Mother's Story (6 page)

The hands of the kitchen clock were quickly making their way towards 7 p.m., which was precisely the time they needed to leave in order to make the banquet at the Guildhall that started at 7.45. Jessica looked at the clock guiltily and pulled out a three-quarters-full bottle of Pimm's and a chilled litre of lemonade from the fridge.

‘Be a love, Matt, and pour me a big one while I go and find shoes.' She smiled as she plonked the bottles on the work surface and scooted along the kitchen floor in her bra and pants before coming to rest in front of the huge scrubbed-pine linen-press in their hallway, which was brimming with numerous pairs of shoes and boots, most of which, if Matthew were to be honest, looked remarkably similar.

‘Oh, come to Mumma, you little beauties!' Jessica bent over and dug deep into the closet, withdrawing with a pair of beautiful silver Louboutin shoes in her hand. She leant on the kitchen worktop and kicked up her left foot. ‘Matt, I am being as quick as I can. Just look at this red sole; tell me it isn't the most fabulous thing you have ever seen! God, if someone had told me when I was eighteen that in five years' time I'd be a married woman who got to wear Louboutins to a posh work do, I'd have told them pigs were flapping past the window!' Jessica flicked her long, dark hair back over her shoulder and grinned excitedly.

Matthew poured his wife's drink and swallowed. He had known her for the best part of two years, they had been married for five months and the sight of her in her white lacy underwear and killer heels had the same effect it always did. He knew he would never, could never, grow tired of this vision of his perfect, excitable, sexy, unreliable, disorganised, tardy wife.

‘They are indeed things of beauty. Now get this drink down your neck while I call a cab. We can't be late. Again.' Matthew reached for his phone while Jessica necked her Pimm's and scoffed the little strawberry he had placed in the bottom of the glass.

‘Tell you what, I'll go same again.' She pointed at her empty glass. ‘And I promise to be ready by the time the cab gets here. Deal?' She beamed.

‘Do I have any choice?' Matthew smirked as he reached for her glass and collected one for himself from the floating shelf above the sink.

Jessica opened her make-up bag and patted dark smudges of powder around her green, almond-shaped eyes before swiping her lips with a wand that dripped with hot-pink gloss. Bending over, away from her husband, she turned her head upside down and tousled her roots with her fingers before flicking her head up the right way and slowly righting herself. She turned to Matthew, who was back on his stool, took the glass from him and downed her second large Pimm's in less than five minutes.

Matthew knocked back his drink and looked at the clock, the hands of which were now motoring. ‘We really have to get going, Jess. We're on Magnus's table and you know what he's like.'

‘Absolutely. Nasty boss. He was a topic of discussion today at lunch. Polly says she would like to sort him out, give him something to smile about. I told her it was unlikely to happen, but you know Polly, she's a trier! Have you had a bad day, baby?'

‘Not a bad day, exactly, but a busy one and I find being late stressful. But this you know.' As Matt sipped at his drink and looked at his beautiful wife, now bent over the open drawer, rummaging for a pair of stockings to go with her shoes, he found that being late was suddenly the last thing on his mind.

Jessica felt his gaze and turned around, a slow smile lighting up her face. ‘Well, I suppose there is one thing we could do to relieve your stress,' she said coyly, coming to nestle in the space between his legs as she toyed with his bow tie. She leant in to kiss his neck.

‘Jess, you minx! We
have
to go out!' Matthew wiped his brow and fought the flames of longing that reared up inside him, trying to focus on the fact that he was expected to be somewhere and it was work related. ‘This is very different from blowing Jake off last minute for the pub quiz or lying to my parents that we have colds and can't make brunch. This is my job!'

‘I know that.' She nodded. ‘I can't help it that I find you completely irresistible. And we could be very quick!' Jessica laughed, loving how this man made her feel like the sexiest woman alive. He gave her confidence that she had never experienced and she loved it.

Matthew shook his head and placed his hands on his wife's waist. ‘I love you, Mrs Deane. I love you so much.' He kissed the base of her throat.

‘Good job, isn't it?' She lowered her head and looked up at him through lowered lashes.

‘It bloody is.' He smiled.

