The Dead Wife's Handbook (17 page)

But now it’s Eve laughing at Max’s jokes, and I can see in his eyes and his smile just how much he’s enjoying entertaining someone again.

‘Maybe that’s partly why we got into teaching in the first place – to try and hold on to our youth a bit?’

‘Speak for yourself, Max. My intentions were entirely honourable.’

‘Seriously, though, what did make you want to become a teacher?’

‘Seriously? Okay. Without wanting to sound earnest – and I can talk about this till the cows come home, so feel free to stop me whenever I start boring you – I genuinely think it’s one of the most important jobs in the world. Educating the next generation, preparing them to head out into the world, ensuring that they contribute in some way to society – I can’t think of many more worthwhile things to do. Now that I’m a head I really miss that daily contact with students. They can be infuriating but I can’t imagine another job that’s quite so energizing.’

As Eve concludes her speech, I see that Max is gazing at her with something approaching reverence.

‘I couldn’t agree more. It’s just rare to hear someone articulate it so passionately. Most teachers, even after just a few years in the job, tend to succumb to the cynicism bug, however hard they might try to fight it. I think it’s great you’re still so enthusiastic.’

Eve laughs.

‘I know what you mean about the Cynical Brigade – we’ve a fair few littering the staff room at my school. I just don’t see the point of staying in a job if it doesn’t excite you any more. Life’s too short.’

Max doesn’t respond and I wonder if he’s thinking what I’m thinking. Eve, meanwhile, continues where she left off.

‘Without wanting to eulogize, I suppose for me it’s about recognizing the value in what you’re doing. Parents entrusting you all day with their children – there aren’t many greater privileges.’

Max smiles at her reflectively and it pains me to see because I know what’s behind that smile and I know what’s precipitated it. I can see the flame of enthusiasm lighting up his eyes again, the way it used to, the way it’s failed to for over a year now, and I can’t help but wish it was me who’d managed to ignite it.

‘It’s great talking to you about all of this. It’s so easy to forget why you’re doing what you’re doing, particularly when you’ve got a child at home to take care of too; being a parent definitely shifts the priorities, makes you use every minute that much more efficiently. But I’m sure you’ll probably find that out for yourself one day.’

Eve looks at Max slightly quizzically and I wonder whether he’s crossed a line, whether he’s misread the signals, whether he’s getting too personal for a first date. But it’s the lightest expressive breeze before her face restores its composure.

‘Speaking of Ellie, I can’t really imagine how you manage everything – a demanding job and a seven-year-old child. It must be incredibly hard.’

Just hearing her say my little girl’s name already feels like she’s more ensconced in our lives than I could ever be ready for.

‘It’s getting easier but I won’t deny it’s been the steepest learning curve I’ve ever climbed. It’s the level of organization required – who knew that children’s lives were so busy? Honestly, Ellie has a more vibrant social life than I do and nearly every day there’s an activity after school that requires me to remember some sort of special equipment or outfit. You need the organizational skills of a military general just to keep up. I’ll be honest – Rachel used to take
care of most of that stuff and it’s only now I realize quite how impressive she was in keeping track of everything.’

I smile to myself as I think back to when Ellie first started school, an initiation that brought with it a raft of extracurricular activities and play dates. Max and I were astounded that someone so little had such stamina. He used to say it was like she’d inherited the aggregate of both our energy reserves and then some quirk of DNA had doubled it. He used to say that she’d turned out better than the best of each of us combined. And he was right.

‘It sounds like you’re doing a great job, taking charge of it all. It can’t be easy, doing the job of both parents.’

Max pauses for a second and I wonder whether he’s weighing up just how much to share, whether he’s wary of disclosing more than she’s ready to embrace, whether he’s remembering the humiliations of previous dates. I urge him, silently, to be cautious. I don’t want him getting hurt again.

‘It can be pretty tough, I’d be lying if I said otherwise. The truth is, when you live with someone, it’s not so much that you take things for granted as things just kind of slip into a routine and you each take on different responsibilities. You know what it’s like.’

Eve pauses for a second.

‘Well, I don’t actually. Not really.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I … I haven’t ever lived with anyone before.’

