This Changes Everything

by Helen Mcginn

  This Changes Everything

  Helen McGinn

  For Ross

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part II

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Book Club Questions

  Questions with answers from Helen

  Acknowledgments

  More from Helen McGinn

  About the Author

  About Boldwood Books

  Part I

  1

  Annabel Armstrong had loved James for as long as she could remember. But on this particular morning she wanted to tip the contents of her half-full cereal bowl over his head. It wasn’t that he was being deliberately unhelpful, but rather he was so busy rushing around the kitchen asking who’d moved his keys (answer: him) he didn’t seem to notice Annie could really do with a hand. The boys had to be fed, teeth and hair needed brushing, and everyone needed to be in the car ready for the school run in the next twenty minutes. Meanwhile, chaos reigned. The noise – shouting from the boys, whining from the dogs, mewing from a hungry cat – was ridiculous. Annie contemplated sitting on the floor under the kitchen table, closing her eyes and covering her ears.

  ‘Come on, Rufe, eat up!’ she managed.

  ‘I am! I can’t eat any faster,’ Rufus replied dramatically. He really was the slowest eater.

  ‘I’ve finished all of mine,’ said Ned, wiping the last of the cereal from his mouth across the sleeve of his newly washed school jumper.

  Annie sighed, reaching for a cloth. ‘Good boy, Ned. Now let’s get going, otherwise we’ll be late.’

  ‘You never say good boy to me when I finish my breakfast!’ protested Rufus.

  ‘If you finished it, I would,’ said Annie, immediately feeling mean.

  ‘Thanks a lot.’ He looked distinctly huffy.

  ‘What’s your plan today?’ Annie called after James as he headed down the hall.

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual,’ he replied over his shoulder. ‘Get in, be driven to distraction by people much younger than me. Try not to shout at people. Come home.’ James was having a work mid-life crisis of sorts. Having spent twenty years working in advertising, changing company a few times as he worked his way up to a management position, he now seemed no longer to be doing the work he loved. As he saw it, he was a glorified babysitter for (just about) grown men and women who all appeared to be younger, hungrier and better equipped to get ahead than he was. Cue resentment, inevitably leading to a ‘what’s-it-all-for’ phase. And now he’d started talking about retraining as a woodcutter, or something like that; Annie couldn’t quite remember.

  ‘Oh, come on, Jimmy, you love it when things are going well. Maybe this is just a, you know, down bit? Things will get better, they always do.’

  ‘Annie, I love you for your optimism, I really do.’ He came back to kiss Annie on the top of her head and shout goodbye to the boys.

  ‘’Bye, Dad!’ they hollered before careering off into the garden.

  The sun was out and it was already warm, despite the early hour. They were still just under half a term away from the summer holidays but there was already a holiday feel in the air. Annie watched them run, dogs in tow, into the garden before she turned to attack the kitchen table. The boys’ cereal of choice had a habit of attaching itself to that table like barnacles. A blowtorch really would have been more appropriate than the damp cloth she held in her hand.

  Her phone rang. It was her sister, Jess, the flashing screen announced.

  ‘You OK?’ Annie always started her phone calls with her sister with these words. Most of the time everything was, indeed, OK. But with Jess, calls often came with a generous dose of drama, sometimes with a side order of flakiness. Annie adored her only sister; eighteen months younger and a few years off forty.

  ‘Oh God, Annie. You won’t believe what I’ve done. Seriously, I have even surprised myself this time,’ Jess sighed, and Annie could hear her dragging furiously on her e-cig.

  Annie wedged the phone between her shoulder and ear, ditched the cloth and started to throw hastily made Marmite sandwiches into lunch boxes for the boys.

  ‘Go on, I’m all ears.’

  ‘Well, you know that small, bald, irritating little man in accounts?’

  ‘Brian?’ said Annie, fearing the worst. ‘Oh God, Jess. Please don't say you…’

  ‘No! Of course not,’ said Jess. ‘But he was buying endless shots last night and I seemed to be drinking most of them. And, er, things got a little out of hand and I ended up, you know… with Rob.’

