  ‘Have you actually seen her?’

  ‘Yes, because I told her I was going to call you if she didn’t come to the door and show me she was all right.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She opened the door, said, “Leave me alone, Mel, I’m all right but I just want to be on my own,” and shut the door again.’

  ‘How did she look?’

  ‘Well, I’m not experienced, but pretty much like you’d expect a woman whose sister has just told her that her dead husband was screwing around to look.’

  Andy touches her, lightly, on the shoulder. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Andy.’ Mel traces the inside of each eye socket in turn with the tip of the first finger on her right hand.

  Both men, trained to notice small things, see that her nail is ragged, the varnish chipped and pulled.

  Mel takes a breath, tries again. ‘She looks like she did when he died. But more disappointed. I don’t know if she’s disappointed in him for doing it, or in the rest of us for thinking that he might have. Which would be worse?’

  ‘Well, assuming that it’s true, the longer she denies it, the worse it will be when …’ Blake says.

  ‘If nothing else happens,’ Mel begins hopefully.

  ‘If nothing else happens,’ Blake says, ‘if things stay as they are, then by the time that baby is a month old all of Throckton will be in no doubt as to its paternity, because Patricia Gray will have a grandchild.’

  Andy says, ‘He’s right.’

  Mel says, ‘I keep thinking that all I need to do is get her on a plane. Tell her we’re having a holiday and take her home. She doesn’t have to watch the bloody kid grow up.’

  ‘No,’ Andy says, ‘but she might need to.’ He and Lucy had talked this whole thing over last night, after Blake had been. If I was her, I’d leave, Andy had said. No, you wouldn’t, his wife had answered, if you were her you couldn’t if you tried. Don’t forget, her husband is here, and she’s not going to be able to leave him until she’s sorted this out. Something is better than nothing.

  Mel gets up, reaches for her cigarettes, and is about to head for the back door when the sound of Elizabeth’s bedroom door opening, closing, her feet on the stairs transfixes them all.

  ‘Elizabeth—’ Andy begins, taking in the red of her eyes and the scrape of her hair, the way her hands tremble a little and the leg of her pyjamas has a tear in it.

  Elizabeth barely glances at him. ‘I’m not ill, Andy, I’m just really pissed off and I want to be on my own. Blake’ – Blake has stood to greet her, and now reaches out to touch her arm, but she flinches at just the intention – ‘did you know about this? About this cystic fibrosis thing that everyone’s run away with?’

  Blake says, ‘No. I found out from Richenda at about the same time as Rufus came to see Mel.’

  Elizabeth nods, as though she’s ticking something off a list. ‘And did you know before? When this was supposedly happening?’

  ‘No. I had no idea at all.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Elizabeth says, with a sort of desperate triumph, ‘if none of us knew then, not his wife, not the colleague he’d worked with for years, not his best friend’ – she tips her head at Andy, a question, and he shakes his head in return – ‘if it wasn’t true then, why should it be true now?’

  Blake sighs, glances round and sees it’s his turn to try. ‘I agree that it’s all circumstantial evidence, but there’s more and more of it. I’m sorry, Elizabeth, because it hurts me to even say it and I can’t imagine how much this is hurting you, but I think we have to entertain the possibility that this baby is Michael’s baby. I’m so sorry.’

  For a minute it looks as though Elizabeth will hit him, but she doesn’t. Instead she glares at the three of them, one after the other, and Mel moves forward from where she’s standing and tries to take her arm.

  Elizabeth pulls herself back, out of range, turns, leaves the room. As she goes, she calls back, ‘I want to see a photo. Blake, you’re supposed to be liaising, so liaise me one of her crappy Photoshopped pictures so I can see how she did it, the little bitch.’

  Blake and Andy stand together by the gate.

  ‘I keep going through it,’ Blake says, ‘trying to think of what I missed. There must have been signs.’ He has been over and over the last few months, looking for the moment when he could have said, done, something: been the butterfly wing.

