This is Me

by Shari Low

  He didn’t look convinced.

  The whole way home, Claire tried to engage him in sunny chat about his day, and he gave her doleful one word answers. By the time she reached the house, a decision she hadn’t even realised she was making was already cast in stone. She dug her phone out of her bag and texted Sam.

  Really sorry – won’t make the lunch. Going to stay home with Jordy. He’s fine but just think he needs some love. See you later. Xx

  He didn’t text back and she didn’t give it a second thought.

  Her children would always be her priority. And if it came down to choosing who needed her most, they would win every time.

  Twenty-Two

  Denise – 2019

  Denise put the highlighter pen down and closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at bank statements any more. She needed a break from this before her head exploded, needed to centre herself, to do something that would unravel the twist of panic and fury that was consuming her.

  Ray. The only thing that would break this pain for even a few moments was to remind herself of who he was, what they’d been.

  Years of meditation had taught her how to focus her mind and block out the rest of the world. That’s what she did now.

  Ray. The synapses of her brain worked together to pull up a memory of a night only a few weeks ago. He’d been working away all week on a job in Edinburgh, and she’d missed him every second he was gone.

  He’d walked in the door on the Friday night with a huge bouquet of her favourite lilies. Stargazers. Of course, she’d been expecting him, so she’d done her hair, her make-up was perfect and she was wearing a Diane Von Furstenburg wrap dress that he’d bought her for Christmas a few years before. He’d said all the celebrities were wearing them so she deserved to have one too. It was still one of his favourites and he clearly appreciated it because, with his free arm, he’d picked her up, swung her around and kissed her hard on the lips.

  ‘God, I missed you, gorgeous,’ he told her, his breath hot on her cheek. ‘Come on, let’s go out.’

  Her arms tightened around his neck as tingles of excitement flooded her body. Forty years and he could still make her feel like she was fifteen again. ‘Are we celebrating something?’ she asked, giggling.

  ‘We’re celebrating that I absolutely…’ He kissed her. ‘Love…’ He kissed her again. ‘My wife.’

  ‘I like that kind of celebration,’ she murmured, utterly swept away by her adoration of this man.

  ‘Go put something stunning on,’ he told her.

  She took a step back. ‘Not dressy enough?’

  He pulled her back towards him, tugged on the strap that held the dress closed, allowing it to fall open. She smiled, knowing that he liked what he saw. Sure, her boobs were a bit lower than they once were, but the La Perla lingerie he’d bought her for her birthday took care of that. At fifty-five, the rest of her body was still tight and toned, thanks to daily workouts at the gym. She wanted her body to please her man. The look on his face told her that it still did.

  He tossed the flowers on to the granite worktop, then they made love right there on the kitchen table. It was the perfect Friday, the perfect moment, the perfect man.

  Reluctantly, Denise let the delicious feeling of his touch dissipate as she brought her mind back to the present, calmer now, the memory restoring her faith and trust in the love that they’d shared. Those weren’t the actions of a man who kept secrets from his wife. Or a businessman in crippling financial difficulties. Ray Harrow was a man who had made a success of his life, built a thriving company, lived with a wife he adored, had no worries to keep him awake at night.

  Sitting forward, she returned to the sea of highlighted lines in the business bank statements. The easy ones to cross off were payments to contractors that she had booked to help him on jobs. She knew them all by name, either individually or the companies that they worked for. Next were the transfers to the credit card he used to buy supplies and equipment for his jobs, and petrol and diesel for the vehicles. Cross checking them with the credit card statements that were at the back of the file, they looked to be completely in order. VAT debits were what she’d expect. As were the lease payments for his company van, his Mercedes and her BMW, both of which were arranged via the business for tax reasons that she didn’t particularly understand. Phone bills paid – mobile and landline. Electricity and gas bills – also through the business books. The only other regular debit was a transfer to his personal account for… wow, £6,000 a month. Was that how much it cost to maintain their lifestyle?

