Can I Give My Husband Back?: A totally laugh out loud and uplifting page turner

by Kristen Bailey

  ‘He just needs to work some things out, Mum,’ I say.

  ‘Is it a money thing? We can always lend you money,’ she digs further. ‘I just think it’s terrible that he’s basically abandoned my daughter and grandson.’

  Beth looks alarmed that her voice may carry through to Dad. I am more alarmed that she will cause a scene and people will leave. There is a whole loin of pork resting on the counter that needs eating.

  ‘He didn’t abandon me. He’s just having a time out. He…’ Beth takes a large gulp of wine. She looks at me for help. We know Mum too well. Soon she’ll start with the catty comments about his ability as a father and partner that will cut and penetrate because essentially it’s a reflection on choices we made. I’m all too familiar with this. We used to stand in this kitchen and have the same conversations about Simon all the time. He’s working? On a Sunday? He’s cheated? Again?

  ‘Let’s just have a nice lunch. Mum, could you get my big serving bowl out?’ I ask, trying to diffuse her line of interrogation.

  Beth exhales loudly as our mother roots around in the cupboards.

  ‘I believe this is my dish, Emma.’ Mum gets the dish out and places it on the counter. It’s not the prettiest, there’s a seventies sunflower vibe going on but it cooks a good crumble. I always thought it was a rite of passage that we should at least inherit one thing from the family home kitchen. I can hear my oven door has been opened and turn to see Mum peeking to no doubt check whether the roast potatoes are up to standard.

  ‘I mean he better be in his son’s life for Christmas or I’ll be having words with him myself… ’ Mum says, adamantly. ‘Do I have to get him a present?’

  ‘Mum, don’t be like that,’ I tell her.

  ‘Please, Mum…’ pleads Beth.

  But then at that precise moment, a figure walks through the door. It’s Dad. It’s a classic Dad move; he almost has a sixth sense when there’s trouble brewing. ‘Fiona, the girls are upstairs and wanted to show you something, some sort of fashion show?’

  It’s clever because granddaughters trump daughters every time so she takes her leave, but not before her final stab. ‘Those potatoes are looking quite brown. Your dad’s dentures might not be able to take them too crispy, Emma.’

  I salute her as she closes the kitchen door and Dad chuckles to himself.

  ‘What can I do?’ he asks, grinning. We both smile back at him.

  ‘You could drain my green beans?’ I stand over the joint of meat at the counter and get carving. The joy of being a surgeon was that this was the task that I inherited in the family. You should see me with a turkey at Christmas, I can remove legs like a pro.

  ‘Did I walk in on something?’

  Beth shakes her head.

  He looks over at her warmly. ‘She’s just worried about what’s happening with you, Beth. You know that, right?’

  We both look over at him strangely and he smiles.

  ‘Have you ever met Lucy before? Gob like a black hole?’

  ‘Lucy told you… about Will?’ I ask.

  He nods. Beth goes over to embrace him.

  ‘I sometimes like your mother thinking I don’t know everything, it makes her think she has the upper hand.’

  Beth chuckles in reply. ‘I should have told you. I’m sorry, Dad.’

  ‘Not your fault. How are you? Do you need anything?’

  She shrugs her shoulders. ‘I’m surviving. Just help me deal with Mum’s comments today.’ Beth looks fraught and he hugs her again.

  ‘She cares, you know. Your mum.’

  Beth and I look at him curiously. It’s been like this since we were little. As a mother of daughters, I got it completely. You want your girls to find their place in life, smash the patriarchy and rule the world but she always held us to impossible standards as a consequence. I respected and feared her for it in equal measure.

  ‘She’d move mountains for each of you. I think that’s all she’s done since Meg was born but she’s protective too. That’s the lioness in her.’

  ‘I was thinking more dragon,’ says Beth laughing.

  ‘Then don’t confuse her fire,’ he replies sagely.

  I laugh under my breath but Beth and I look at each other and know exactly what he means. It’s all some outward expression of love and care. It’s at times blistering and we feel the effects of those flames but they’ve never really been directed at us. He smiles. I never got Dad’s opinion on what happened with Simon. He was consolatory and kind but never had the same fire that Mum had. I don’t know if that was a good thing or not but at least it balances out my dear mother.

