‘Oh my God,’ Juliet breathed. ‘It’s him. Mark’s the man you had a crush on before Ben died.’
Michael, said a voice in her head. He’s not even called what you thought he was. That’s how well you knew him. You idiot. How could you even have thought this was anything like a new relationship?
Juliet felt dizzy, as if the walls were moving around her. Louise was talking, but the words faded in and out as her brain tried to deal with the roaring in her ears. She barely knew the man, so how could this be hurting so much?
‘It’s over, Juliet, honestly. I mean, there was really nothing there to start with. It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t even a proper affair, really. It was a flirtation that went a bit too far, when I was in shock after Ben died. I mean, Ben dying just made me wonder what was going to happen next, and—’
‘Don’t bring Ben into this, you hypocrite!’ spat Juliet. ‘Don’t try to use my husband as an excuse for your own tacky affair!’
Louise’s mouth dropped, and then her eyes narrowed. ‘In what way have I been hypocritical? I’m not the one going round pretending I had the most perfect marriage in the world, am I? Or have you conveniently forgotten what you told me?’
That was too much for Juliet. The outrage that had been simmering away in her for months burst out.
‘Have you forgotten what you told me? Sitting there with that sanctimonious look on your face?’ Juliet adopted a lecturing tone. ‘“All marriages go through bad patches”? “It’s worth trying harder”? And all the time you were carrying on with . . . Michael here.’
‘I was talking about your marriage,’ yelled Louise. ‘Your marriage was worth saving! You and Ben were a great couple; you were meant to be together. I didn’t want to see you break up because you were going through some rough patch! It was barely even a rough patch! Ben being a bit irresponsible about money? Well, when wasn’t he? I mean, compared with the real, miserable rough patch Peter and I were in at the time . . .’
‘That’s right, you always have to have the definitive version, don’t you?’
Louise shot her a bitter glare. ‘You try coping on three hours’ sleep and your husband never helping because he’s playing computer games for research and feeling like everyone just sees you as a braindead mummy. That is a rough patch. I knew I was doing the wrong thing with Michael. I didn’t want you to get yourself into the same nightmare.’
‘It didn’t look like that from where I was sitting,’ snapped Juliet. ‘You looked like someone who was really enjoying having a bit on the side.’
‘Oh God.’ Louise put her face in her hands for a second. When it emerged, she looked wretched. ‘OK, so for a while it was amazing. That didn’t mean to say I didn’t feel shit about it too! I felt terrible and . . .’
A car pulled up outside the house opposite and the pair of them froze. A woman got out and gave them a curious look before starting to unload her shopping. There was a bootful. She’d be there a while.
‘I don’t want to have a shouting match on the doorstep,’ hissed Juliet. ‘And no, I don’t think it’d be a good idea to go inside either,’ she added, seeing Louise’s eyes flick towards the hall. She wondered how many times Louise had been in this house. More times than her? Upstairs? She felt cold.
It was bad enough realising she barely knew ‘Mark’; having her own sister turn out to be someone she didn’t know either was too much for her to process.
She realised she was still holding Louise’s letter.
‘Can I have that, please?’ asked Louise.
Juliet considered saying no, to punish her. The anger was ebbing and flowing. She tucked it in her back pocket and pulled her keys out of her jeans.
‘Here.’ She thrust her van keys roughly at Louise. Lucky that she’d driven, to fit in all the cat-visiting. ‘Go and sit in the van with Minton. I’ll be out in a minute.’
Louise looked at the keys, and Juliet regarded her sister curiously. It was so weird to see Louise out of control, nearly hyperventilating. She’d always been the one who could stay calm when the lights went off, or when someone had a nosebleed.
‘OK,’ she said, and turned to go.
‘You might want to brush the passenger seat first,’ added Juliet, out of habit. ‘Minton rides in the front. It’s a bit . . . hairy.’
Mike. Michael. Michael.
