The Dead Wife's Handbook (8 page)

‘You know I don’t like photos of myself, Harriet. Admittedly, that one’s less offensive than most but that’s not saying much.’

‘But wait till you see what I wrote. Don’t look – let me read it out to you.’

Max does as he’s told. There are times when the extremity of Harriet’s bossiness can be almost comical. Today, though, I seem to be missing the funny side.

‘
I’ve known Max for eleven years. I know this isn’t all about me, but I think it’s worth you knowing up front that I don’t suffer fools gladly and I’m not one who’s generally given to waxing lyrical about other people’s attributes. Max, however, is an exception. To cut to the chase, he has what people commonly refer to as “the whole package”: he’s smart, funny, kind, patient and – for a bloke in his late thirties – looks surprisingly acceptable in a pair of swimming shorts. He can cook, he doesn’t have any unappealing habits that I know of (apart from his modesty which I find annoying but I’m sure other women wouldn’t) and he’s genuinely a man of multiple interests and endless good humour. He’s the man, to coin a cliché, with whom women want to share their problems and men want to share a pint. He also happens to be the world’s best dad to his gorgeous seven-year-old daughter. And right now, lucky ladies, he’s all yours
. How’s that for a testimony, huh?’

It’s a wonderful testimony, there’s no denying. I never knew my best friend thought so highly of my husband.

I think about all the things I’d have added if I’d been writing that profile instead of Harriet. I’d have described Max’s broad shoulders that reassure you he could carry the weight of the world on them if he had to, and his beautifully solid hands that encase yours in security when he holds them. I’d have mentioned the muscle definition in his calves – cyclist’s calves – that imbue his every stride with a sense of purpose, and the oversensitivity of his bare skin that renders every human touch potentially ticklish. I’d have talked about how the tip of his nose quivers when he talks, engendering even the most fractious conversation with an air of comedy and how, last thing at night, after a difficult day, he’ll stroke your head with the gentlest of touches – so gentle it’s like the air of an angel passing through your hair – until such time as he’s caressed away the day’s frustrations and soothed you into slumber.

I think if I’d started writing that profile, I might never have been able to stop.

‘Harriet, I’m flattered, really I am. But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want it up there.’

‘Hang on a second, Mr Risk-Averse. Before you go jumping the apocalyptic gun, just have a look at some of these women who’ve messaged you already. Look – there’s one here called Sophia who’s a doctor – actually, she’s a bloody surgeon – and, though I hate to admit it, she’s got even better legs than me. Look at them – they go on forever. What’s not to like about a surgeon with legs like that? And there’s another really pretty one here too – let me find her – yes, here she is. Sarah, she’s a social worker – possibly a bit earnest but she’s still pretty hot.’

Max looks over Harriet’s shoulder with disconcertingly more interest in this collection of female admirers than befits a man who insists he’s not ready for all of this yet.

‘You haven’t even got my height right here, Harriet. Since when was I six foot? And my eyes aren’t brown – they’re hazel. And while it’s very kind of you to have described me as “very good-looking” I think it might have been more honest to have ticked the average box.’

‘Stop obsessing over the details, Max. You’re almost six foot and anyway – what kind of freak is going to get out a tape measure to check? I said your eyes were brown because I always think that hazel sounds a bit – I don’t know – indeterminate whereas everyone loves a man with brown eyes. And given that it’s standard practice for people to upgrade themselves at least one rank on the looks leader board on these kinds of sites, if I’d said you were average I’d basically be implying that you’re ugly and I’m assuming you wouldn’t have wanted me to communicate that to the virtual world, would you?’

Max looks contemplative. I wish I could know what’s going through his mind. I wish I could discuss this with him, face-to-face, even though I know that if that were possible, the conversation wouldn’t be necessary.

‘I’m sorry, Harriet. I can see you’re just trying to be helpful and that you’ve gone to a lot of trouble. But it’s just not the right time.’

‘Oh come on, Max. You and I both know that left to your own devices you’ll still be saying it’s not the right time come Doomsday. Some of these women look genuinely nice. What’s the worst that can happen if you give it a go?’

