A home for broken hearts, p.16
A Home for Broken Hearts, page 16
‘Oh yes, well I mean he didn’t rip off my clothes or fling me about. That just wasn’t Nick, but he was very passionate about our marriage, about the way it should be.’ Ellen smiled fondly as she remembered. ‘He was an old-fashioned boy, with old-fashioned ideas. He was the man who went out in the world, the breadwinner – and I was his sanctuary, his wife waiting for him at home. I know it seems outdated and archaic now, but the truth is, Allegra, that Nick was exactly the kind of man I needed. I’m not a go-getting career girl like my sister Hannah, I don’t … didn’t … function all that well on my own, I haven’t got what it takes. Nick made me realise that I didn’t want to be out in the world, fighting my corner. I wanted to be there for him and he wanted to make a safe place for me. When we bought this house he closed the front door behind us and told me that I was home now, and I never had to worry about the world outside again. I felt so … cherished.’
‘And your husband was your only lover?’ Allegra asked her. ‘You were a virgin when you married him?’
‘No, of course not! I was twenty-four when I married him. I’d had two other “proper” boyfriends but it was nothing special with them. With the first one I remember I was scared because I hadn’t told him I was a virgin. I didn’t want him to think I was inexperienced so I just lay there totally rigid with fear, until eventually he stopped and asked me what was going on. I had to tell him then and he was really sweet about it, turned out he was a virgin too, and we muddled through somehow. That was Graham – we went out together for a year and then after him there was this man at the museum, my boss, I’m ashamed to say.’
‘And did he throw you across his desk, rip a hole in your tights and take you?’ Allegra sounded hopeful.
‘Goodness no, he was a lot older than me and he had recurring back trouble. We never really clicked in that way. Anyway it only happened a couple of times before I met Nick and I realised for the first time in my life what it meant to really want someone.’
‘What did Nick think of your lovers? Was he jealous?’ Allegra enquired.
‘No – Nick never asked me and I never told him. It was as if when we came together we started on a new page, as if nothing that had happened before mattered. It was us two against the world.’
‘I see,’ Allegra said thoughtfully, eyeing Ellen. Her assistant’s tawny skin was a little flushed from the conversation, the slight breeze that found its way through the French doors lifting tendrils of her dark hair away from her skin. ‘And now?’
‘Now?’ Ellen queried.
‘Ellen, you are still a young woman, a young, attractive and clearly passionate woman. Now surely is the right time for a new chapter in your life. So – who will make love to you now?’
‘Oh God – no one!’ Ellen stuttered. ‘No, no one. I was, I am Nick’s wife. I always will be. I could never … not with anyone else. It would be a betrayal. And besides, what about Charlie? I have to think of him, the last thing he needs is me, you know, doing it.’
‘Are you sure?’ Allegra asked her. ‘Perhaps a more fulfilled and satisfied mother is just what he needs – either way, it’s clear to me, even if it isn’t to you, that you are a very sexual person.’
‘Me? Allegra, have you noticed that you think about sex a lot? You are obsessed!’ Ellen laughed, but she didn’t deny Allegra’s assessment. ‘The truth is I just can’t ever imagine meeting someone who could replace Nick. There isn’t anyone, it’s as simple as that.’
‘Well perhaps not as a life partner or a husband, those kinds of men are very hard to come by, which is the reason that I have never married. But lovers? Lovers are ten a penny. For example, what about your handsome lodger?’ Allegra’s smile was wicked, her eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘I’m seventy-three, I haven’t enjoyed “congress” for many months but I can still imagine that young man in a number of uncompromising positions.’
Ellen’s mouth opened and closed as she tried to process all the information that Allegra had just given her. Deciding it was none of her business to ask, she concentrated on the salient bits. ‘Matt? As if he would ever be interested in me!’
‘He’s a man, my dear, he’s interested in anything with a pulse, more or less – but that wasn’t the question I asked you. I asked you if you were interested in him.’
Ellen blushed, thinking again of her haybarn fantasy, her face betraying her without a thought of loyalty to its owner.
