The Road to Zoe

by Alexander, Nick

  ALSO BY NICK ALEXANDER

  The Bottle of Tears

  You Then, Me Now

  Things We Never Said

  The Other Son

  The Photographer’s Wife

  13:55 Eastern Standard Time

  The Hannah Novels

  The Half-Life of Hannah

  Other Halves

  The CC Novels

  The Case of the Missing Boyfriend

  The French House

  The Fifty Reasons Series

  50 Reasons to Say Goodbye

  Sottopassaggio

  Good Thing, Bad Thing

  Better Than Easy

  Sleight of Hand

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Nick Alexander

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542014120

  ISBN-10: 1542014123

  Cover design by @blacksheep-uk.com

  Cover illustration by Jelly London

  For Lolo

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Subject: Sorry

  Re: Sorry

  Epilogue

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  She stands in the middle of the kitchen, her hands on her hips as she surveys the devastation. Around her, what was once a clean, orderly family home has become a grubby mess – a zone of utter chaos. There are muddy footprints across the lino. Bits of paper and random items lie on every surface.

  In many ways the mess strikes her as more appropriate. It seems to fit the circumstances of her life rather better than the superficial neatness of just a few days ago.

  She continues to pull things, any things, all things, from the places they belong, the places they have occupied, often untouched for years, adding them to the contents of an open box on the kitchen table.

  She’d tried to be logical at first, indeed had even managed to maintain order for a while. Thus, those early boxes, now at the bottom of a veritable wall of boxes in the hallway, truly do contain what it says on the packet, whether it be ‘Recipe books’ or ‘Kitchen implements’ or ‘DVD’s’. (Yes, she has erroneously added an apostrophe at the end of ‘DVD’, and it irritates her every time she sees it.) But she’s beyond being logical now, beyond being able to decide into what kind of category a half-empty pack of AA batteries should go, and beyond caring, too. As a result, the last seven boxes have all been labelled ‘Misc.’.

  She takes the wooden bowl from the kitchen table and tips the contents into the current box (she sees a lightbulb flash by, then a key, an unrecognised USB cable and a box of Tic Tacs). She folds over the flaps and tapes the lid shut. With a chunky marker she writes ‘Misc. #8’ on the side. This one might actually be Misc. #9, she thinks; not that it matters.

  She carries it to the hallway and deposits it on top of Misc. #7, then, taking a deep breath, she turns, walks the length of the short hallway and steels herself before yanking open the door to the cupboard under the stairs.

  She drags Henry the Hoover towards the front door but then changes her mind and moves him into the lounge instead. The vacuum cleaner is going to have to be one of the last things to go, after all. Returning to the stair cupboard, she reaches into the semi-darkness and retrieves an orange extension lead, the mop and bucket, the ironing board and the iron. The iron should probably have gone in ‘Electrical things’ or ‘Laundry stuff’ but it’s too late now.

  She unhooks, from a nail, three school bags (an image of Jude at the school gates flashes in her mind’s eye, and her heart twinges with love and loss), along with two old handbags that she should have thrown away years ago. These she dumps next to the sealed bin bags at the back door before hesitating, kneeling and checking the insides, one by one. They are all entirely empty except for the green canvas handbag, in which she finds an ancient restaurant receipt. Someone, somewhere, once ate spaghetti vongole in a restaurant called Paradisio but the date is faded and unreadable. While gently pushing one fingernail through a hole in the corner of the handbag, she tries to remember, but she can’t even recall to which era the bag belongs.

  Back at the cupboard, she drags some old coats from the depths, revealing two wooden shelves, one of which is packed with pots of home-made jam. They’re so old that they’re almost certainly inedible. From the lower shelf she pulls a dusty cardboard box.

  She bites her lip as she carries it to the kitchen table. She sits and stares past it, out through the rain-speckled windows at the waterlogged green lawn beyond. She should probably tape the box up and look at it later, or not at all. That would almost certainly be the best thing to do.

  But then the idiot DJ on Groove FM finally stops talking and plays a song instead, and it’s one of Zoe’s favourites. Mandy never much liked it herself, but Zoe had played it constantly, in . . . when was that? 2008? 2009? And how can 2009 be ten years ago? she wonders. Two thousand and nine sounds like last week. Lily Allen, she thinks now, as she listens to the song. When it reaches the chorus, she even remembers the title: ‘The Fear’. An image of her daughter telling her that the lyrics are amazing pops into her head as clearly as if it happened yesterday.

  For a moment, she stares out at the greenness of the wet garden again, and then, after glancing almost guiltily around the room, she runs her finger diagonally through the dust on the lid of the box and then removes it.

  And here they all are, the actors of her life, smiling up at her. All gone now, she thinks, as she lifts a picture of Ian, suited, drunk and grinning, from the pile. Thirteen years they were married. Thirteen years! And here’s Jude. Not entirely gone, that one, she thinks, but mostly absent all the same. She runs a finger gently across his cheek and lets out a deep bitter-sweet sigh. So much love, she thinks. Kids, they absorb so much time and effort and money. But the main thing is the love. And no one teaches you what to do with all that love once they leave. No one explains how you’re supposed to cope when their fifteen-hour-a-day presence dwindles to a ten-minute call on Sundays (if you’re lucky) and a two-day visit at Christmas.