  She mentally totted up their other outgoings – holidays, nights out, groceries. That was it. And sure, their travel was expensive, but that was only a couple of times a year, yet the £6,000 was moved to the personal account every month. Strange, for sure.

  She was about to close the folder when she realised that she’d only looked at half of the picture. If the account was so deep in the red, then obviously there wasn’t enough cash going into it. She scanned the credits, mentally tying up the payments with the jobs she had helped him to arrange. There was Mr & Mrs Lemon’s conservatory. Paid in full. The refit of the chip shop in the high street. Paid over three months, as agreed, to help the owner with his cash flow. The construction of the new forecourt for the independent garage in Paisley. The emergency jobs caused by the torrential storms at the beginning of the year. All paid in full. So what wasn’t there?

  The Edinburgh job, two months of regular travel through there for up to four days at a time. That one finished weeks ago. Then there was the loft conversion in Stirling. The kitchen extension in Falkirk. The summer house construction in Ayr. And those were just the ones she remembered off the top of her head.

  Fury bubbled inside her. Bad debts. Was that what had caused this? A sudden thought… These were also all jobs that he’d arranged himself. She hadn’t booked contractors to work with him because he said he’d contacted them personally and arranged it all. At the time, she thought he was just trying to take some tasks off her plate, but now… None of this made sense.

  As she closed the file on the business account, she’d learned two things. He hadn’t been paid for half of the jobs he’d done in the last year – and the ones he hadn’t been paid for were all jobs that he told her he’d organised. And he was transferring six thousand pounds a month to his personal account – the one that currently had a balance of £636.00.

  She’d spent two hours digging through this web of confusion and she was no further forward in understanding the situation.

  Opening the second folder, the one with his personal statements, she just hoped the answers were in there.

  Twenty-Three

  Denise – 1986

  The lights on the Christmas tree in the corner were flickering, the angel on the top a little lopsided. Not that the kids had cared. Now that Claire was seven and Doug was six, they were beyond excited about Santa’s visit tonight, and so hyper before they went to bed that they were practically swinging from the paper chains that draped from every corner of the room.

  Kneeling on the floor, Denise sat back on her heels and rubbed the base of her back. She’d been bending over, wrapping these presents for the last hour and her festive cheer had well and truly disappeared.

  She’d been hoping beyond hope that Ray would get home in time to help, but in truth, she’d known it was a long shot. The plant shut at lunchtime, so it was normal for the men to head to the pub for a pint on the way home. In Ray’s case, that invariably meant ten pints once he got going. He couldn’t help himself, she knew that. He just loved being sociable and having a good time with the other guys. It was one of the things she loved about him, so she rarely complained. Besides, how many times had his mum told her that the worst thing Denise could do was put demands on him? He had a lot on his plate, Jenny said, between working and supporting a family with two kids. Denise had to make allowances.

  If she were being honest, though, she just wished those allowances didn’t need to be made
at 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve, when she still had to finish sorting the presents and get the preparations done for her first time hosting a Christmas lunch tomorrow.

  Her own family weren’t coming – Agnes said she wasn’t traipsing across the city on Christmas Day – but Ray’s mum and dad were definitely going to be here. Ray had said that offering to do it was the least they could do now that they were in their own house. She got a tingling in the pit of her stomach just thinking about that. Her own house. And it was a bought one too, not one off the council. No one in her family had ever owned their own house before, and much as her mum would die before she admitted it, Denise knew Agnes was a tiny bit impressed.