Jessica kissed him on the mouth, reaching up and enjoying their Pimm's-infused connection.

‘I guess ten minutes late isn't going to make any difference, is it?' Matthew sighed as Jessica whipped the tie from around his neck and placed it around her own. She then undid the top buttons of his shirt.

‘It'll be fine and we can have the best ten minutes ever, ever, ever!' She laughed as she slipped her hand inside the white cotton frontage and stroked the skin of his chest.

‘I'm never going to get promoted!' Matthew yelled. ‘How can I admit that I am
never
going to get promoted and the reason for that is I can't leave the house on time because my wife is too sexy. It doesn't make any sense!' He shook his head and ran his palm over her back, lingering on her bra strap, enjoying the promise of what lay ahead.

‘You don't have to worry about promotion. I am very cheap to feed and my only indulgence is flashy shoes.' She threw her head back and laughed.

‘We still have the mortgage to pay,' he reminded her.

‘I don't care about mortgages. I'd live in a tent with you!' she shouted.

‘God, you must be pissed! I know you love this house.' Matthew laughed.

‘I do, but not as much as I love you.'

Matthew reached for the remote control and pointed it towards the docking station. Calvin Harris's ‘Feel So Close' blared from the speakers.

‘Woohoo! I love this song! It reminds me of when we met. Come on!' Jessica swooped over and pulled Matthew towards her. ‘Come and dance with Joanna!'

She ran in her heels back to the dock and turned the volume up even louder until the beat hammered against their ribs and the bass made the glasses on the shelf jump. With her hands above her head, Jessica spun and danced to the song, stopping only to swig from her glass and pass it back to her lover. Matthew, as ever, was quickly hypnotised by his gorgeous wife, dancing in her heels and underwear in their kitchen. The Pimm's disappeared and the song changed beat. The fast dance rhythm was replaced by Adele's soft and haunting ‘Someone Like You'. Jessica walked slowly over to her man and slipped into his arms as she clasped her hands behind his neck. Matthew held her as they swayed in the middle of the kitchen, fuelled by the Pimm's. They danced slowly, then progressed to kissing and eventually to falling onto the floor, where Jessica shed her Louboutins and Matthew his inhibitions before making love to his irresistible wife.

Matthew slicked back his hair and shot his cuffs as he sidled into the chair next to his boss. He nodded hello to his assembled colleagues, who appeared to have polished off their first course and were awaiting the next. Jessica kissed Magnus's wife on both cheeks.

‘So sorry we are late, Magnus, traffic was absolutely horrendous, some kind of problem on the A4. It was completely snarled up.' He avoided eye contact and concentrated on spreading the napkin on his lap.

‘Oh, you should have called me.' Magnus paused. ‘We could have picked you up. We came in from Heathrow, practically drove past your house. Whistled in with ease.'

Matthew reached for the water jug and tried to think of something to say.

‘Maybe there are two A4s, eh, Matthew?' Magnus winked at his young protégé and thankfully chose not to mention the lipstick that sat on his collar and matched a smear on his neck.

7th December, 2012

I was given this little red book a while ago and had quite forgotten about it until I unpacked my bag here on that first, lonely day inside this horrible place. This is a good use for it. It's nearly the end of my first year in here. I remember when I'd just arrived and the doctor said, ‘It would be a good idea, don't you think, to write everything down, everything good and everything bad. How does that sound, Jessica? Think you can manage it?' trying to get me to commit, coaxing like I was a child. I shrugged my agreement. I never wanted this to be a chore, like writing an essay or filling out a form. I decided at the beginning to ramble and see where it takes me, knowing I can always rip the pages out if I don't like what I've put. Anyway, I've only written a measly four entries this year – probably not enough to convince anyone that I am ‘coming to terms with it' as they insist on calling the guilt and fear that gnaws away every day. I was pleased to find this book among all my possessions, though I don't know who packed it for me. Its crimson cover is a lovely splash of colour in this world of grey and beige. And it has beautiful creamy hand-pressed pages. So perfect I can hardly bear to write on them.