  She caresses the photo again and slides it to the edge of the box, revealing Scott’s business card. Chunky, sexy Scott, who, despite everything else that was going on, gave her the best two years of her life. She’d bought her first digital camera just before they met and she’s pretty sure she’s never had a proper physical photo of him. Maybe even the digital photos have been lost by now and perhaps that would be just as well. Damn, Scott was sexy.

  She delves further into the box and finds her official, mounted wedding photo. It’s hard to decide which of the two of them looks the most uncomfortable in it. Ian, probably, she decides. Ian always looked a bit uncomfortable – a bit as if he wanted to be somewhere else. As it turned out, of course, there was a reason for that.

 
And then here she is, her first-born, and it’s only when she finds the photo that she realises that it’s what she’s been looking for – that it’s what she’s been dreading. The photo, the Lily Allen song . . . Her heart lurches.

  The idea that any of the main players might just step out of your life is hard to get your head around. Our brains are wired for permanence, really. Our parents will (we believe) always be on the end of that phone line. The husband will always be there for breakfast. But at least the concepts associated with losing these people are all around us. Our friends’ parents die, and so we are forewarned. Other friends go from coupled to single. Shit happens. Separation, divorce: we have proper, useful words to describe these events. But a child? Well, you just don’t get over that one, do you? There’s not even a word for it.

  ‘Oh, Zoe,’ she murmurs. Lovely lost Zoe. Her vision is blurring, so she swipes at the corner of her eye and takes a deep, jagged breath. It’s just too upsetting, and she can’t do with being upset right now. She needs to be cool and efficient, like some suited female lawyer in a Netflix series. And so she slides Zoe beneath a photo of Jude’s first car, and then reseals the box, taping across the top.

  She has just added the box of photos to the teetering pile in the hall when her mobile buzzes in her pocket. Talk of the devil, she thinks, but with a warm feeling and a hint of a smile.

  ‘Mum?’ It’s Jude’s voice.

  ‘If that’s who you called,’ she says, ‘then that’s probably who it is. How was your holiday? Are you back yet?’

  ‘Um, great,’ Jude says. ‘Yes, we just got back. Look, I need to see you. Can I come up?’

  She grimaces. ‘You need to see me?’ she repeats, mentally listing the various reasons her son might want to see her. If he wants money, she’s all out. If he’s split up with Jessica and needs emotional support, her stock of that is pretty low, too.

  ‘Yeah, it’s kind of urgent,’ Jude says. ‘So is it OK? If we come up?’

  ‘What? Now?’ she asks. ‘I’m right in the middle of packing. Everything’s all over the place, sweetheart. The moving guys are coming tomorrow and I’m way behind schedule.’

  ‘Then we can help you,’ Jude says. ‘We can stay the night and help you all day tomorrow.’

  ‘But the bedrooms,’ she says. ‘I’ve packed all the bedding away. I wouldn’t even know which box it’s in.’

  ‘We’ll bring sleeping bags. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘But . . .’ she sighs. ‘This really isn’t the best timing, Jude. I’d have to start unpacking stuff and tidying and this isn’t the right moment for that. Are you sure it can’t wait till next weekend?’

  ‘Um. Well, no. No, it can’t really,’ Jude says. ‘And don’t tidy. We don’t care how the place looks.’

  ‘Tell me now, then,’ she says. ‘Tell me on the phone. You don’t have to drive all the way here, do you?’

  ‘I’d rather come,’ Jude replies. ‘We can be there in . . . How long?’ he asks, and it’s not until Jessica, in the background, shouts out, ‘Four, four and a half hours,’ that she realises the question wasn’t directed at her. ‘So, about sevenish?’ Jude says.

  ‘But the kitchen . . .’ she says. ‘Even the kitchen stuff . . . It’s all packed away.’

  ‘Then we’ll bring pizza,’ Jude says.

  ‘Pizza,’ she repeats.

  ‘We can eat it out of the boxes.’

  ‘Bring Chinese, then,’ she tells him. ‘If you must come, bring Chinese, from Ip’s. I’ve still got plates somewhere.’

  ‘Chinese it is, then,’ Jude says. ‘See you about seven-thirty.’

  ‘And go to Ip’s,’ she says again. ‘Opposite the Bull’s Head. They were really rude the last time I went to the other one, so go to Ip’s.’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ Jude says. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll go to Ip’s. See you in a bit.’

  ‘Just one thing,’ she asks. ‘Is it good news or bad?’

  ‘Um, I’m not sure, really,’ Jude says. ‘It’s certainly news, anyway.’

  One

  Mandy

  My marriage ended on the 3rd of March 2007 at about 2.25 p.m.

  There had been no warning signs; I had no suspicions. If anything, I felt blessed that we were one of those lucky couples who were destined to coast through life side by side. I didn’t like to think about the end much, didn’t want to consider which of us might go first, but that was about the only terror I could envisage on our joint horizon.