  ‘And don’t listen to her. The potatoes are perfect, cookie.’

  I pause for a moment. Smart cookie was his nickname for me growing up. Pickle, peanut, chicken and bean. That’s where the food theme came from. I side hug dad without him really knowing why.

  ‘LUNCH!’ I shout as Beth and I get the last of the dishes and we hear the flutter of people on the steps. To be fair, there is a warm glow about having everyone near, to see my girls embedded in all of this love and commotion. I take the roast out to the table and move the apple sauce away from my mother as even though I’ve spooned it out into a bowl, she’ll see it’s not got lumps and know I’ve got it out of a jar.

  ‘This looks delish, Ems. Thank you so much,’ Beth says as she straps Joe into his highchair.

  My mum silently rakes through the vegetables. It’s a difficult balance with her. She’s either saying too much or nothing at all. At least congratulate me on the pork as I don’t think I’ve completely killed this.

  ‘So Beth, why don’t you tell everyone about Joe. Mum, Dad… He’s been on a few modelling shoots.’

  Dad sits up in his chair as he serves himself some broccoli.

  ‘Well, obviously he got my good looks.’ The girls giggle.

  My mum looks over. ‘Is that how you’re going to earn money now? It doesn’t seem very reliable?’

  Mum. Rein it in. Say something nice, even if you don’t quite mean it. You know she needs it more than ever now.

  ‘Are they keeping your teaching job? You were such a good teacher.’

  Beth has taken to flooding her plate with gravy. Don’t eat the stress away, sis. I look over at her. There is the need to FaceTime all the other sisters immediately so they can share in this awkwardness.

  A little voice pipes in. ‘She is a good teacher,’ says Iris through a mouthful of stuffing.

  Beth pauses. ‘What was that, hun?’

  ‘Granny used the past tense. Aunty Beth is brilliant. You taught me about adverbs the other day. And you’re a great aunty. I don’t know why Uncle Will left you but he’s a prize idiot.’

  I drop my carving knife so it clatters on the floor and luckily doesn’t slice off my toes. Beth brings Iris in for a side hug while my mum and dad sit there, open mouthed.

  ‘Dad knows, Mum,’ I announce.

  They both glare at each other. They can thrash that out in the car later but for now, I smile at my Iris for knowing or at least appreciating the wonder in her aunt Beth. She who counteracts the madness of Lucy, who doesn’t hate anyone – not even that bloody ex-husband of mine, not even the boyfriend who left her.

  ‘I didn’t mean that, Iris,’ replies my mother. ‘I know Beth is brilliant. She’s my daughter. All my daughters are brilliant and they deserve the world because they are a fucking marvel.’

  And we all freeze. Violet drops a fork at hearing the swearing. Beth’s eyes glaze over and we look at each other. Those words will never leave her mouth again. At least not in the next decade but we were the privileged two who got to hear them. This has made today worth it. Dad beams broadly as if to say he told us so.

  ‘Even Aunty Lucy?’ asks Violet.

  ‘I’m sorry I swore. Yes, even your aunt Lucy.’

  ‘Because she showed her foof to the entire park the other day.’

  ‘Is that a Yorkshire pudding under your pillow?’ I ask Violet.

 
‘Yes, I may get hungry in the night.’

  ‘Unless a mouse finds it first and eats its way through your face to get to it,’ says Iris.

  Violet looks horrified and I cast Iris a look as I am pretty sure her sister will never sleep again now. I gesture for her to hand over her contraband but am mildly amused that she hides savoury baked goods instead of sweets and thought to wrap it in a napkin first.

  The meal went well after my mother’s shock announcement that she was quite fond of her daughters though we may need to prepare Lucy for the onslaught of reprimand she’ll receive after Iris and Violet outlined the whole Elsa in the park incident. She smacked one right in the gob and called her a peroxide titface. Really, Granny. It was brilliant!