Eve smiles nervously as if embarrassed to admit it.

‘Oh, right. But I don’t just mean with partners. It was the same when my brother and I used to share a flat back in the day.’

‘No, I mean I haven’t lived with anyone before – not flat-shared or cohabited or anything. I’ve always lived by myself, ever since I left home.’

‘Really? God, I’d have been hopeless living alone in my early twenties. Connor and I could only just manage to pay the bills on time between us. I think I’d get pretty lonely living by myself too. Have you just never fancied sharing with anyone?’

‘It’s not that. I suppose it’s just never worked out that way. And after a while you do get used to being by yourself – I’ve no doubt it’s made me hideously intolerant of other people.’

Eve laughs, just fractionally too hard.

‘Anyway, it sounds like Ellie’s social life hasn’t suffered too much with you at the helm.’

‘No, that’s one thing I can definitely attest to. She’s incredible, really. She has her moments of insecurity, as you’d expect, but she’s amazingly resilient given what she’s been through. And she’s great fun to be with. I’m lucky to have her.’

‘It sounds like she’s pretty lucky to have you too.’

Eve gazes at Max with a look I can’t quite decipher; it’s a deep, introspective expression that seems lost inside itself. A few seconds of silence follow that seem loaded with something they’re both unable to articulate and I’m unable to interpret, before Max breaks the mutual reverie.

‘God, I’ve just realized we’re the last people here. The staff will be cursing us. I guess we ought to be making a move.’

The wall clock reveals that it’s a little after eleven. Eve slips on a beautiful pale green mac and together they wan
der outside, both very slightly tipsy, Max’s arm swung loosely, protectively, across the small of her back; somehow they already look every inch a couple.

‘I’ve had a fantastic time, Eve. You’ve restored my faith in internet dating.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Although I hope that doesn’t mean you’re going to be back online as soon as you get home this evening.’

Her smile is playful but I can hear the undertone of insecurity in her voice. She likes him. She really likes him.

‘I’m kind of hoping I’m not going to need to. I’d really like to meet up again, if you’d like that too?’

And he likes her too. But I knew that already, before he made claim to a second date, the very moment I arrived this evening and saw the smile I know is reserved for these rare moments of alchemy.

‘I’d like that a lot. Believe me, I’ve done my fair share of internet dates and blind dates and awful set-ups with friends of friends, and evenings like this don’t come along very often.’

As Eve looks down, shyly, perhaps taken aback by her own forwardness, Max cups a hand around her cheek and gently, slowly, moves his face towards hers until they’re so close they must be able to feel the heat of one another’s breath and his fingers are grazing her hair and then their lips are touching and I’m witnessing, for the first time, my husband kiss another woman.

An intense, uncontrollable nausea swells inside me and I feel dizzy and sick and I fear I’m going to faint. I close my eyes to shut it all out, to shut them out, and I remain there, in self-imposed darkness, for what feels like an
eternity of self-preservation, until I dare finally to open my eyes again, hoping they’ll be gone, hoping it will all be over, praying that I’ll be back on my own in the whiteness. But I open my eyes and they’re still there, they’re still kissing, and it’s not passionate, nor energetic, but rather soft, affectionate, gentle and somehow that’s far, far worse. It’s tender and romantic and indicative of a confidence and a desire that there will be much, much more to come.

Finally it’s over and they giggle together, conspiratorially, as if embarrassed by their own uninhibited desires. Max hails a passing cab and for a split second it occurs to me that they might get into it together, that there might yet be more horror ahead, and I know I can’t bear it.

But Eve steps in alone and the torment, for now at least, is over.

As Max waves her off and wanders away in the opposite direction, white clouds begin to gather over the dark night sky and before I’ve snatched one last look at Max’s face I find myself alone in my stark wilderness, with only the plague of recent memory for company. Just a few seconds earlier and I’d have been spared that scene. Instead I’m here momentarily too late, trying to purge that punishing image from my mind, but it assumes a life of its own, burning into the screen behind my eyes so that all I can see, the only picture in the world I seem capable of painting, is the sight of Max kissing the beautiful blonde.

