A Perfect Husband

by Hilary Boyd

  When Lily woke, Freddy was gone.

  PART II

  Chapter 21

  Lily lay on her back in the single bed, under the stiff hollowfibre duvet in the spare room of her sister’s house. Her eyes were wide open, watching the beams from the occasional car stretch across the ceiling through the spotted blue and white curtains on the wooden pole.

  Ten days before, when she’d woken alone on the sofa, the first thing she’d done was call out to her husband. But there was no response. She’d quickly pulled her T-shirt and pants over her nakedness and gone to look for Freddy in the silent flat. There had not only been no sign of him, but no sign that he had gone either. The bags and cases he might have packed his clothes in were all there. His shirts and suits, boxers, socks and shoes looked untouched. He had taken nothing, as far as Lily could see. He’s popped out for some food, she told herself, as she flopped down on the bed. He’ll be back later.

  When he wasn’t, she tried to ring him. But time and time again she got the same diversion to voicemail. As the evening wore on and he still did not appear, telling herself that he wasn’t answering his phone to avoid his creditors, or because it had run out of juice, or because he had lost it, began to hold no water. She lay huddled in bed, her limbs frozen, her body stiff even under the thick duvet, waiting.

  It wasn’t till around midnight, when she finally dragged herself up to make a cup of tea, that she found the message. Written on a torn-out page from his Moleskine notebook, it was tucked between the apples in the wooden fruit bowl on the kitchen table – almost hidden, as if he didn’t want her to find it – and said:

  My dearest Lily,

  We disagree about how things should go, but I know this is the best way. I’m no bloody use to anyone at the moment.

  Love you with all my heart,

  F xxxx

  She had known, absolutely, that he would leave her. His mind had been made up long before he’d come home to her that afternoon; none of her arguments and pleading had made the slightest difference. The note made her cry, but part of her was relieved that he’d gone, because the pain of waiting for him to do so was almost worse.

  He’ll ring with a new number, Lily comforted herself. But Freddy didn’t ring. Not that night, or any subsequent nights. He had simply vanished.

  Initially she had been reluctant to leave the flat, despite the familiar rooms feeling empty and slightly sinister now, no longer a place of safety since her husband’s assertion that people who wished them harm might be hovering beyond the front door. Freddy had told her the rent was paid until the end of April, but Prem had warned that the landlord might terminate the lease immediately, once he knew about the bankruptcy. Leaving would mean throwing herself on her friends’ charity – Lily hated that thought. And . . . Freddy might come back.

  She had not been able to sleep that night, having already slept, and the darkness stretched out, lonely and cold. As the hours passed, during which she sat curled up on the sofa, half asleep, her mind whirring, Lily’s anxiety mounted. But as soon as she lay down in bed, exhausted, she began to cough, immediately recognizing the return of an age-old foe as her chest tightened.

  Sitting up and reaching for the inhaler in the drawer beside the bed, she took two long blasts of Ventolin. The sensation of tightness began to ease, but her anxiety fought against the medication and almost immediately the breathlessness returned, this time with a vengeance. It was as if someone was strangling her, reducing the airways to almost nothing. However much she tried to breathe in, her chest didn’t seem to move an inch. No air was getting through – it was like breathing through a straw.

  She knew she must not panic. The long years of childhood echoed with the mantra: ‘Stay calm, Lily, light breaths, slow breaths, watch the lamp.’ Her father’s voice rang in her ears, and she could almost feel his firm hands around her shoulders as she sat on the edge of the mattress in the dim light of the penthouse bedroom. There was no lava lamp to watch now. The glowing, sea-green waxy swirls floating up and down the glass cylinder had calmed her, distracted her when she’d felt an attack coming on.

  She was shivering and frightened as she stood, still coughing, still snatching at breath. She staggered into the bathroom and turned the shower on full, to the hottest setting, until the room was filled with steam – it sometimes eased her chest – and leaned back against the tiled wall, eyes closed. It was warm, pleasantly womb-like, and after a few minutes she could feel her body begin to relax as her breathing gradually returned to something like normal. But it had frightened her. She knew she should not be alone.