I've never written a journal before, not properly. I tried once, not long after Danny died. I sat on my bed with the duvet over my legs, leaning on the wall with a pillow stuffed in the small of my back and a little book perched on my knees. I thought I had something important to say, but I didn't. Instead, after much consideration, I decided to write about what I'd had for lunch, who I fancied at school and which song I loved. But then one day I came home early from school to find my mum reading it in the kitchen. I couldn't believe she had stolen my private diary, but some instinct made me duck behind the door instead of shouting. She didn't see me, but I saw her face crumple with tears as she put the book down on the table. I could imagine her anger: ‘How could you write about stupid things like lunch, music and boys when we have lost Danny! Lost him forever!' She didn't say those words, but I heard them anyway. I was convinced they were there under the surface at all times.

After that, I made a few brief entries, things I thought she would want to read:
I see the stars and think of my brother. I hate it when Danny's bedroom door is left open and I see his bed, knowing he will never sleep under his duvet again.
These were both true, but so far from what I wanted to write that my diary soon felt like a work of fiction, snippets of someone else's life. And so I stopped writing it altogether. I left the book on my bedside cabinet, hoping that maybe Mum would see it and realise that I did care about Danny, and that I was a good daughter and a good sister. That part was true: I did care about my brother. But I still knew my diary was meaningless and fake, and that ruined it for me.

This diary will be different. No one will ever see it or read it. I shall destroy it when I have said all that I want to. It isn't for the benefit of anyone else. This is for me and me alone. I can say what I want, how I want. I shall prove it right now. I shall write three things that I have never, ever told another living soul. Okay, here goes.

Firstly, the car keys didn't miraculously disappear when we were camping in Devon; I threw them into the river. After I'd done it, I sat on the grass and watched as Mum and Dad argued, then Mum cried and Danny, who hated any kind of conflict, went all withdrawn. I was six. We waited hours for a man to come and change the locks. He charged ‘an arm and a leg!' The reason I threw away the keys was because I figured if we couldn't drive the car home, we could stay on holiday forever. Mum wouldn't have to go back to her shitty job as a dinner lady and every day Dad could nap in the afternoon and drink beer in the evening before we all fell into our beds laughing. But we didn't stay on holiday forever. Instead, we drove home in frosty silence and Dad kept shaking his head as he had spent the next month's petrol money on getting the car sorted. I still feel bad about that. Particularly because I spoilt one of Danny's last holidays. I spoilt it for him and I spoilt the memory for everyone else.

Secondly, I cheated in my Biology GCSE. I copied a diagram from Neil Whittaker's paper. He was sat to the side of me and by copying him I went up a whole grade. A whole grade! I accepted the hug from the teacher on results day and her words of congratulation stuck like sticks in my craw, I couldn't swallow.

And thirdly…

And thirdly.

I don't know how to write this, but here goes. Thirdly, if I think about the terrible thing that I did and if someone offered me the chance to rewind time, would I stop and do something differently, change the outcome? And the answer to that is no, I don't think I would or could and that frightens me more than I can say.

With fingers quickly numbing in the cold, Jessica twisted the wreath on the door and adjusted the tartan ribbon so it sat just so against the willow-green front door. She gave a little jump, beyond excited. Their first Christmas in their new home and she wanted everything to be perfect.

‘Looks like someone died.' Mrs Pleasant's voice drifted from the other side of the low hedge.

In the half-light, Jessica looked over at the woman's sour expression. She wasn't going to let anyone or anything take the shine off her planned evening. ‘Not yet, they haven't, but the night is young!' She shut the door and skipped up the hallway, pleased by her confidence and audacity.

Kneeling on the kitchen floor, she prodded the side of salmon that had been generously slathered in herbs and lemon, just as the recipe had prescribed. ‘Look at you, my leaping beauty! Admittedly, your leaping days are over, if you ever had any – more likely you bashed your head on the wall every time you tried to turn around in some cramped fish farm and were only allowed to visit your family once a week, looking at them through a green net. Blimey, it's not much of a life, is it? But on the plus side, you will bring my guests and me a lot of joy and you are still quite beautiful!' She shoved it back inside its tinfoil tomb, popped the tray back in the oven and closed the door. She was getting the hang of this cooking lark, but couldn't resist opening the oven door every few minutes to check on progress.