Max leaves the kitchen table and begins wiping down work surfaces that were already spotlessly clean.

‘It’s not that I think something bad will happen, Harriet. It’s just that I look at the pictures of those women and I’m sure they’re all perfectly nice, but they’re not Rachel. In fact, when I look at them, all I can think about is how little they compare to her, to Rachel’s beautiful bright eyes and her quizzical expression and her eloquent mouth. I know it’s stupid and I know it’s not going to happen, but Rachel’s is the only face I want to see right now.’

Max has spoken slowly, quietly, the smallest of wistful smiles upending the edges of his lips as though there’s an entire movie of memories spooling through his mind that he’d rather view alone.

‘But, Max, Rach isn’t here any more. I know how much you miss her – or, at least, I think I have some sense of it – but you refusing ever to go out with anyone else isn’t going to bring her back.’

Max takes a deep breath that he lets out slowly, wearily.

‘That’s not the point, Harriet. You’re missing the point. It’s not about thinking I can ever have Rachel back. It’s about not really being able to cope with her being gone. There’s a big difference. When Rachel died, I didn’t just lose her. I lost the amazing, intangible thing that Rachel and I had together. It’s like there was me and there was Rachel and then there was this third entity, the alchemy of the two of us combined. And when you have that thing – call it a good relationship, I suppose – you get so used to living slightly outside of yourself in order to inhabit this other place with this other person that you forget how to live on your own, with only your own thoughts and opinions for company. It’s not as simple as losing a partner. It’s losing the part of yourself that went into creating that relationship. And that’s what I don’t ever expect to have with anyone else. I know how lucky I was to have it once.’

There’s a look of appeal in Max’s eyes, the hope that Harriet’s going to understand something he’s perhaps only just beginning to come to terms with himself.

‘I get it, Max. But it’s not like you can’t think for yourself any more, or make decisions on your own. You’re still a grown-up capable of making your own choices.’

‘Of course it’s not that I can’t make decisions for myself any more. It’s just that I’m out of practice and, quite honestly, I wish I didn’t have to. When you’ve been used to sharing your thoughts with someone else for over a decade, and used to having those thoughts come back to you reworked, improved, often more comprehensible than they were when you set them off, it’s hard – it’s really hard – to live without that. I keep trying to invoke Rachel’s voice in my head. I know it probably sounds stupid but I
ask her opinion on things and try to hear what she has to say about Ellie and work and how she thinks I’m coping without her. Sometimes I manage it and that’s great and I feel like I still have a little part of her alive in my head. But a lot of the time I feel that she’s just out of reach and that’s when it hits me all over again that I’ve lost her. That I’m never going to be able to talk to her about anything ever again. That she’ll never give me advice or help me out or laugh at my stupid jokes or tell me off. And I can’t imagine anyone else ever filling that space. I can’t imagine ever having that alchemy with anyone else. So if I can’t have it with Rachel, I really would rather just be on my own. Just me and Ellie.’

Max drops his head, as if exhausted by so much honesty. There’s a hint of salt water in the corner of his eye that he tries and fails to blink away inconspicuously.

I’m sorry for doubting you, Max, even for a second.

Harriet stares out of the patio doors, feigning absorption in Ellie’s antics in the garden, leaving her gaze averted just long enough for Max to compose himself.

‘I’m sorry I overstepped the mark, Max. You know I’d never do anything to piss you off deliberately, right?’

‘I’m not angry, Harriet. I’m just sad and I feel quite private and I think it’s going to be a while before I start to feel any differently.’

‘Well, listen, I won’t do anything with that profile, I promise. I’ll just leave it there, untouched, gathering virtual dust until such time as you’re ready for it, whether that’s in a few months or a few years’ time. Okay?’

Before Max has a chance to respond, Ellie comes bounding in from outside. Harriet snaps the laptop shut.

‘Is it lunchtime yet? I’m starving.’

‘You’re bang on cue, angel. I’m just about to serve.’

As Max swings open the oven door and pulls out the loaded tray, I’m reminded of the smell of roast lamb I can see steaming in front of him. I’m not hungry – I don’t get hungry any more – but the recalled smell is one of nostalgia and longing, a smell that warms me from the inside out and makes me yearn to be part of that nourishing domesticity.

