The Missing Husband (29 page)

It was a good thing then, that Jo had little time to think about her latest humiliation or any of the other trials and tribulations that constituted her life. She expected no news from the police, had no contact from work and certainly took no interest in the disintegration of Steve’s marriage or the apologetic message he had left on her phone. She could even convince herself that she cared little about where David was or what he was up to. There had been no sign of him during her mercy dash to the surgery either en route or when she returned home. Jo’s sole concern from that point was meeting her son’s needs – and even though he was too unwell to demand her attention, she gave it willingly, as any mother would: it was the least she could do after coming so close to failing him again.

As Steph had suspected, Archie had a virus and the doctor prescribed liquid paracetamol and dehydration powders. Jo’s main task was to give her son plenty of fluids and after a few days her efforts paid off and he was soon through the worst of it. She didn’t need to return to the surgery and with no other reason to leave home, she cut herself off from the rest of the world, declaring the house a no-go zone to any visitors, claiming both she and Archie had the bug. Her cherished isolation lasted right up until the following Tuesday afternoon.

‘You took your time,’ Steph said, shaking her umbrella as she stepped into the hall with Lauren trailing behind. ‘You haven’t just got up, have you?’

Jo was already retreating down the hallway, her dressing gown fluttering in sympathy with her heart. She had spotted Steph’s arrival from the nursery window and had wanted to pretend there was no one home but Steph’s insistent hammering at the door threatened to wake up Archie who was asleep downstairs. Even so, she took her time answering the door and stopped at the mirror in the hall to check her reflection, something she hadn’t done for days. Her hair was unwashed and when she tried to straighten the cow’s lick in the middle of her forehead it refused to relax along with the rest of her. Her hands had been trembling when she managed to unlock and open the door, breaking the seal on her sanctuary.

‘I was in the kitchen making up bottles for Archie, I didn’t hear you,’ she said, keeping her head down and playing nervously with her fringe. ‘Why don’t you check on Archie while I make us all a drink? I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve woken him up with all that racket you made.’

‘Can I pick him up?’ Lauren asked.

‘Not until you’ve dried off and warmed up,’ Steph replied, then added, ‘And
I’ll
make the drinks.’

‘I can manage,’ Jo said but she already knew that when Steph set her mind on taking control there was little point arguing.

In the living room, Lauren shook off her wet coat and peered over the bassinet to take a closer look at the baby who had woken up as Jo suspected but didn’t even murmur when his cousin picked him up.

Jo sat down in one of the armchairs and rubbed her face to add some colour to her cheeks. ‘So what have you been up to?’ she asked as she tried to tame her hair again. It felt slick rather than shiny.

‘Mum’s had me under house arrest revising for my mocks,’ Lauren said. Her rocking motion was a little enthusiastic but Archie looked happy enough.

‘It can’t be easy staying away from your friends,’ Jo said with a subtle emphasis on the last word.

‘You can say that again.
She
doesn’t trust me at all and can’t seem to understand that it actually helps having someone to study with.’

‘
She
? Who’s this
she
when she’s at home?’ demanded Steph, arriving with a tray laden with cups of coffee and a plate of biscuits.

Lauren’s response was inaudible and Jo half expected Steph to ask her to stand up and share what she had just said with the rest of the class but her sister looked a little battle weary and chose to ignore her daughter. ‘So how are you both?’ she asked Jo.

‘Archie’s more or less recovered; in fact I think his appetite is better than it’s ever been. He’d spend half his life feeding if I let him.’ There was a hint of pride in Jo’s voice. When Archie was asleep in her arms looking completely satiated, she felt a sense of fulfilment too. The rewards of motherhood were still few and far between but they were there if she looked hard enough.

‘And you?’ Steph asked as she shoved the plate of biscuits under Jo’s nose, refusing to move until she took one.

‘It may take me a while to recover from this one,’ Jo answered, comfortable with the half-truth.

‘Hmm,’ Steph replied as if she had marked Jo’s answer out of ten and wasn’t impressed with the score.

‘I think you should get out more,’ offered Lauren. ‘If you wanted to go out one night, I don’t mind babysitting.’

‘Really?’ Jo and Steph said in unison.

Lauren chose to respond to her mum. ‘Why? Don’t you trust me?’