I implore myself to think about Max with me instead, about that last kiss we shared, about that final evening we spent together, celebrating his promotion. I remember how we’d been in the restaurant, sitting across from one another, when suddenly he’d leaned over the table, taken
my face in his hands, and kissed me tenderly on the lips. I recall how unexpected it had been, how happy it had made me, how at the time it had taken my breath away. But now I can’t seem to locate any feelings attached to it. I can only remember it as if a scene from a movie, as if a memory that might as well belong to someone else. The only feelings I have right now are this evening’s, the feelings I’m desperate to eradicate, the feelings no one should ever have to bear. The feelings that come with having watched my husband in the arms of another woman.

I can’t believe that Max has done this to me. I can’t believe he’s gifted me this execrable image that I know will haunt me for days to come. And that, in doing so, he seems to have obliterated the memories I have of us being together.

Just one more kiss. That’s all I want. Just one more. To feel his lips on mine, to feel our breaths intermingle until we don’t know whose is whose any more, to know once again the intimacy that never failed to assure me that in Max’s presence I was always going to be safe and loved and desired.

Now when I close my eyes it’s not me Max is kissing. It’s Eve.

I feel as though something profound has happened this evening. Something irreversible. I feel as though a part of Max is emptying out of me, or perhaps it’s me emptying out of him.

And I feel angry, too. Angry that Max is alive and I’m not, that his life continues where mine has ended, that he’s able to go on dates and flirt with beautiful women and kiss them outside restaurants late into the evening. Angry
that he gets another shot at life, at love, at success, at parenthood. Angry about the naive, presumptuous certainty I had that there was so much more of my life yet to come.

Angry that of all the people in the world who had to die that day, one of them had to be me.

I just want to be with him. And with Ellie. And the knowledge that I can’t is the lone atom of truth that makes me wish right now that dying really had been the end of everything.

Chapter 12

I hear the living world before I can see it. There’s cheering, shouting and chanting, a rabble of male voices that are at turns excitable and angry. As real life comes into view, I’m disorientated for a second, hovering high over a large stadium I don’t think I recognize, before my vision instinctively zooms in on the person I’m here to see.

Max is standing in the terraces with his threadbare QPR scarf around his shoulders. I look next to him, expecting to see Connor, his regular football sidekick, but instead of Connor there’s Eve, conspicuously radiant amidst the testosterone-fuelled crowd.

‘Only five minutes to go. All we’ve got to do is hold our defence and the game’s ours. You don’t mind, really, do you? I know it’s not the most romantic of fifth dates but I thought it might be fun and I wanted you to see why I always get so excited before a match.’

Fifth date? And he’s taken her to see QPR? Only once in ten years was I afforded the privilege of accompanying Max to see his beloved football team play live, and then only because Connor was ill and the dozen friends he’d phoned to replace him had been unable to make it at such short notice, so it had made sense for me to go rather than ‘waste the ticket’ as he’d so gallantly put it. Football has always been sacred as far as Max is concerned; sacred amongst men, a masculine exclusion zone to which
women are never admitted. It was Max’s only adherence to male stereotypes and I’d always counted myself lucky that of all the ways in which relationships can become polarized, one afternoon a week of agreed separation really wasn’t anything to complain about.

But that was before Eve was invited to a football match on their fifth date. They can’t have been seeing each other for more than a few weeks and yet already she’s managed to inveigle the space that Max kept separate from me for a decade. It’s hard not to feel affronted. Not only is this woman beginning to live my life, the one I’d be leading if I hadn’t died, already she seems to be negotiating her way through it with greater success than I ever did.

The final whistle blows and Max hugs Eve with the adrenaline of sporting victory. It’s a visual assault, seeing their bodies embrace, his arms around her, their torsos touching with a familiarity and a freedom that for so long has been the preserve of him and me.

As they file, slowly, out of the packed stadium, they’re holding hands and laughing together, indisputably relaxed in one another’s company. The first date had been promising, admittedly, but there’s clearly been some progress since. Not for the first time, I curse the unpredictability and irregularity of my access. If it serves any purpose whatsoever, surely it should at least do me the courtesy of keeping me fully apprised of my husband’s romantic liaisons. That should be the very least of a dead wife’s prerogatives, shouldn’t it?