The steam from the oven begins to thicken excessively into an impenetrable white mist and before I’ve had a chance to savour a final view of Max and Ellie today, I find myself back alone above the clouds. Not even a spectator’s invite to Sunday lunch for me today, it would seem.

I wonder what Max’s reply would have been, had Ellie not arrived to interrupt the conversation. I wonder whether Max will agree to leave the profile online or whether he’ll insist on Harriet withdrawing him from the virtual dating pool. I wonder whether it will take only one bored, lonely evening for Max’s curiosity to get the better of him and for him to begin surfing the profiles of women who may one day wish to replace me.

I try to console myself with all that I know about Max, about the man he is and the relationship we cherished.

I recall his hatred of blind dating and how, when we’d been together just long enough to confess such things to one another, he admitted his relief at being liberated from anxious evenings in the company of hopeful strangers.

I hear his words to my mum on the evening of my funeral, after the guests had left, after the dining table had
been cleared of haphazardly constructed sandwiches, after Ellie had been tucked up in bed, when he’d told her he wouldn’t have been able to continue without me if it weren’t for Ellie’s existence.

I recollect his words to Harriet today, sentiments that aren’t, surely, those of a man on the brink of contemplating a romantic life without me.

I think about all these things and, eventually, I manage to entrench myself in reassurance.

Max isn’t any more ready to move on than I am. I have to trust him, trust the legacy of our marriage, trust that if time is a great healer then we are both yet in need of a longer passage.

I have to trust all of that because there is, after all, little else I can do.

Chapter 6

Trust, it transpires, can often be misplaced.

Max is sitting alone in a pub on Portobello Road, tapping his fingers on the table in rhythmic succession, betraying his nerves to anyone observing him with anything more than fleeting attention. Given that it’s Friday night in an overcrowded Notting Hill pub populated by people a decade younger and a generation cooler than Max or I, luckily no one else seems to be taking much notice of him at all.

It’s been over a month since my last visit, a fact of which I’m aware due to the frustrating tail end of a conversation between Max and Harriet I was privy to last night during a tantalizingly brief few minutes of access. I discovered that Max has been doing a lot of thinking lately which has, inexplicably, led him to the conclusion that it’s time he ‘took the plunge’ into the murky waters of the online dating pool. Harriet, unsurprisingly, endorsed the decision, reassuring him it’s ‘best to get it over with sooner rather than later’, like ‘the ripping off of a well-worn plaster’. Joan, meanwhile, has apparently continued to ‘encourage’ Max to ‘get out and about’ more, hence the purpose of this evening’s arrangement is as much to ‘get Mum off my case’ as it is to dip his own tentative toes into the dating waters.

It was horrible listening to that conversation last night. It was one of those rare times I wished my access had
done me the favour of maintaining my ignorance. There are some things a dead wife is definitely better off not knowing, and right at the top of that list is undoubtedly the stomach-churning thought of your husband on a date with another woman. I honestly think Max isn’t ready. I think he knows he’s not ready. But I suppose if there’s one predictable aspect of grief, it’s the promise to make people behave unpredictably.

During my protracted weeks of absence – weeks that feel so much longer now than when I lived and breathed them – I’ve assumed that if Max did at some point in the distant, unimaginable future decide to start dating again, my feelings about it would be unambiguous. I expected there to be simple, unadulterated jealousy and a possessive desire for nothing short of social disaster. But watching Max now, witnessing his profound level of discomfort, remembering – just about – what it’s like to be meeting a stranger for the first time with all the accompanying hopes, desires, fantasies and fears, my overriding feeling is the simple wish that Max wasn’t putting himself through this. That I wasn’t putting him through it. That none of this – for either of our sakes – was happening.

I know frustratingly little about the woman Max is about to meet. I know that she’s a vet and that Max thinks her photo makes her look ‘friendly’. I know that her name is Dodie, which seems strangely fitting for a vet and yet equally inappropriate for anyone living in the twenty-first century. I know that she’s thirty-four, which is younger than me but thankfully not quite young enough to be threatening.