In no mood to referee, Jo said, ‘Thanks Lauren, but I don’t think I’m quite up to it yet.’

Jo could feel Steph watching her every move and she tried not to tense up when Archie began to cry. The only thing worse than having her son judge her, was her sister there to cast a critical eye over her performance too.

‘Here, you can have him back now,’ Lauren said, offering him up to Jo.

‘My turn, I think,’ Steph said when she noticed Jo’s hesitation.

The baby settled and the conversation limped on. Jo thought she had the balance about right, somewhere between being ill enough for her guests not to overstay their welcome but not so ill that Steph would think her incapable of caring for herself or the baby.

When they had finished their drinks, Steph returned Archie to his bassinet and it looked as if she was getting ready to leave, but then she said, ‘I think we need to sort out some supplies before we go. You’ve run out of milk and your fridge is practically empty. What food you do have is long past its best.’ She tipped her head towards the plate of half-eaten biscuits.

‘I do my grocery shopping online. I can manage.’

‘At least let me get the basics in.’

‘Honestly, Steph. I’ll be fine.’

‘Nonsense. Lauren won’t mind.’

‘Won’t mind what?’

Steph silenced her daughter with a glare that held its intensity until Lauren stormed off, armed with a shopping list.

‘So,’ Steph said as she settled back down into her chair without relaxing a muscle, ‘how are you, Jo? And I want an honest answer this time.’

Jo took too long to think up a convincing reply before Steph continued, ‘You look like you’ve only just crawled out of bed and yet there’s a full load of washing in the machine and the house is as spotless as ever. You’re clearly well enough to keep a tidy house.’

Jo squirmed as she watched Steph’s face become grim, her mouth opening and closing as she tried to formulate a response. Her sister’s voice hardened as she added, ‘You took for ever to answer the door because you said you were making up baby bottles but the only bottles I can see are ice cold in the fridge.’

Jo blinked away the unwelcome tears that had sprung to her eyes. She was sick and tired of having her entire life under constant scrutiny and she wanted to be left alone. She didn’t want to go through the shame of telling someone else she wasn’t coping. Steph leant forward, placing a soothing hand on Jo’s knee.

‘I’ve seen the boxes of antidepressants, Jo.’

‘I haven’t taken any. The GP practically forced them on me,’ she said, flushing guiltily.

‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did. You’ve been through such a lot lately and it was inevitable it would catch up with you. No one can be that strong. It’s time to stop pretending you are.’

In response, a single tear trickled down Jo’s cheek. She was shaking her head, silently begging her sister to stop trying to force the truth from her.

‘Tell me what’s wrong. Please, Jo.’

Jo’s jaw clenched shut but she knew that her sister wasn’t going to leave until she’d had her pound of flesh. ‘I think David’s been here, Steph. I can’t be sure, but the birth certificate was there one minute and now it’s gone and it’s not anywhere else because I’ve looked. I’ve looked everywhere but then why would he take that and nothing else? OK, I burnt most of his stuff but why take that? It doesn’t make sense.’

Steph managed a nervous laugh as she said, ‘Neither are you making sense. Slow down, Jo.’

‘Do you think I don’t know I’m not making sense! I’m a complete mess, Steph!’ she blurted out before she could stop herself.

‘OK, one step at a time: you think David has been back in the house?’

Jo shook her head as she struggled with an answer. It wasn’t as if she had a CCTV recording and in her current frame of mind, who would believe that she could be so certain of anything, especially about the whereabouts of one single piece of paper that could so easily have been misplaced. ‘I don’t know. I only know how I feel. I can’t go out without expecting to find David lurking around every corner; I can’t look out of a window without trying to catch a glimpse of him in the shadows; I can’t open the door without wondering if he’ll be there on the doorstep waiting for me and I can’t hold my son without wondering if he’s going to grow up hating me – and I wouldn’t blame him if he did, because I keep letting him down, Steph. He was ill and I almost didn’t make it to the doctor because I was too terrified to leave the house. What kind of mother does that make me? We would all have been better off if he’d never been born!’ Jo was panting and the startled look on Steph’s face was no doubt a mirror of her own. She hadn’t meant to utter that last statement; she hadn’t meant to even think it.