‘Well he is very handsome,’ she admitted. ‘And quite, you know, masculine – he’s got very nice arms. Oh look – yes, he’s a man and he wanders about the house in a towel sometimes, and he’s quite tactile, not in a sexual way. But any man touching you when it’s been so long, it reminds your body what it’s like and . .. I did enjoy that side of my marriage. It is hard to come to terms with the fact that all that is over for me. But Matt and I – I’m like his older sister, we’re friends.’ Ellen dropped her gaze to the floor, not wanting to reveal quite how much she enjoyed her kitchen chats with her lodger. ‘I can’t think about him in that way, it would just be wrong!’
‘Rubbish,’ Allegra told her stoutly. ‘Matthew isn’t the kind of man to turn down any sexual experience. Here he is, a virile, experienced young man in your house. It’s almost as if the gods have brought him to you for your personal delight. He might open up a world of possibilities to you, and bearing that in mind you might want to consider taking him as your lover.’
‘My – what?’ Ellen all but shrieked. ‘Allegra, don’t be so ridiculous. As if I ever would and even if I would, even if I could, as if Matt would ever look twice at me, as if he would ever want me! He just wouldn’t … would he?’
‘Certainly I don’t believe he would fall in love with you, propose to you or cherish you in quite the same way as your late husband seemed to,’ Allegra said thoughtfully. ‘And I’m sure that whatever interest he had in you would wane in due course. But I am also quite sure that, as long as you understood that and were determined not to fall in love with him, if you set your mind to it you could have him in your bed whenever you chose, at least for a while.’
Words failing her, Ellen emitted a kind of strangulated squeak, and glancing at her watch was glad to see that it had gone five in the afternoon. She had been so engrossed in her talk with Allegra that she hadn’t heard Charlie come in.
‘Well anyway – that’s that for today,’ she said, hurriedly saving that day’s work. ‘I’m going to see what Charlie wants for tea – would you like anything before dinner, Allegra?’
Allegra smiled, clearly satisfied with her meddling. ‘I am quite replete, thank you,’ she told Ellen. ‘I think I might take a nap now and indulge in some daydreams of my own. Thank you for today, Ellen, you don’t know how much it means to me to have found you to work with.’
Ellen was so touched that she forgot to be shocked, and she was glowing with the after-effects of the praise when she called up the stairs to Charlie.
‘Darling? Do you want tea yet, or do you want to wait?’
There was no reply. He was probably plugged into some contraption or other, listening to music on the iPod that Hannah had bought him or playing his treasured DS. Wearily Ellen mounted the stairs and obligingly knocked on the door before opening it, as Charlie had made her promise to do. But the room was empty. He wasn’t back from school yet, she realised, feeling a swell of panic balloon in her chest.
‘Well that’s OK,’ she said out loud. ‘I mean it’s only just five and he is nearly twelve. He’ll be in the park or with a friend. It’s perfectly fine. Nothing to worry about.’ Yet she crossed to the landing window that looked out over street after street of houses and towards the park that suddenly seemed so very far away. Ellen placed the flat of her palm against the glass, withdrawing it quickly as if she somehow might get sucked through it into free fall, like she had seen happen in a film once about a jetliner that had lost cabin pressure.
‘He’s just off somewhere and he’s forgotten that he’s supposed to phone me if he’s staying out with friends,’ Ellen reassured herself out loud, a tremor in her voice despite her calming words. Quickly she went back downstairs to the phone in the hall and dialled the number of Charlie’s mobile. She had been furious with Hannah for giving this to Charlie soon after Nick had died, as if gifts could replace his father, but she was now grateful that she could contact him. Or at least she would have been grateful if her call hadn’t gone straight to answer-phone, which meant that the mobile was either turned off or didn’t have a signal.
Ellen swallowed, staring at her redundant telephone as if it were some kind of mysterious cipher that held more answers than it chose to reveal. Why would Charlie’s phone be turned off, and where might he have gone where there wasn’t a signal? There wasn’t anywhere around here that didn’t have a signal. She knew that because there had been that campaign in the local paper about the phone masts that had been put on top of a block of council flats a few streets away. The residents had formed a protest group, anxious about brain cancer or something. They had lost in the end, proclaiming that people in private housing would never be subjected to such risks, which Ellen had felt bad about – but still the place virtually bristled with masts. Where around here could Charlie be that could be out of reach of a mast – or had he had gone somewhere very far away? Or what if his phone was turned off? Ellen felt freezing fear settle on her chest like a block of ice. Had someone turned off Charlie’s phone to stop him asking for help?