  Beth lingers downstairs to watch television as my set is bigger and my sofas are comfier whilst Mum and Dad have returned home with some pie – which Mum ‘loved’. Beth nailed the pastry, she said, which is probably the first time my mother has ever lied but I think she wanted to continue in some theme of kindness and raising her daughters up for one small moment.

  ‘When will Aunty Lucy come back?’ asks Iris.

  ‘She and Aunty Gracie have just been to a wedding and then she’s back on Tuesday.’

  ‘Freya’s mum is getting married,’ Violet pipes in. I realise who this is. It’s Faith, Leo’s ex. She’s getting re-married already? I’ll text him and make sure he’s alright. ‘Freya said they’re getting married on a beach and no one will wear shoes? Can you get married without shoes?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Did you wear shoes at your wedding?’ asks Violet. Iris glances over at her.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I reassure her, ‘I wore white high heels and they got ruined because there was a lot of grass so by the end of the day, they were light green.’

  ‘Like the Hulk?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Iris eyes me curiously. ‘Do you think you’ll ever get married again, Mummy?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’d be a lot of fuss.’

  ‘You could have an office wedding?’ says Violet.

  ‘You mean a registry office wedding?’ I grin imagining an actual office wedding backlit by the glow of a photocopier.

  Iris is quiet and I beckon her over so we can have a squish and a hug altogether.

  ‘Are you OK, little potato?’

  I know she feels this all a lot more than her sister.

  ‘There’s just a lot of people to think about now. You spoke about the awesome foursome before and that made me sad.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask.

  ‘Because that’s what Daddy used to call us.’

  I hear sadness in her voice. I hadn’t even pegged where I’d heard that term before.

  ‘And sometimes I just miss it when it was the four of us.’

  The emotion is a little unbearable and a tear trails down my cheek. Violet looks petrified.

  ‘Don’t be sad, Mummy.’

  ‘I’m not sad. I’m just sorry Daddy and I couldn’t make it work. You know how much we love you though. And how I’ll always love him really for giving me you two little pumpkins.’

  ‘You’re calling us food again.’

  ‘Because you’re both delicious.’

  ‘That’s called cannibalism,’ says Iris.

  ‘Do you have a new boyfriend?’ Violet asks.

  I pause. Do I do this here? Now? Do they meet him first? Do I show them a picture of him?

  ‘I’ve been on a few dates with a man called Jag.’

  They both giggle.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I ask.

  ‘That’s a silly name, like a Jaguar?’

  ‘He’s Asian.’

  ‘Is he nice to you?’ asks Violet.

  ‘He buys me hummus.’

  ‘And you love hummus,’ says Violet, rearranging her pillow. ‘Does he have kids? Would we have more brothers and sisters? Then we’d have to buy a bus.’

  I smile at hearing her talk so plainly. She thinks it’s a chance to make new friends and have a party on a bus. When did this one grow such a big heart?

  ‘Jag has no kids and he’s also a doctor.’

  ‘And you love doctors,’ says Iris, jokingly. I narrow my eyes at her cheekiness. Suddenly, my phone rings from over on the dresser and I peel myself off the floor to go answer it. Speaking of doctors I’ve once loved…

  ‘Simon?’

  The girls sit up in their beds. ‘Is it Daddy, can we say goodnight to him?’

  However, the voice on the end of the line is hushed, the breathing is in short gasps. Oh my god, has he sex dialled me? But something’s not quite right.

  ‘Girls, time to sleep.’ I give them swift kisses on the tops of their heads and vacate the room quickly.

  ‘Simon, what’s wrong? Are you crying?’

  ‘Ems.’ He can hardly catch his breath.

  ‘Is it Susie? Your boys?’

  This feels different. Even when we divorced, I never heard him like this.

  ‘It’s my mum. They’ve just wheeled her into surgery for a blood clot…’

  I sit down on my bed to steady myself. ‘Oh Si… is she OK?’

  ‘Can you get here? Can you come down?’

  I pause for a moment. I am sitting here in a room that once belonged to us, in a house with our girls. A court of law has said I don’t have to be his wife anymore. But I hear his voice, that panic and my heart aches and I am not sure why.

  ‘Tell me where you are.’