  ‘Me too,’ Andy says. ‘Lucy noticed, when we all went for a drink after Bonfire Night, do you remember?’ The Throckton Fireworks had been as good as washed out, and Michael, Elizabeth and Blake had gone for a drink afterwards, drawn to the promise of the open fire in the bar of the Red Dragon. Andy and Lucy had joined them after dropping the twins with their grandparents for an hour. It had been one of those evenings that had never quite got going. Michael, who could usually be relied upon to get a conversation started – even if it was about running – had been the quietest of all of them.

  ‘Vaguely,’ Blake says. ‘I remember we were all wet through and we went home early.’

  ‘On the way back Lucy asked what was wrong with Michael. I said, I thought he hadn’t been himself since the fire. She said, if he walked into a burning building when he knew it wasn’t safe, maybe the fire was the symptom, not the cause.’

  Blake gives a laugh-that-isn’t. ‘She sounds like a better doctor than you.’

  ‘I know. I didn’t think any more about it. I—’ Andy seeks for words that will explain the thrashing helplessness he’s feeling, the way the muscles in his neck knot whenever he thinks of how all this could have been going on without his even wondering about it. How whatever he is feeling must be amplified beyond all bearing in Elizabeth.

  ‘I know,’ Blake says, ‘I know,’ and he thinks of all the crimes that happen under people’s noses, unnoticed because of their proximity, and the belief that someone so close would be incapable of doing such a thing.

  ‘I wish we could do something more,’ Andy says. Which gets Blake thinking.

  And Andy and Blake shake hands and part.

  Mike,

  You wouldn’t believe what’s going on here. It’s stupid. I’m not going to insult you by even telling you about it. I’ve called their bluff. You used to say that about work: most times, you just call their bluff and it goes away. I do it at work sometimes, when people are horrible. If they threaten to go elsewhere, I smile and ask if they’d like me to call around some other hotels and find them a room. When that guy insisted his moussaka had given him food poisoning, even though thirty-five other people in the restaurant had eaten it with no problem, and said he was going to report us, I wrote down the number of our contact at environmental health for him and we never heard another thing.

  So. I’ve called their bluff, ‘good and proper’ as your mother would say. (I may never be able to bring myself to speak to your mother again.)

  While I’m waiting for this all to go away, I thought I’d start on the quilt. But something went wrong with the cutting out, and now all I have is shreds and shards of fabric. And when they were your shirts, I loved them: now th
at they’re material, they look broken and faded and frayed. Another plan awry.

  I love you. I miss you. Every time I think I couldn’t get lonelier, I do.

  E xxxx

  THIS TIME, BLAKE had taken the precaution of calling ahead to make sure that Rufus wasn’t around. He hadn’t asked directly, of course, but Richenda had said, Rufus is off seeing a client today, so it will be just Kate and me, if that’s OK, and Blake had said, that will be perfect, in a way that he thought afterwards was a little too warm for the work he was about to do.

  Richenda serves coffee in bowls today. ‘It’s a habit we picked up when we lived in France for a while,’ she says, and thinks as she says it of the lifestyle that that sentence implies: happy, carefree, part of a history of interesting adventures. Well, the adventure part could possibly be considered true, but their French year-and-a-bit she remembers as lonely and puzzling. She thinks of it now as the time when she could have, should have, got out: less than two years married, the certain knowledge of the great mistake she’d made becoming clearer every day. But, then, the thought of facing up to her disapproving mother and her disappointed father, a few uncomfortable months of living at home again and finding a new place in the world, had seemed worse than the prospect of muddling through another day with Rufus. So she’d stayed, and then there had been Kate, and then there was no point in regretting anything, or wishing things were different.

  ‘Richenda?’ Blake’s voice is gentle. She shakes her head.

  ‘Miles away,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry. I assume this isn’t a social call?’

