‘I’m lighting the candles.’ An in-joke: it was how I signalled to Hugh that I was in the mood.
He looked unimpressed but he followed me upstairs, where I performed wildly enthusiastic non-cheater’s sex and didn’t spend a single second fantasizing about Josh. Not that I’d ever done that – at least, not during sex with Hugh. Once or twice, on my own, I had – those nights in London, sleeping by myself.
But never again.
43
Saturday, 8 October, day twenty-six
Saturday morning, I’m awake in the darkness, and even though I’d drunk no alcohol last night, my head is pounding. Probably a sugar hangover.
Sugar isn’t my usual thing. I’m more of a savoury person. I get frenzied around sausage rolls – but, anyway, last night I started in on the Haribo Starmix, then moved on to chocolate and, by close of business, I was tearing the cupboards apart, looking for biscuits.
And there had been no one there to stop me because Neeve, Sofie and Kiara were out – babysitting Posh Petra’s pair of horrors.
To my shock, I hear another person breathing – someone’s in bed with me! Who? My hand shoots out and lands on an arm, a slender one, too slender to belong to Hugh – so he hadn’t arrived home in the dead of night and sneaked into bed to surprise me. I know it’s unlikely but, God, that painful dart of dashed hope …
‘Oh, my good Christ,’ Neeve intones into the darkness. ‘Those fucking twins.’
Despite everything, I giggle.
‘You might have warned us,’ she says.
‘I did warn you.’
‘Sofie is traumatized.’
‘They didn’t do the –’
‘The baked-beans thing on her head? They did.’
‘Oh, no.’
I’d thought that Neeve’s toughness and Kiara’s sweetness would be a match for the twins of Satan. I wasn’t sure about exposing Sofie to them, but because she’s here so much, it’s natural to include her in all family activities.
‘You should have seen Posh Petra when she got home,’ Neeve says.
‘How?’
‘Scuttered. So drunk she couldn’t walk and had to be carried into the house between Posh Peter and the taxi-driver. Like a wounded soldier! And, hey, no judgement, if those kids were mine, I’d be doing time for a double homicide. Are you awake now? Okay, I’m going to my own room. I need more sleep.’
She leaves. I’m not sure what she was doing here in the first place, but we often play musical beds, and I check the time: 4.37 a.m. On a Saturday. I’d get up but what would I do?
I remember the days when I’d have joyfully gone back to sleep. Oh, how I loved my bed. I used to tumble so gratefully into its welcoming arms, but since Hugh went, it’s the place I miss him the most. Late at night and first thing in the morning are the worst. I guess they’re the times when there aren’t enough other thoughts rushing around to mask the truth. And weekends are the worst mornings of all. All the other days, I’m getting the girls to school or else I’m haring to the airport or across London.
But on Saturday and Sunday mornings, I’m allowed a lie-in and, right now, time on my hands is just something to kill and I’m finding the social stuff almost impossible. I keep trying, showing up with fake versions of myself, then having to retreat, exhausted, into solitude and online shopping.
I despise myself for not ‘doing’ more with this unexpected hiatus. But I can only do what I can do and, in my defence, I’m showing up for the important stuff, like work.
I get my iPad and, once again, I check Hugh’s Facebook page – no posts, no activity, nothing. Everything’s frozen. It’s what I’d asked for, but it’s still incredibly strange, almost as if he’s dead.
I’d nearly prefer to see a picture of him sitting on a tropical beach, drinking a beer, surrounded by fresh young friends, just to know that he’s okay. Missing him is getting worse, not easier. It’s like torture. For what feels like the millionth time, I get my phone and fantasize about calling him. I stare and stare at his name. I could just touch the screen and listen to the ringing noise, then the click as he picked up, and the thought – oh, the thought! – of hearing his voice, of hearing him say, ‘Amy?’
The astonishing wonder, the aching longing, of how close he is. Just one press of my finger would make it happen. ‘Come home,’ I’d say, and he’d say, ‘Okay.’ Then everything would be fixed.
44
Monday, 10 October, day twenty-eight
Okay, Monday mornings are never a reason to have a parade but, today, no sooner have I arrived at my desk than an email arrives from Richie Aldin. What now? A quick read establishes the facts. The cheeky bastard! He’s invited me to a charity ball!
I make an outraged little sound and Alastair looks up. ‘What?’
‘Richie Aldin has invited me to a do next month.’
Alastair looks confused. ‘Who? Oh! The Richie Aldin you were married to when you were eleven? What’s brought this on?’
I cast a furtive glance over both shoulders. ‘Where’s Tim?’
Alastair assumes a matching conspiratorial air and mutters, ‘Out.’
Good. I don’t like talking about personal stuff in front of Tim. ‘Richie wants me and him to be friends. Because of Hugh leaving, he says he realizes how I must have felt when he left me.’
‘But Hugh hasn’t left-left.’
Unless he has. ‘You know, Alastair,’ I exclaim, ‘I think there’s something wrong with Richie. For whatever reason, guilt has finally caught up with him and he doesn’t like it, so he thinks he can magic it away by bulldozing me into friendship. But he can’t just decide that we’re going to be friends, can he?’
‘Not if you don’t want it.’
‘He’s so used to life going his way that he thinks the force of his will is enough to make anything happen. But I don’t have to oblige, do I? It’s like he’s telling me, “I hurt you and now I feel guilty, so I’m going to make you be friends with me. I know you don’t want to, but my wishes will prevail.” ’
But now Alastair is wondering why I’d married such a man and, unexpectedly, I say, ‘I was crazy about him. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone the way I loved him. Not even Hugh.’
‘First love.’ Alastair is unimpressed.
I get a sudden flashback to how sexually combustible I was with Richie – aged seventeen and insatiable, I was constantly borderline orgasmic.
‘What?’ Alastair asks.
‘Before we got married –’
‘What age were you?’
‘Nineteen. Madness.’
‘And your parents let you?’
‘Mum was in hospital again and Dad’s eye was off the ball. I took advantage of that. They went bananas when they found out. But before that Richie and I were both living with our parents and the opportunities for sex were limited, so one time I literally pulled him into a cupboard so we could, you know, do it. And another time I made us steal a little boat from Greystones harbour and row it out a few hundred yards just so we could fuck in it.’
Alastair is eyeing me in a speculative fashion.
‘I’ve never had sex with anyone like the sex I had with him.’
‘Nobody ends up with their best-sex person. It always happens with the wrong person because there’s an element of hate-sex in it.’
‘I didn’t hate him,’ I say. ‘I’ve never been so crazy about anyone.’
We’d fallen in love during our last year in school, and while everyone else’s future was unknown, we mapped out ours with precision: he would be a First Division footballer and I’d be a dress designer, and we’d be together for ever.
I was only nineteen when I ran away to Leeds and married him in a registry office, but I didn’t feel young: I felt in the right place, in the right life.
‘So what are you going to do?’ Alastair asks. ‘About his charity ball?’
‘Ignore the email.’
‘He might take it as a yes.’
Alastair was right: he might. So I bang out, ‘No, thanks,’ hit the Send key a clatter, and hope my resentment comes across.
‘Can you babysit Pop tonight?’
‘Mum, I’ve to oversee the girls’ homework, and tomorrow morning I’ve to be up at five to go to London.’
‘I’ll be home by eleven.’