Juliet made herself say it over and over again as she sped through Damson’s routine in the utility room, filling up her bowl, putting on the radio, fluffing up her bed.
He didn’t look like a Michael. He looked like a Mark. How could you kiss someone and have their name wrong? It made her feel dirty. And convincing herself that the fact he reminded her of an auctioneer and – wow! – he was one, was a sign? She cringed. She’d had more mature thoughts when she was at school.
The bereavement books were right this time. She’d obviously moved on far too quickly. If anything was a sign, it was this – that she should stay out of the messy world of new relationships. Stay out of everything.
Damson curled up in her basket, easily satisfied now she’d had her walk. Juliet envied her contented snoozing. The universal ‘Do not disturb’ sign that was sleep was very tempting now, and if she hadn’t had her sister and her dog waiting in the car, she’d have gone straight home and done that.
Louise had taken the five minutes on her own to refresh her make-up, and now she was looking a little bit more like the Louise Juliet knew.
‘Jools,’ she said, before she’d even slid into the front seat. ‘I don’t want you to think Mum and I have been gossiping about you, but before you say anything else, is Michael the client you went on the date with? To the private view?’
‘Yes,’ said Juliet stonily.
‘Oh.’ Louise took a deep breath. ‘What are the chances of that, eh? All the men in Longhampton . . .’
‘And you’ve already had the one I liked,’ Juliet finished for her. ‘I don’t think it’s funny. I think it’s pretty par for the course.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning . . .’ Juliet gave up any pretence of being mature. She was angry with herself, but Louise was a much easier target. Widow Rage, plus the moral high ground, suddenly released a barrage of resentments she’d squashed down for years. They flew out of her like angry bats. ‘You always get things first. Exams. Weddings. Men.’ She paused. ‘Grandchildren. Mum running around after you. Dad lending you money for your house deposit. It’s always you, achieving.’
‘Oh, Jools . . .’
‘I never had anything that was just mine!’
‘You had Ben! You had the soulmate!’
‘Don’t—’ Juliet began, but Louise talked over her.
‘You did. No matter what you thought you were going through, it was just a hiccup. You lucked out with Ben. He lucked out with you. You’d have got through it. You’d have been fine. I always looked at your marriage and thought, Wow. They’re like Mum and Dad. They are happy people. They know how to be happy with each other.’
‘Is that meant to make me feel better?’ demanded Juliet. ‘Now I’ve lost that?’
Louise’s face fell. ‘I don’t know. You’re a hard woman to make feel better right now. I’m just telling you what I think.’
Juliet threw her head back against the headrest and Minton turned round and round, trying to make himself comfortable. He finally settled, halfway up the steering wheel, and looked sullenly at Louise, taking up his seat.
‘Were you the woman who broke up his marriage?’ asked Juliet, without opening her eyes.
‘No. His marriage was breaking up when we met him at the ante-natal classes, and then it finally finished when Natasha was born. I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Really.’
‘Yes, really.’ Louise sounded offended. ‘I might have been a shoulder to cry on, but it wasn’t like that. It was about . . .’
’It never is, is it? How it looks.’
‘Don’t be like that. Do you want to know what happened?’
r /> Juliet wasn’t sure she did, but Louise seemed determined to get it off her chest, and short of throwing her out of the van, she didn’t have much choice.
‘Peter doesn’t listen to anything I say,’ began Louise. ‘He used to, but now he doesn’t. He just comes home, demands a breakdown of the day’s events, and thinks that’s parenting. He didn’t listen when I said I was worried about taking time out. He’s not listening when I tell him . . . when I tell him I’m not sure about having another baby yet. It’s killing our relationship. Michael and I had actual, adult conversations. He made me laugh, he told me about stuff I didn’t know. I was going mad on maternity leave, Jools. No one ever wanted to talk to me about anything other than Toby.’