  *

  Prem and Anthony, as promised, had taken her in. The morning after Freddy left she had packed two large cases with clothes, sketchbooks, art materials, photo albums, laptop and a couple of books and gone back to Fulham, two roads away from the family house in which she’d lived with Garret for most of their marriage. She felt as if she were stepping back in time, the intervening years washed away, wasted.

  But she was the ghost at the feast. Despite her friends’ kindness, Prem’s brother and his partner were staying for their annual visit and there were dinners planned, the house full, people to catch up with, family visits. Lily knew her gloomy silence, her inability to join in, was casting a pall over proceedings. It wasn’t fair on anybody. After three nights, she bit the bullet and rang her sister.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Helen had said, on hearing the news. ‘Well, I’m not going to say a word, but—’

  ‘Thanks, I’d appreciate that,’ Lily interrupted her. Helen had always been deeply suspicious of Freddy’s charm.

  Helen’s offer of the spare room had been typically grudging. ‘It’s not what you’re used to,’ she’d told Lily, ‘but you’d be welcome to camp out while you find something better.’

  Lily didn’t feel welcome at all. It had been a last resort.

  The bedroom at her sister and brother-in-law’s house was small, up in the eaves of the thirties red-brick semi-detached off north Oxford’s Banbury Road. It was painted a neutral cream and minimally furnished. The bed faced the window, with a narrow pine chest of drawers immediately on the right by the door, a free-standing metal rail for hanging clothes crammed next to it and a rug, beige and patterned with thick, ugly circles in primary colours, on the laminate floor by the bed. The only other furniture was a rough, wobbly, unvarnished bedside table – definitely not David’s work, perhaps one of Kit’s school projects – carrying a small red desk lamp.

  It was cold, still only April, and a wet, chilly spring so far. Lily was freezing: the radiator under the windowsill was not working, and every time she moved around the room, she hit her head on the sloping ceiling. But Lily did not complain. She had been in Oxford a week now and, although stunned and thoroughly miserable, was grateful for the shelter her sister had offered.

  ‘Poor Dillon. Poor Gabriela,’ Helen had said, the first night of Lily’s stay, as she laid the white china dish of macaroni cheese on the kitchen table and dug a serving spoon into the crisp, bubbling cheese topping, directing the handle towards Lily. David had made the supper – he did all the cooking. ‘What on earth are they going to do about the wedding now?’

  Helen was still in her work clothes: a light grey trouser suit, ill-fitting across her broad bottom, the jacket cut too short for her tall figure, a cheap, plum-coloured crêpe-de-Chine blouse beneath, which did nothing for her pale complexion and greying auburn crop. It was almost, Lily thought, as if she wanted to look as unattractive as possible, a two-fingered gesture to a world that had somehow disappointed her. Although she had a PhD, a professorship, had had two books published on business management, was married to one of the best husbands in the world and had all the material things she could wish for, Helen seemed permanently disgruntled. Yes, her son was an ongoing nightmare, but her disgruntlement predated Kit’s addiction by twenty years.

  Growing up, her sister had been the
one with the looks. Lily had ached with envy at Helen’s beauty, her ability to attract boys, a string of them beating a path to her door from when she was fifteen. Back then she had been striking: tall, with their father’s thick auburn hair worn long down her back, a slim, athletic figure from all the sports she played, and those huge, fierce grey eyes, which seemed to draw the boys in with promises never fulfilled. Helen was not interested. She would cast them off with utter disdain, making Lily and her mother, often witness to these dismissals, wince and beg Helen to be nicer. But Helen, angry, it seemed, from the bottom of her soul, brushed off their pleas with scorn.

  Only David, large and bumbling and kind, had managed to get under the wire one very hot day when the inner tube of Helen’s front wheel had blown and got stuck in the tyre rim. She couldn’t even push the bike without the rubber getting caught in the spokes.