  It was just a shame they’d got it under such sad circumstances. Situated in Giffnock, a lovely suburb in the south of the city, it had been Ray’s grandad’s house, until he’d passed away a couple of months before. The house had been left to his only son, Ray’s dad, Pete, although there was still an outstanding mortgage on it. Pete had decided that he was too late on in life to be taking on a mortgage and a house that needed complete modernisation. He and Jenny were happy in their tenement flat and had no desire to move. ‘They’ll take me out of here in a box,’ Pete always said. Jenny was in agreement for three reasons – first, she was deeply wary of any financial commitments. She was paid in cash every week by the supermarket and she had her savings club for Christmas. They had no credit cards, no loans and no interest in having them. And secondly, well, what did they need to move and leave their friends and neighbours for? She was perfectly happy in the council home she’d lived in since she married Pete. Most importantly, her Ray and the kids (yep, Denise noted she didn’t figure in the equation) were just starting out in life and this would be a fabulous move for them. It would give them a lifetime of security and it would get them out from under her and Pete’s feet. Not that she didn’t love having them close, but four adults and two children in a two bed, one box room flat was definitely a challenge.

  Ray had jumped at the chance. The important thing was that it was in a posh area, he said. They could do it up over time and they’d be set for life. Not that he’d had much time to work on it yet, right enough. Between work and football, sometimes it felt like he was barely home.

  Claire and Doug had settled fine into their new school though. Maybe one of these days she’d get round to talking to some people, maybe at the school gate. Sometimes it felt like she went days without speaking to another soul.

  She was on the lookout for a part-time job too because Ray said they needed the money for the house improvements. Just the mornings, because she had to pick the kids up every day at three o’clock. She was two buses away from her mum and Jenny now, so there was no one nearby to help.

  Stretching, she loosened her muscles off and then went back to wrapping presents again. Just after ten o’clock now. The opening bars of a familiar theme song on the telly made her look up. Dallas. JR Ewing was strutting about with that smug grin on his face. It was one of her favourite shows, but Ray reckoned it was nonsense. She’d seen an advert that Larry Hagman and Linda Gray were going to be on a Wogan Late Night Christmas Special tonight as well, so she could watch that while she was getting things sorted, at least until her husband came home.

  *

  It was after midnight when she heard the door open. Presents wrapped, Wogan watched, veg and potatoes for tomorrow’s lunch peeled, she was dozing in the armchair by the dying embers of the coal fire.

  He burst in the door, Christmas hat on his head, still in the work clothes he’d left in that morning.

  ‘Merry Christmas, ma darling,’ he crooned.

  ‘Sssssshhhh,’ she said, giggling. ‘Don’t you dare wake those kids up.’

  He ignored her, bursting into a chorus of ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day.’

  Laughing, she decided to stop objecting and just enjoy the show. Even now that they’d been together for seven years, she still thought he was the best looking man she’d ever seen. She’d seen loads of posters for that new Top Gun movie and she really thought Ray was much better looking than that Tom Cruise bloke.

  Second verse and another chorus sung, he glanced around the room, seeing the cookies and milk by the fireplace and the pile of presents already wrapped and under the tree. If he remembered that he’d promised to come home early enough to help her wrap them, he wasn’t saying. Not that it mattered. All she cared about was that he was home now.

  ‘You’ve done a grand job here, Den,’ he told her. ‘Christ, yer a fab wife. Do you know that?’

  She grinned. ‘Yeah, but you can keep telling me,’ she teased.

  ‘Oh, I will,’ he said, enjoying the joke. ‘Come here so I can tell you just how great a wife you really are.’

  He leant down to kiss her and she reached up to curl her arms around his neck. Her lips were almost on his when she recoiled. What was that smell? It was…

  ‘Perfume?’ she blurted, anxiety ripping through her.

  ‘What? Naw,’ he tried to shrug her comment off. ‘Don’t be crazy. Of course it’s not perfume.’

  She bit her bottom lip, not sure what to say. She was sure it was perfume. Positive. However, challenging Ray was something she rarely did because it never ended well. She’d learned growing up with Agnes, that on almost every occasion, it was much easier to back down, keep your mouth shut and let the issue pass.

  For once, she didn’t take her own advice. ‘But it smells like…’

  ‘It’s not fucking perfume,’ he argued. ‘Or if it is, it came from being in the pub on Christmas Eve, with a hundred folk, half of which were women who were drowned in the stuff. Why are you giving me grief? I came home to see my wife, ready to cuddle up and bring in Christmas, and you’re giving me a hard time. I should have stayed in the bloody pub.’