Her hands trembling, she picked up the phone, pressed redial and left a message.
‘Charlie, it’s Mum, look darling it’s nearly five thirty and you’re not home. Be a love and give me a call when you get this, I know you think I’m a silly old thing, but I worry.’ Ellen successfully managed to brighten her voice, but the artifice dissolved the moment she put the phone down, and she stood uncertainly in the hallway looking at the front door, willing Charlie to come through it.
Perhaps he was just down the road, she thought. Perhaps if she went to the garden gate and looked down the road she’d see him coming, dragging his school bag along the pavement, his blazer tied around his waist by the arms, scuffing his shoes with every step.
Ellen went to the front door and put her hand on the latch and her heart leapt as she heard a key turn in the lock. Happily she flung the door open.
Sabine stood, her keys in her hand, surprised to find Ellen on the other side.
‘What are you doing there?’ she asked. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack!’
‘Oh Sabine.’ Ellen did not mask her disappointment, her eyes travelling over Sabine’s shoulder to the heat-hazed road beyond. ‘I was waiting for Charlie – he’s late and I was worried – did you see him, coming up the road?’
Sabine glanced at her watch. ‘Charlie is twelve nearly and it’s a lovely summer’s evening – he’ll be playing football or something with his friends. There isn’t anything to worried about, I’m certain.’ She put her hand on Ellen’s shoulder, seeing the concern etched in her face. ‘Ellen, you are shaking – please don’t be so afraid. I’m sure that Charlie is fine. I know you must worry about him more after what happened to your husband, but I promise you dreadful things like that hardly ever happen. Statistically the chances of a terrible accident befalling another member of your family are very slim. Come, let me make you a cup of tea.’
Not exactly comforted, Ellen nodded and let Sabine lead her into the kitchen. She knew that Sabine was probably right, that Charlie was probably fine and that he probably hadn’t phoned her because as with everything he did right now he was determined to prove to her that he wasn’t a baby any more, but still it was a struggle to master the cold sweep of panic at the thought of her son out there in some unknown place in the world.
As the kettle boiled Sabine smoothed four sheets of A4 paper out on the table in front of Ellen. Each side was filled with writing, divided into sections and colour-coded with a variety of highlighter pens.
‘You are a professional with words, would you look at my list – tell me what you think?’ Sabine asked her, taking two mugs from the draining board.
‘What’s this, something to do with work?’ Ellen scanned the list, temporarily distracted. ‘I’m not sure I’ll know what to think, Hannah’s the one you want to talk to.’
Sabine snorted as if Ellen had just said something utterly ridiculous, then seeing Ellen’s raised eyebrows she shook her head.
‘No, this is not work. This is my list. My disgusting treacherous husband and I talked and talked on the phone last night. He wants us to try again, he wants us to be together and have children and be a proper married couple like his awful parents. Well, I told him that I could not even consider it until he addressed all of the problems in our marriage. So he suggested we each write lists, lists of things that we don’t like about each other. He believes it will start a discussion and perhaps enable us to reconcile, the vile whoring adulterer. So I said “Yes, OK, I will do it.” After all we have been married two years now and I am not the sort of person who does not try her best, even though the scum-sucking arsehole does not deserve my best. He emailed me his list after we talked but I am still working on mine. Please, take a look, see what you think.’
As she spread the sheets out in front of her Ellen glanced at the kitchen clock as it ticked towards six. With Sabine here she did feel a little calmer, it hardly seemed anything out of the ordinary that Charlie wasn’t home yet, Sabine was so sure he would be soon. If Sabine was unconcerned then she would do her best to be too, at least for the next twenty minutes. After all, life would be impossible if every time things went a little unexpectedly, she expected two police officers making their way up the front path. Ellen made a bargain with herself. If he had not appeared by six fifteen she would allow herself to be anxious and panic again, but until then she would not worry. She tore her eyes from the clock and looked at the list as Sabine, sitting in Charlie’s chair, put a cup of steaming tea down beside her.