  Annie’s shoulders tightened. Rob was drop-dead gorgeous. She didn’t know that for a fact – she’d never met him – but according to Jess he was. He was also married. And as much as Annie berated Jess for doing what she was doing, Jess insisted she was better off being with someone she didn’t have to be with. Basically, it meant she didn’t have to commit, which, Jess said, suited her perfectly. It was, Annie thought, a very sad situation for everyone concerned, most of all Rob’s wife who, presumably, had no idea.

  ‘Please don’t expect me to say anything nice. You know how I feel about it.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to say anything nice – I know it’s not good – but this time it was different.’

  Annie’s heart sank. This was the moment Jess was going to announce Rob was leaving his wife and they were going to be together officially. Annie waited for the crashing punch line to what was, so far, one of the worst jokes she’d ever heard from her sister. Jess always had someone in tow, usually impossibly good-looking, mostly a good deal younger. She was surrounded by them at work; her job meant spending long hours in the City, followed by many more hours drinking after work. Having started as an intern in a PR company, Jess now ran a successful business of her own. She worked ridiculous hours, was surgically attached to her phone, owned one of the most envied address books in the City and was both loved and ever so slightly feared by those who worked with her. No doubt about it, Jess was incredibly good at what she did.

  But years of working in such a brutal environment had left Jess with skin so thick she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried in a movie. Actually, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d even seen a movie. Unless you counted the soft porn film a lovely young man called Tom (was it Tom?) insisted they watch in a hotel room in-between meetings during a recent conference. But Jess knew that didn’t really count.

  Anyway, back to the punch line. Annie braced herself.

  ‘I realised that Rob is, in fact, a bit of a dick.’

  Annie did a silent air punch.

  ‘Annie, are you there?’ Jess was thrown by the silence.

  ‘Yes, yes. I heard. God, I’m so relieved,’ Annie said. ‘I’m not saying you have to get married or anything, but getting involved with someone like that, who’s capable of doing whatever it is you do behind his wife’s back is just a complete waste of time. Not to mention potentially life-changing for all concerned when the truth comes out. Which it always does,’ she added.

  Jess took a deep breath, determined not to rise to her sister’s predictably pious delivery. ‘It’s not always that simple, Annie. There’s more to it, though I don’t expect you to get it.’ But however much Jess wished otherwise, she knew Annie was right. No matter how good Rob made Jess feel, he was cheating on hi
s wife. This was her first affair with a married man and though she had thought she could do it, she had since realised she was just wasn’t able to live a lie.

  It had been the sight of Rob in her flat just a few hours earlier, trying to put on his boxer shorts and tripping in the dark as he’d made his way to the bathroom to make a hushed phone call. At that moment, he had looked ridiculous rather than ravishing, as he’d done in the bar. The shots had become a distant memory, unlike the hangover she’d then nursed as a consequence.

  ‘I’m just so glad you’ve seen him for the slimy grease ball he obviously is. You deserve so much better,’ said Annie.

  ‘Well, just don’t go on about it. Let’s just pretend it never happened. And don’t, whatever you do, tell Mum.’

  ‘’Course not. Have you spoken to Mum?’

  ‘Why, what’s she done?’ It was Jess’s turn to sound weary.

  ‘Nothing. She’s fine, actually. But I know she’ll ask me if I’ve spoken to you in that “she-never-rings-me” kind of way.’

  ‘Tell her I’ll be down in a few weekends’ time. I’ll book a table at The Fox. We’ll go for lunch and have a proper catch-up.’

  Annie knew there was only a very slim chance of this actually happening but the idea that it might cheered her immensely. Despite Jess’s flakiness – and serious lack of moral compass at times – Annie loved her sister deeply. And she desperately missed Jess’s company. Although separated by just a hundred miles of motorway, their worlds seemed so very far apart.