  And she should have kept her mouth shut, she decided. What had she been thinking? All night she’d been waiting for him and now she’d completely ruined everything the minute he walked in the door. How stupid was that?

  Her first reaction was to try desperately to make it right. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that it took me a bit by surprise because it was so strong. Anyway, don’t get annoyed. I’m just glad you’re home now.’

  It took a moment to determine how that was going to go. If he was really annoyed, he’d kick off and storm to bed, but maybe she’d apologised quickly enough that it would be OK. She loved him so much, she didn’t want to be fighting with him on any night, but especially tonight.

  ‘OK, but enough of the third degree. Stop being mental.’

  Still a bit hostile, so she wasn’t forgiven yet. The knot in her stomach tightened a little, but then he grinned and kissed her again and she began to relax.

  ‘Quite like it when you’re a wee bit jealous though,’ he said, nuzzling her neck now.

  All was fine again.

  She pushed his chest playfully. ‘Oh yeah? Well, don’t be making me jealous too often. Never know what I’ll do,’ she said, and it was funny because they both knew that she didn’t have an aggressive bone in her body.

  ‘Poison me with one of those Brussels sprouts?’ he teased, gesturing to the pot in the centre of the coffee table, where two pounds of sprouts sat in water. She’d brought them in to the living room to peel them while she was watching Wogan.

  She didn’t get a chance to answer because his lips were hard on hers now and she felt that familiar thrill of his touch. They made love, then they fell asleep, right there on the floor in front of the fire.

  *

  ‘Mummmmmmm!’ It was still dark, sometime around 7 a.m., when Doug was their early-morning alarm call. ‘Santa has been!’

  Shit. His bellows snapped her awake. Thankfully, Ray had pulled a rug over them at some point last night, so at least the kid wasn’t looking at them lying naked on the floor.

  ‘You go and get your sister, and then Mummy and Daddy will help you open them.’

  ‘Claire! Claire!’ he yelled, running back up the stairs. />
  This wasn’t how she’d planned this morning. Reaching out, she grabbed her clothes from the night before and pulled them on, shaking Ray awake.

  ‘Babe! Ray! The kids are up.’

  ‘Tell them to go back to bed,’ he groaned.

  ‘We can’t! It’s Christmas morning!’

  ‘So?’ he asked, not quite jumping on board.

  ‘Quick, throw these on,’ she said, tossing his jeans to him. He’d only just got them on when Doug appeared back, with his sister trailing behind him.

  ‘Merry Christmas, you two!’ Denise chirped.

  ‘The milk!’ Claire squealed, pointing to the fireplace behind Denise.

  Crap. She’d meant to throw it and the cookies away last night and she’d completely forgotten. How was she going to explain why Santa and Rudolph hadn’t eaten and drank them?

  ‘It’s gone!’ Claire added, her second squeal just as loud as the first.

  Denise turned around to see… Yep, it was gone. She caught Ray’s gaze and he winked at her.

  ‘I think maybe Santa was hungry and thirsty during the night,’ he said, grinning, and she immediately caught on to what had happened. She leaned over, threw her arms around him and kissed him, even though he had hair that was going in fourteen directions and smelled like a pub carpet. God, she loved this man.

  She made the two of them tea, and they sat on the floor, his arm around her, watching the kids opening their presents. She only had to nudge him awake twice.

  ‘Look, Daddy, look!’ Claire said when she opened the Care Bear she had been desperate for since she’d fallen in love with the new TV show. The same when she unwrapped the box containing a bright pink skateboard. That little one just adored her dad. It was so sweet to see. And every time she thrust another toy in his face, he managed to fend off the hangover and raise a smile for her.

  When all the gifts were opened – Doug screeched with excitement over every one of his Transformers and his Pogo ball – Denise pulled a box from behind the armchair and handed it to Ray.