  ‘Afraid not,’ and he explains, probably in more detail than he needs to, certainly with more feeling than he realizes, what’s happened.

  ‘So, Elizabeth would like to see one of Kate’s photographs of her with Michael?’

  ‘Yes’ – Blake’s eyes say, I’m floundering here – ‘I think it might help her to accept things.’

  Richenda thinks of all the photographs of Caroline on Rufus’s phone, his password so easy to guess that it’s almost as though he wants her to look. ‘It will probably hurt her very much.’

  ‘Everything is hurting her at the moment,’ and Blake looks so bleak that as Richenda passes him to call Kate downstairs, she rests her hand on his shoulder. He sits very still, as though that will keep it there.

  Kate comes slowly down the stairs. ‘I was in the rocking chair,’ she says, ‘I think if I rock Kayla in it when she’s on the inside, then it will soothe her to be there once she’s on the outside. It works on me. I was nearly asleep myself.’

  Blake stands. ‘Hello, Kate.’

  Kate half smiles, wary. ‘I still don’t remember anything, you know. About the accident. When Mike died.’

  ‘It’s not that, Kate,’ Richenda says, and looks at Blake to see whether he will make the request or she should.

  ‘Elizabeth is having a hard time accepting that your baby is Michael’s,’ Blake begins.

  ‘I’m not lying about it,’ Kate says, ‘why would I lie?’

  Blake thinks of Elizabeth’s list of reasons. ‘I don’t think you’re lying,’ he says, ‘I’m just telling you what’s happening for Elizabeth.’

  ‘Elizabeth,’ Kate says, although she doesn’t like to speak the name aloud, as it makes her remember how Michael used to say it, each syllable as soft and equal as the next, with the comfort and quality of a word said often, ‘I don’t want to talk about Elizabeth. I’m just thinking about me and Kayla now.’

  Richenda looks at him: forgive her, her eyes say, she’s young and she has no idea what she’s saying.

  ‘Of course,’ Blake says, ‘I do understand that. I understand that Elizabeth trying to come to terms with this is not the most important thing for you now. But maybe for Michael? She was important to him for a long time, Kate, whatever happened in the end.’

  Blake can see by Richenda’s face what a gamble he’s just taken.

  He waits.

  The ball scuttles: red, black, red, black, red. Kate remembers that Blake is the only person who congratulated her on her pregnancy. She remembers how Mike said that he was someone he would trust with his life. Cautiously, Kate says, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’d like you to text me one of your photos of you and Michael. Then I can show it to Elizabeth. Then I’ll delete it. That’s all.’

  Blake is searching his pockets for his card with his mobile number on it, so her ‘No’ catches him off guard.

  When he looks at her, she’s sitting up very straight, hands on her stomach, eyes on his. ‘I don’t have to prove anything to her. She doesn’t have any right to see anything of mine. I don’t belong to her, my photos don’t belong to her just because her husband’s in them.’

  ‘OK,’ Blake says, ‘but Kate, she’s really struggling. This might help her.’

  ‘Why do I have to help her?’

  Richenda says, ‘Kate—’ just as Blake says, ‘You don’t.’ Richenda leans back in her seat, knowing that all the things she’s on the brink of saying, about marriage and death and grace and life being about more than just you and what you want, aren’t the right things to be said.

  ‘You don’t have to help her. But if we only helped when we had to, where would we be? You have your baby. Elizabeth has nothing left of Mike except the fact that he’s not the man she thought he was.’ To Kate, he sounds a bit like Mike: it’s not that his voice is the same, but it’s the sort of thing that Mike would say. She remembers standing in Elizabeth’s garden; the pleading, the conviction that Elizabeth was the only person entitled to grieve for Mike as she was grieving.

  ‘All right,’ Kate says, ‘she can see the photos. But she has to see me, too. I’ll show them to her. She’s not pretending that I don’t exist any more. You can tell her that and see what she says.’