‘Pages one and two,’ Sabine explained, ‘are highlighted in green and come under the category of irritants. Little things that annoy me but don’t especially mean the end of a marriage. There are thirty-seven items in this section. Read it, I’ve written it in English so that I could ask your opinion.’
‘Why my opinion?’ Ellen was puzzled.
‘Because you had the perfect marriage, you know what it takes to make a relationship work.’
‘Do I?’ Ellen wondered out loud as she traced her finger down the first side of the green list. Item one – failure to pick up own dirty socks from floor, item fourteen – refusal ever to see a film at the cinema that does not involve violence and scenes of a sexual nature, item twenty-six – mean when it comes to spending own money. And so on and so on right down to item thirty-seven – leaving unpleasant stains on the bed sheets without any attempt to share the laundry chores.
Ellen didn’t care to know exactly what that meant.
‘Well that is quite a lot of irritants,’ she said.
‘Exactly,’ Sabine replied. ‘Was your husband ever so annoying?’
Ellen thought. It used to annoy her that Nick never remembered to put the milk or the butter back in the fridge and that instead of loading the dishwasher he’d pile all the dirty plates in the sink, filling it with water that would soon grow greasy and cold – but then she’d remind herself that he was out at work all day and that it was her job to make sure the house ran smoothly, and she’d put the curdled butter back in the fridge and pull the lumps of sodden food out of the blocked sinkhole, and any irritation soon passed. And she would have happily have put away a thousand more cartons of milk and unblocked a thousand more stinking plugholes if it meant that he would be back in the house again.
‘No, not really,’ she told Sabine apologetically. ‘And although those things are annoying, well – we are all human, aren’t we? We all have little foibles. If you love someone, you put up with them.’
‘I thought as much.’ Sabine sounded resentful as she put the second sheet of paper in front of her.
‘Here is the amber list, the things that really upset me a great deal but which if he agreed to change sufficiently might not rule out us getting back together. There are twenty-one items in this section.’
Item five – flirting with every single woman ever encountered, even my mother.
Item eleven – always mentally undressing other women, even unattractive ones – and being really obvious about it, even my mother.
Item sixteen – openly watching porn when my favourite TV shows are on.
Item twenty-one – spending more money on lap dances than on my birthday present.
‘Oh my.’ Ellen looked up at Sabine. ‘He really does that?’
‘Yes, he’s a member of a gentlemen’s club, the yearly subscription is hundreds of euros, never mind what he pays for lap dances while he is in there. And yet what did I get for my birthday? A juicer.’ Sabine knitted her lips into a tight knot and crossed her arms. ‘True, I asked for a juicer, but a little something more – something he chose himself would have meant a lot.’
‘So it’s the fact that the strippers cost more than your birthday present that upsets you, not the actual strippers themselves?’ Ellen asked her.
Sabine shrugged. ‘Men will be men. For my odious husband going to a strip club at the end of a night out is like an Englishman going for a curry.’
‘Really?’ Ellen wondered what heinous crime Sabine’s husband could have committed for her to hate him quite so openly, if it wasn’t going to strip clubs.
‘So finally the red list.’ Sabine’s expression dropped, pain etched across her face. Ellen braced herself.
‘There is only one thing on this list,’ she said, pushing it over so that Ellen could read it.
Item one – writing love letters to another woman.
‘Writing … you mean you found out he was having an affair?’ Ellen gasped.
‘Yes,’ Sabine nodded sadly. ‘Not a sexual one, a sexual one I could have understood, perhaps even forgiven. No it was much worse than that. He has always stayed in touch with his childhood sweetheart, I knew that. But then a few months ago I found these letters from her, so passionate, so full of love and regret that they could never be together. So I looked on his laptop, he thought he’d hidden them, but he never was very good at keeping a secret. I found copies of all of his letters in his accounts folders. Telling her how he would always love her, how if things had been different, if they had taken a chance when they had the opportunity … He was so tender, so romantic – he is never like that with me.’ Sabine pressed the palm of her hand to her chest. ‘Honestly, Ellen, if I had come home to find him in bed with another woman it would have hurt less. Now I know that I am second choice, that he settled for me because he can’t have her. How do I get over that?’