  Annie hadn’t always lived in the country. Once upon a time, she had lived and worked in London, racing to the Tube in trainers, ready to be at her desk by 9 a.m. despite often nursing a considerable hangover. Having taken a temping job covering for a sick friend at an art gallery, Annie had gone on to become the first port of call for all the artists the gallery represented, a role she loved. It might be a great British artist on the phone one minute, followed by a complete unknown who hadn’t sold a painting for years the next. And Annie’s skill – not that she’d realised it – was treating each artist exactly the same. From her quietly spoken, pinstripe-suited boss, who used to tell her jokes and deliver the punch line in Latin, to the extremely beautiful, willowy PA, Caro, with whom she’d shared an office, along with all the wonderful artists she’d dealt with daily, Annie had adored everyone and everything about working there.

  Now she sighed, sweeping a look across her kitchen, which, she noted, was once again liberally decorated with small pieces of stray Lego. The white-painted walls looked two-tone, bearing the marks of sticky fingers and the odd felt-tip pen scrawl from about child’s head height downwards. Plates, pots and pans balanced precariously by the sink, evidence of the seemingly endless meals Annie had to dole out every day to people both big and small. A basket of washing sat on a chair, the arms of crumpled shirts hanging out as if making a half-hearted attempt to escape from the mess.

  Standing in the middle of the kitchen was a worn, zinc-topped oak table. It had been found years ago in an antique shop whilst Annie and James were on holiday in Cornwall, and Annie had insisted on tying it to the roof of the car to transport it back to their first flat in London, where it took up most of the main room. Securing it to the roof rack had severely tested her and James’s knowledge of knots but here it stood, as it had done for the last six years since they’d left London for a small cottage in the country. Luckily, the kitchen was the biggest room in the house. To Annie, their table was a rock in a sea of washing, toys and noise. She picked at a piece of stuck-on cereal as she spoke. ‘OK, I will. I’ll ring you later in the week.’

  ‘Sorry for being such a fucking nightmare.’ Jess sounded genuinely contrite.

  ‘Don't be silly. Big kiss.’

  ‘’Bye.’

  Annie glanced at the clock on the oven. ‘Come on, boys, we’ll be late,’ she shouted.

  The boys ran in, mud on their knees and grass stains on their school jumpers. Deciding it was too late to do anything about that, she chucked the dirty plates in the sink, grabbed their lunch boxes and her bag and headed to the car. As the boys piled in, shouting and jostling for position, Annie remembered her phone, left on the side. ‘Seatbelts, boys.’ She ran back into the house to get it, finding it on the side, ringing. Her mother’s name – Julia – flashed up on the screen.

  ‘Sorry, Mum, it’ll have to wait,’ she muttered, stuffing the phone into her back pocket and running back to the car.

  As she went through her usual mental checklist – boys, bags, coats, check, check, check – Annie set off on their school run.

  ‘Haven’t you got your Show and Tell this morning, Rufus?’ she asked.

  ‘Yep, and I’m going to talk about Colin,’ he said, sounding confident. He held up a jam jar stuffed with leaves.

  ‘OK, but make sure people don’t frighten him,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Mum, snails don’t get frightened!’ Rufus said, laughing.

  ‘How do you know? They might. Just make sure you bring him back safely and then we’ll put him back with his friends under the flowerpots later.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Rufus, with a sigh.

  ‘Are snails born with their shells?’ asked Ned, and Annie realised she had absolutely no idea. Just as she was about to embark on a completely made-up answer, her phone pinged in her back pocket. She knew it would be a text from her mother. A missed phone call from Julia was always followed by a text. Too late to read it now; it would have to wait until after the school run.

  As the sun shone and the boys continued to argue over the song choice, Annie reminded herself to catch Clare at the gates. They’d been friends since meeting at a pregnancy yoga class in a nearby village hall, both carrying second babies. Annie had fallen asleep during the deep breathing exercises. Clare had nudged her and she’d opened her eyes to find Clare’s kind face informing her via stage whisper that the class had, in fact, finished. To this day, she was in Annie’s phone under ‘Yoga Clare’, despite neither of them having been back to a single yoga class since. In the months that followed, Annie and Clare had bonded over a love of strong coffee and, in the later stages of pregnancy, a craving for pastries. In those tough early years, when Annie had found herself stuck at home with very small children, permanently tired and often incapable of finishing a sentence or cup of anything hot without needing to do something for someone small, Clare had been exactly the friend she needed. Funny, warm and definitely more relaxed about the whole parenting thing than Annie, Clare had been a proverbial breath of fresh air when the Armstrongs first left the city.