  Elizabeth says yes. Well, she says, ‘Bloody little cow. All right. Get her round here. She can sit in Mike’s house and my house and see how she likes that,’ which Blake translates into ‘Yes’ and passes on to Richenda in a conversation where both express their misgivings.

  Richenda says, I think it best that we keep things as calm as possible, with a question mark at the end, and Blake, whose translation skills are coming into their own at the moment, realizes that she doesn’t plan to tell Rufus until this is over and says, yes, I agree.

  And so, on a sunny day in the middle of August, Richenda and Kate walk up to Elizabeth and Michael’s front door, and Kate rings the bell. Her face could be made of wax. Mel opens the door.

  ‘You’re a bit early,’ she says, not unpleasantly, ‘but ten minutes isn’t going to make this any easier for anyone, I suppose.’ And she steps back, and Kate walks into the house that she’s walked past and wondered about so many times.

  Three steps and she’s in a living room that feels like a home. Above the fireplace there’s a framed wedding photo. Mike has a white shirt on, and he’s laughing. He looks younger. So does she: younger, prettier, longer hair. Kate looks at the shelf of travel books, the lamp with the twisted wooden base which she thinks must be from Australia, the alcove where the Christmas tree goes.

  She wishes she hadn’t come.

  Blake is already here. He’s standing, to the side of the fireplace. Mel indicates the sofa, and Richenda sits at one end, Kate in the middle.

  Blake smiles bravery towards Richenda, smiles it again to Mel, who says, ‘I’m dispensing with the traditional offer of tea. I hope that’s OK.’

  Richenda nods.

  And then Elizabeth comes down the stairs and into the room. Her hair is damp and she wears jeans and a white shirt with a hole in the elbow. Her feet are bare. So is her face. She nods to Richenda, who nods back.

  Mel opens her mouth to say something, but Elizabeth says, ‘It’s fine, Mel.’

  The room holds its breath.

  And then Elizabeth looks at Kate.

  And Kate looks at Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth sees blossom. She sees bloom. Everything about Kate is rounding,
orbing outwards as though the baby she carries is filling every space in her with its presence and intention: I’m coming, and when I come, I’ll change your life. Her hair is glossy and her eyes are bright, and even the sharpness she is holding in them can’t contain the cornered, afraid child she is.

  Kate sees tiredness. She sees sadness. She sees the contents of her own heart – love, grief, loss – carved on to someone else’s body. Elizabeth’s toenails are unpainted and her hands don’t rest. There’s a cut on her fingertip. She works her wedding ring round and round her finger, with her thumb. Her engagement ring, a diamond solitaire clasped in yellow gold, sags from her finger a little. Kate finds herself wondering whether Mike chose it or whether they had bought it together. She sees the ring on Elizabeth’s thumb, too big too. Recognizes it. Remembers the time she tried to take it off, half playful, and he’d pulled his hand from hers and said, no. Just that one word.

  The room needs to breathe.

  Elizabeth says, ‘Thank you for coming, Kate. I hope you’re well.’ She sits down, next to Kate but careful to be far enough away to make sure that their bodies can’t accidentally touch. At eight months pregnant, Kate is taking up a lot of room. Elizabeth holds on to the arm of the sofa with her left hand, to keep her anchored at a safe distance.

  Kate, scrabbling for purchase as she realizes that happy-holiday Mike is smiling out from every picture frame in the room, says, ‘Do you?’

  Richenda says, ‘Kate.’

  Elizabeth says, ‘It’s much easier to think unkind thoughts about someone when they’re not sitting next to you. And there’s no way your baby is Mike’s child. So yes, I hope you’re well. My husband died because you’re walking around, so it would be a shame if you weren’t well.’

  Kate can’t work out if Elizabeth is being bitchy or not: decides that she isn’t, that she doesn’t have the right sort of eyes. And her mother, who is now holding her hand so very tightly, has promised to step in if need be.