  Stranded on the Broad in the centre of Oxford, the rooms she shared with an American student way out in the further reaches of Summertown, she had been cursing under her breath, staring accusingly at the tyre, arms akimbo, when David Herring had stopped and offered to carry the bike home for her. Helen was twenty-four, still a student, doing her PhD in business studies. David was a carpenter, seven years her senior, much in demand with the Oxford professors for his cabinet-making skills. They had, after all, a lot of books.

  And strangely, since Helen had rejected half of Oxford by then she had allowed David to court her. It must have been love, Lily always assumed, although Helen had never said as much, making out that David was merely decent and acceptable rather than her knight in shining armour – she hated to be dependent on anyone. But David didn’t seem to mind. He clearly adored his wife, even thirty-three years on, her irascible temper and bossiness, her put-downs, seeming to go clean over his shaggy head.

  ‘I don’t know. Dillon won’t talk to me at the moment,’ Lily replied. ‘He thinks I must have known about Freddy’s gambling. He blames me.’

  Lily had made every effort possible in the days since the debacle to speak to her son. She knew there would be an enormous amount of hassle associated with a cancelled wedding. Even though much of the preparation was the responsibility of the venue, there would still be guests to inform, the registrar, wedding cars and band to cancel, Gabriela’s dress to be returned. She wanted to help. But Dillon had refused to return her calls. Maybe because she kept trying and he’d got sick of it, he had eventually sent a cold one-line text: We’re dealing with everything, Mum.

  No ‘love’, no kisses. He hadn’t told her in so many words to fuck off, but that was the message Lily took from her son’s text. She understood his anger, but it cut her to the quick.

  Helen raised her eyebrows. ‘Hmm . . .’ She seemed about to say something, then bit her lip. ‘I suppose I can see his point . . . the scale of it. You must have had some inkling, no?’

  ‘No.’ She didn’t bother to explain further. There was no explanation that people would understand, beyond the weakness of love.

  ‘I always thought there was something . . . sort of indulgent about Freddy,’ Helen went on, as if Lily hadn’t spoken. ‘He was too charming, too . . . perfect—’

  ‘They could have it here,’ David interrupted, from across the table. His face, as he approached sixty-five, was lined and weather-beaten, his blue eyes faded, his chaotic mane – previously corn-coloured – now almost entirely grey. But there was strength to his physique still, and he had a quiet confidence that Lily had always found reassuring.

  She smiled at him. ‘That’s incredibly kind, David. But they have to get married in the borough where they registered, which is Islington.’ She paused. ‘I wish they could come here.’

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ Helen retorted, thrusting the green plastic salad bowl into Lily’s hands. ‘I have absolutely no desire to be responsible for a last-minute wedding, even if it is Dillon’s.’

  David shot a surreptitious grin at Lily, but didn’t press the issue.

  The kitchen where they sat was a functioning, unremarkable room at the rear of the house, backing onto a strip of paved patio and a square of lawn, surrounded by mature plants and shrubs such as roses, azaleas, sedge grass, potato jasmine along the fence, a large magnolia and a pear tree. David was a diligent, if not a passionate gardener – his passion reserved for his furniture – and the garden was tidy, the plants carefully pruned, the grass unmarked by moles or moss.

  They ate in silence, Lily staring ahead at the photographs on the far wall next to the cupboards, mostly of Kit as a child and a young man, back when there had been so much hope. One of the frames contained a pen-and-ink drawing Lily had done when Kit was about ten. His young face, framed by strawberry-blond curls, impish, with his mother’s intelligent grey eyes, looked out at her with an unintentional poignancy. She remembered doing the drawing, catching the boy when he was in the garden one summer, trying – unsuccessfully – to get him to sit still for more than a second while she sketched him. She really loved Kit. They’d had a bond when he was growing up. He’d always made her laugh with his crazy inventions and witty responses.

  ‘So where is Freddy now?’ Helen was asking.

  ‘He’s . . . I don’t know.’

  Her sister eyed her with disbelief. ‘Really? You mean he hasn’t told you?’

  Lily shook her head, wishing she would shut up.