  Eighteen

  If you had to say there’s a noise that marks out the soundtrack of my life, it’s probably that of a heart monitor. The bouncing sound is a comfort to me – it means someone is alive and their heart working. But the droning sound of when a heart stopped, dragged and prolonged, haunts me. When a heart dies, a monitor detects a complete lack of electrical activity within the muscle. It stops beating. It’s still. I often think of waves on an ocean rippling to a halt, leaving just a wake of still water.

  I haven’t been in a hospital as a visitor since last year when Grace’s husband died. His name was Tom and it was all so very tragic. One moment, they were this young beautiful couple with everything at their feet and the next, Tom was given a diagnosis which changed the landscape forever. He was gone within a month. I was there when he passed and Grace collapsed to the floor because his body stopped working. I held her. I felt the immense pain that tore through her and it diminished everything that I had been going through. Those were not fractures that would just heal over in time, it was a heart crushed into nothing.

  ‘Are you family?’ the lady on reception asks.

  I pause for a moment. ‘I am, Emma Chadwick. I’m her daughter-in-law.’

  The ward on this hospital glows quiet; the lights have been turned off. A strained voice comes from a ward behind me and a nurse walks in to placate them. It’s a symphony of monitors and a creaking trolley that delivers charts and medicines. Geriatric medicine was like this, there was a serenity to it but I found it all exceptionally sad – people saying goodbye to loved ones they’d known for years, some dying alone, others who’d lost all reason and understanding as their minds faded.

  The receptionist looks at her computer. ‘She’s still in surgery.’

  ‘Her son was with her, is he about?’

  ‘Tall, good hair?’

  ‘I guess…?’

  ‘He’s waiting in her room. Room 4 to the left.’

  She smiles in the way I’ve seen a thousand times before and I walk over to the room and stare at the door. Why am I here? I knock lightly.

  ‘Come in?’

  When I walk in, Simon’s figure stands by the window. He wears a navy pea coat and I know that coat well as it’s the one I gave him for Christmas on the very day I decided to leave him. Shadows mask his face but I can tell that he’s been crying. Simon never cried – not when our daughters were born, when he lost patients, when we divorced. After our breakup I often wondered if this made him some form of sociopath. Now he wipes tears fr
om his eyes then moves towards me cautiously. I am not that much of a monster so open my arms out to offer my condolences. His body curls into mine and I feel the shudders from his sobbing.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’

  He realises he’s shown a moment of weakness and we part. I retrieve some tissues from the bedside table and he goes back to stand at the window. It had been just Linda and Simon growing up. His father had left them when he was five so he had no siblings and few relatives to speak of.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Stroke.’

  ‘Oh, Simon. Were you with her?’

  ‘Yes. Emma, what if she dies?’

  He pulls a chair out to sit down, bowing his head and crying quietly. I put my bag down to go over to his side of the bed, holding a hand to his back.

  ‘Was there anything to pre-empt this? I always thought she was in good health?’

  ‘She was. She always kept herself well.’

  ‘Then you know as well as I that she should handle any surgery really well… Did you get her in quickly?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Did they scan? Is it ischaemic? What are they doing?’

  I sit on the bed in front of him. He doesn’t reply and I assume the worst. I deal in hearts and all those connected areas. As hardy as they are, they’re also unpredictable. I guess he needs reassurances that hers is maybe different.

  ‘Did she still do her morning walks around the park?’

  ‘Yes. Decked out in lavender fleece, every morning. She used to take the girls too.’

  ‘Stop talking in the past tense. I’m sure it’ll be fine.’

  We stand, feeling a little helpless. Kingston Hospital is beyond our remit but I don’t doubt that Simon most likely swanned in here with his credentials and good hair and got his mum the private room.

  ‘Did you really go to a Chinese for her birthday?’ I ask.

  Simon laughs under his breath to hear me change the subject. ‘God, she hated it. You know how she is with food. And then the cake and… Oh god, I fucked up, Ems.’

  I don’t know if this is a general statement so I stay quiet.

  ‘That was just the beginning of everything going wrong. The last weeks all we’ve been doing is fighting. This is all my fault.’