  Other than that, I felt quite comfortable with the idea of getting older. What could be nicer, I thought, than lazy days in front of the (gas-powered) log fire, pausing occasionally to make a cup of tea for the person I’d spent my life with, someone so familiar to me that I hadn’t needed to ask what he was thinking about for years. That’s how well I thought I knew my husband.

  Retirement, of course, was still a long way off, so I’m only telling you this to give you an idea of just how shocking that afternoon’s revelations were to me.

  I’d had one of my rare optical migraines at work that lunchtime, and after the obligatory lie-down on the office couch until I could see well enough to drive again, I’d rushed home, hoping to get to bed before the pulsing, throbbing headache that invariably followed the blindness got started.

  Other than the hum of the refrigerator and the pfff! of the boiler starting up, the house was exactly as quiet as I expected it to be. Ian was out at work; the kids were at school. I’d take my Migrex and lie down in the darkened bedroom and, if I was lucky, it would pass by the time everyone got home.

  As I entered the bathroom, I glanced towards our bedroom and saw, through the half-open door, a heeled leather shoe at the end of the bed. I noticed it without noticing it, if you know what I mean. I saw it as I saw the rumpled sheets and the wintry sunlight cutting through a gap in the curtains, but with the shimmering still present around the edges of my vision it didn’t register, really. I certainly didn’t consider, as I sat down to wee, that the shoe might not be mine.

  What I did notice, when I stepped back out of the bathroom, the shimmering almost gone now and the lobe above my left eye beginning to throb, was that the shoe was no longer there.

  Feeling more confused than suspicious, I headed towards the bedroom. The sheets, I noticed, were now smooth. The shoe I thought I’d seen had vanished. Had I imagined it? Was I having visions, now? Or had it just been a memory from a different day?

  I sniffed at the air and thought I detected an unusual odour, a synthetic fruity perfume like fabric softener or perhaps cheap own-brand washing powder. But strange odours were a regular feature of my migraines, too, and so I ignored it and thought instead, as I kicked my own shoes off, about the shoe I thought I’d seen.

  I crossed to the window and, even though this was physically painful, peered out at the street before pulling the curtains shut. The street outside was quiet. Everything seemed as it should be.

  It was then that I heard a noise, or at least, I thought I heard a noise. Above the whistle of the WC tank filling it was hard to be sure, but it had sounded like our conservatory door closing. The imaginary shoe, the fruity smell, the sheets, the noise . . . Something seemed out of kilter.

  Not knowing quite why, I strode down the landing to Jude’s bedroom and peered out between his Spider-Man curtains at the back garden, just in time to see Ian, my husband of thirteen years, surreptitiously pulling the back gate closed behind him. Then for a fraction of a second, no more, I saw the backs of two heads: Ian’s, and a blonde woman’s, before they vanished behind the neighbour’s hedge.

  I just about managed to change the sheets, but I was in too much pain to do anything more. But even with the sheets changed, I couldn’t bear to lie down in that bed. I wondered if I ever would again.

  After glancing around the room one last time and noting that Ian’s tie was draped over the back of a chair, I crossed the landing to Zoe’s messy bedroom, where I threw myself down and closed my eyes. The tie, I realised, was the same one Ian ha
d worn to work that morning, the pink and blue striped one I had bought him (on Jude’s behalf) the previous Christmas. Between spasms of physical pain, I thought about what I’d just discovered, and wept.

  The pain had faded to a dull ache by the time the kids got home. I set them up with a film and some crisps and waited for Ian in the kitchen. They didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong. Kids are incredibly self-absorbed at that age.

  Ian arrived just after six. He was whistling. I kid you not.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, bending down to peck me on the cheek. ‘How was your day?’

  ‘Not good,’ I said. ‘I got a migraine and had to come home, but then you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Um,’ he said, as if he hadn’t even heard this remark. ‘That’s not good.’

  ‘How was your day?’ I asked, with meaning.

  ‘Fine,’ he replied. ‘Uneventful.’

  ‘Ian,’ I said, in an attempt at getting him to stop what he was doing and look at me. But he continued to fiddle in his briefcase, retrieving first his phone and then the charger and then plugging them in.

  ‘Ian!’ I said again, and when this time he looked at me, I added, ‘I know.’

  He froze for quite a long time. I could see him reviewing the possible options. Denial. Incomprehension. Maybe a calculated argument about something else that would give him time to think. He opened his mouth to speak a few times, but then closed it. He pushed his tongue into one cheek.

  And then I suddenly no longer wanted to hear what he had to say. I didn’t want to discover which of the possible untruths he would choose. I didn’t want to hold back what I knew or stoop as low as attempting to catch him out. It seemed too grubby, somehow. It didn’t seem worthy of our thirteen-year marriage, or of our two beautiful children watching Star Trek in the next room.

  ‘I saw you leave from Jude’s window,’ I said. ‘I saw her shoes on the floor, Ian. You forgot your tie on the back of the chair, as well. I know, Ian.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘Oh,’ he said.

  I’ve seen too many films, perhaps, but I expected him to say, ‘It was nothing.’ I expected him to say, ‘It was just sex.’ And I’d been totally unable to decide how I’d respond when he did say those things.