  ‘I don’t understand. Where could he have gone? You don’t think he’s run away . . . left the country?’ Helen’s eyes ­widened in alarm behind her rimless varifocals. ‘I certainly hope not, because there are legal obligations attached to bankruptcy. If Freddy doesn’t deal with them, he risks being in contempt of court.’

  ‘Of course he’s going to deal with it. He told me he would.’

  The look on her sister’s face implied this was hardly proof. ‘So why can’t he tell you where he is?’

  ‘He doesn’t want me involved, he said.’

  ‘Huh. I’d have thought it was a bit late for that.’

  Lily didn’t reply. The numb ache that had set in, like bad weather, since Freddy had walked out made it hard for her to concentrate on what her sister was saying. It was as though she were battling through thick fog even to hear the voices around her.

  ‘Well,’ Helen said, into the silence, ‘you’d better make a plan, I suppose. You’ll have to get a job, sort out your finances . . .’

  ‘Leave her alone, Helen.’ David, a man of few words who’d been characteristically silent over supper, sounded as if he would brook no argument. ‘She’s only just got here.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘You can talk about it another time.’

  It was unusual, in Lily’s experience, for him to be so firm with his wife. And, maybe because of this, Helen was silenced.

  Later, when Lily had made her excuses and gone up early to bed, she’d had a moment on the stairs when she felt like someone else and wondered what on earth she was doing there. It seemed impossible that she was now exiled to this attic room, alone, her family in tatters, her son not speaking to her, totally, utterly broke. And Freddy . . .

  Chapter 22

  ‘For God’s sake, Dillon, I can’t help you. I don’t know what the fuck to do either.’ Sara had met up with her brother in the café round the corner from Dillon’s flat. He hadn’t wanted to talk in front of Gabriela, who was still alternating between stony silence and bouts of uncontrolled sobbing.

  ‘Yes, but I can’t get a straight answer out of Gaby. I don’t know what she wants. I think doing it hole-and-corner in some dump we both hate is stupid. We haven’t the money for anything decent so it’s bound to be a disaster. But Renata’s still coming over, then Gaby’s sisters and everyone else next week, even though there might not be a wedding now. My instinct is to leave it till next year, plan the whole thing properly. But her family won’t be able to afford the tickets again any time soon. And she’ll want them at her wedd
ing, obviously.’

  He could tell his sister wasn’t really listening. She kept checking her mobile and texting. Bloody Ted, no doubt.

  ‘Sas?’

  ‘Sorry.’ She put her mobile into her bag and gave him a deliberately attentive look, moving her coffee cup to the side as if that had been the impediment to her concentration. ‘To be honest, Dill, you don’t seem to have a choice. If you haven’t got the money for a venue then you can’t get married. End of. Presumably the town hall is full?’

  He nodded. ‘For weeks.’

  ‘Well, then, you’ll have to let it go, won’t you? Think again once the dust has settled.’

  ‘Thanks for stating the bleeding obvious.’

  Sara threw her hands into the air. ‘Well, what are you asking me for? I can’t magic a free wedding out of thin air, Dillon.’

  ‘Maybe I wanted a bit of sympathy. A sympathetic ear, at least.’ He sighed martyrishly. ‘But, hey, I can see your mind’s elsewhere. Have you told poor Stan yet?’

  His sister’s expression morphed into a frown. ‘“Poor Stan”, as you call him, hasn’t been in touch for nearly two days. I haven’t had time to go home, been working back-to-back shifts, but he won’t return any of my texts. I don’t know what his problem is.’

  ‘Hmm, let me think . . . Could it be somehow, I don’t know, Ted-related?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Really? You think so?’

  But Dillon didn’t get her sarcasm. ‘Christ, Sas. Don’t be so fucking naive.’

  ‘No one knows.’ Her tone was sullen.

  ‘Ha. Someone always knows.’

  ‘We’ve been incredibly careful.’

  Suddenly Dillon had had enough. ‘Whatever. Not my problem. Listen, I’m off.’ He made to get up, but his sister reached across and grabbed his wrist, holding tight until he sat down again.