‘Is it postnatal depression?’ Steph asked.

Jo wrapped her arms around herself in a bid to stop trembling. ‘No, I’m not depressed, Steph, I’m just unhappy – really, really unhappy and I’ve been that way for months, long before the baby was born. I talked it through with the doctor and he agrees too. He said that what I’m going through is a natural reaction to the pain I’m feeling. I am allowed to be unhappy, Steph,’ she said, her voice breaking at the last.

‘I know,’ her sister said softly.

‘David’s taken everything from me, hasn’t he?’ Jo asked, her words strangled with so much emotion that it took her breath away. ‘He may not have cleared out every bank account or emptied the house but he’s left me with nothing. I’m not the devoted wife any more, or the level-headed career woman and I’m certainly not the doting mother I know I could have been if he’d had the guts to stay or at least turned around to say goodbye. I’m trying, Steph, really I am, but my best isn’t good enough and Archie knows it. Maybe I wouldn’t be better off without him, but I don’t doubt for a minute that
he’d
be better off without me.’

When Steph came over to perch on the chair and put an arm around her sister, her movements were deliberately slow as if she thought even the gentlest breeze might knock Jo down. ‘Do you – God, I don’t even know how to say this, Jo – should I be worried?’

Jo rested her head on her sister’s shoulder. ‘I’m not giving up,’ she said and even though she didn’t believe that was necessarily true, she hoped it was. ‘It’ll take time to adjust, longer still because David isn’t giving me the option for closure.’

‘You could divorce him.’

‘I don’t see what good that would do. There couldn’t be any financial settlement until David appears out of the woodwork and besides, I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me my marriage is over – just like I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me I have a duty to Archie. What I need is an explanation.’

‘If you’re not going to take the medication, is there anything else the doctor can do?’ Steph asked.

‘There are talking therapies but the waiting list is as long as your arm. So at the moment it’s a matter of heal thyself,’ Jo said as she tried to raise her head and her spirits along with it.

Steph didn’t look convinced. ‘Can you look after Archie?’

‘Yes, of course I can. He’s the only reason I have to try to build my life back up from the ground. He is worth it, Steph,’ she added to contradict her previous outburst. ‘He has to be.’

‘Yes, he is,’ Steph said, following Jo’s gaze towards the sleeping infant. ‘And if anyone can get through all of this crap life is throwing at you, then you can. You’re the most determined, single-minded woman I know.’

Jo looked up at her sister. ‘By determined, you mean stubborn, don’t you?’

‘Well, yes, maybe I do,’ Steph confessed. ‘But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Use it to your advantage, Jo. Set your sights on getting you and Archie through this, one day at a time, and you’ll do it. I’ll help all that I can, we all will.’

By the time Lauren returned with enough supplies to keep Jo in tea and biscuits for a month, Jo had convinced her sister that all she needed was time and a shoulder to cry on now and again. When they left, reluctantly on Steph’s part, Jo wondered what her sister thought of her now. She certainly wasn’t the confident, self-assured woman who everyone turned to for advice; she was someone who was needy and helpless; an object of pity. And that was, apparently, the view her mother had arrived at by the time she appeared on her doorstep unannounced the next day.

‘Look at the state of you,’ Liz said shaking her head. ‘What the hell has that man driven you to?’

‘Steph told you?’ Jo asked and although the answer was obvious it was no less palatable.

Liz was weighed down with a large overnight bag and various other carrier bags that thumped into Jo as her mother forced her way in.

‘I’m here to look after you for a few days – and don’t worry, I’ve come prepared,’ she said, cutting off Jo before she had a chance to argue. She dropped a bulging plastic bag at Jo’s feet. ‘It’s an inflatable bed. I presume Archie’s still sleeping in your room so I can sleep on the nursery floor.’

‘You? Presume?’

Liz raised an eyebrow. ‘You can’t be that ill if you can still give me lip.’

‘God forbid I’ll ever be that bad.’ Jo braved a smile but she was already wondering how much Steph had told Liz and whether there was any point in continuing to pretend that she wasn’t
that bad
. It had only been the pitying look from her mother that had riled Jo enough to stop her bursting into tears the moment she discovered that the unexpected visitor on her doorstep wasn’t her husband.