  As she dropped the boys at the school gate, Annie scanned the playground for her friend’s familiar figure, usually the only one dressed head to toe in faded black among an ocean of blue jeans and stripy tops. As the kids ran across the playground into school, she spotted her across the other side.

  ‘Annie! Coffee!’ yelled Clare.

  ‘Yours or mine?’

  ‘Yours,’ Clare said, as she got closer. ‘Mine looks like it’s been burgled.’

  ‘Done, see you in a mo.’ Annie watched the back of the boys as they disappeared into class and, walking back to the car, remembered the message waiting for her. She took the phone out of her back pocket and waited for it to ping onto the screen.

  DARLING I AM GOING AWAY FOR A FEW DAYS. WILL EXPLAIN. CALL ME ASAP PLS. M XX

  For reasons she’d never really understood, her mother always sent Annie text messages in capital letters. Either she’d never found how to take off the caps lock on the phone, or Julia just liked texting in capitals, but Annie always felt that her mother was shouting at her. Julia going away at short notice didn't worry Annie. She was always going away at short notice. Annie loved that her mother was an active, sociable woman in her seventies with a ton of friends and a seemingly endless number of lunches to attend. What did worry her, though, was that Julia felt it needed explaining. The ‘WILL EXPLAIN’ bit of the message was a concern. She dialled Julia’s number and waited.

&nb
sp; Half an hour later, Annie sat at her kitchen table, a mug of very strong coffee in her hand and the remaining crumbs of a couple of croissants on the plate between her and Clare.

  ‘I mean, what the actual fuck is she thinking?’ Annie shook her head slowly.

  ‘I’m sure she knows what she’s doing,’ said Clare.

  ‘Oh, come on, Clare, you know what she’s like. She really doesn’t! I mean, it’s like she’s decided this is what she’s been waiting for. Prince Charming finally shows up, three marriages too late, and she goes running!’ Annie had thought that nothing her mother could do would surprise her any more. Clearly, she’d underestimated her.

  ‘So, what did she say, exactly?’

  Annie sighed. Julia had answered Annie’s call with her usual, cheery ‘Hello, darling!’ before saying ‘Now’, in a way that made Annie sense that what was coming next was going to be anything but run-of-the-mill.

  ‘Essentially, Mum’s just told me that she’s planning to meet the man she says is her first love. She’s not seen him for more than fifty years. Fifty years! And they’re not meeting in any old place. Oh, no, they’re meeting in Rome. Bloody Rome!’ Annie lifted her eyes to find Clare with a huge smile on her face.

  ‘But that’s so romantic!’ Clare sighed. ‘I mean, she’s a single woman, presumably he’s a single man, what’s so bad about that?’

  ‘Because she’s my mother, Clare. Things are never that straightforward. As you well know.’ Annie raised her eyebrows at her friend.

  When it came to surprises, Julia had form. Over the last few years, Annie and Clare had in turn each filled in the other on various chapters of their lives and the characters in them. One of Clare’s favourites was Annie’s description of her mother’s romantic history to date, including the part where she married Husband Number Two, Simon, whilst on holiday in the West Indies. And according to Annie, Julia was slightly drunk on rum punch at the time and the taxi driver, a man called Winston, was the witness. On returning home, they announced the news to the assembled children on both sides: Annie and Jess, by now both teenagers, and their new twin stepbrothers. Jess had stormed off, Annie had burst into tears and the boys had simply asked if they could go and watch TV. Not a roaring success, really. Just like the marriage, which lasted less than three years. Then there was Husband Number Three, a kind man called Andrew. Ruddy-faced and permanently dressed in a holey green jumper and mustard-coloured cords, he hadn’t lasted long either. Too boring, according to Julia. Annie had once asked why her mother hadn’t realised that before marrying him but Julia’s answer was typically brusque. ‘Darling, he was a fantastic Bridge partner. I just shouldn’t have married him.’ And that was that.