‘That might be because the one time I tried to invite you round for lunch on your own, you bit my head off and said I wouldn’t understand how totally impossible it was to go out for lunch until I had children of my own.’
‘Yes, because just getting him out of the house is such a production, and then finding a sitter, or somewhere to take him where it’s safe for . . .’ Louise paused, as the implication of what Juliet had said sank in. ‘I’m sorry if you felt pushed out,’ she said, sounding genuinely ashamed. ‘To be honest, I’ve been so exhausted I barely know what I’m saying half the time.’
It was so rare to hear Louise apologise that Juliet had to stop herself commenting on it. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘So it was just talking, was it?’
‘To begin with. I mean, don’t you find he’s the easiest person to . . .’ She caught herself. ‘Sorry. Michael just made me feel like I was actually connected to the outside world again. He knew interesting things. He knew interesting people. Like Peter used to, before he started this company and turned into a workaholic computer nerd.’
Even though Juliet couldn’t see Louise’s face, she could sense the frustration seeping out of her. Louise had always itched to move in more glamorous circles than she did. Her university friend Esther worked on Ready Steady Cook, and Louise was always banging on about her ‘friend at the BBC’, as if she produced Question Time.
‘It’s all right for you,’ said Louise. ‘Ben had interesting friends. He had friends, for God’s sake. Peter plays online wizard games. With fat truckers in Tucson who call themselves Glwedyr the Good Witch.’
Juliet managed a reluctant smile. Ben’s sunny ability to get on with people had been one of the qualities she’d loved most about him. He knew everyone, from the jobbing teenage lawn-mowers right up to Longhampton’s sole old-school posh family whose Gothic folly he’d landscaped. And he could chat happily to them all, in the supermarket or in the pub or in their garden.
‘It’s a good thing in a man, being able to talk,’ she said.
Was that what she’d responded to in Michael – having someone to talk to? It couldn’t just have been that. She talked more to Lorcan, and he made her laugh, and there was nothing there.
Louise was off again, letting the words spill out as if she’d never had a chance to tell anyone. ‘We tried not to talk about our home lives too much, but it was pretty obvious neither of us was really happy. I tried to tell you that time, hoping you’d say, “Absolutely, Peter’s taking you for granted,” but you went off on one. And then Ben died. I just thought, Oh my God, we could all die tomorrow, so why am I the one being good . . . ?’ She shook her head in disbelief.
Like she’s the first person who’s ever had that little revelation, thought Juliet. She turned to look at her sister, who was staring straight ahead as if the scene was playing in front of her on the windscreen.
‘I saw you in the hospital, sitting outside the room where they’d put Ben, and it made me wonder who I was living for,’ Louise continued. ‘Me, or everyone else? I’ve always done the right thing. Always. And where’s it got me? So I took Toby round to Mum’s, said I had a dental appointment, called Michael, and we . . .’ She stopped.
Silence filled the van like poison gas.
‘You what?’ said Juliet.
‘What do you think?’
Oh, come on, own it, thought Juliet. I’m not going to let you off the hook that easily. ‘Here?’
‘No.’
‘Where, then?’
‘Coneygreen Woods,’ said Louise, after a long pause.
Juliet swivelled to face her sister. ‘But it was October! And that place is full of dog-walkers!’
‘I didn’t know that! I don’t have a dog, do I? I wasn’t thinking of romantic locations; I just wanted to grab Michael and do all the things I’d been trying not to think about doing for months. It wasn’t a rational thought process. I just didn’t want it to be my house, or his house, or some hotel.’
Juliet sank back in her seat. She wouldn’t be able to see the woods in the same way now. Not that she could imagine Louise overcome with animal passion, half naked up against one of the oaks, but she could sort of see him, his shirt tugged out of his cords, his strong arms against the bark. She blinked away the image before it could take root and upset her.
‘And then what?’ she asked.
‘And then it wore off. I saw how devastated you were without Ben, and I had one of those blinding flashes about what would happen if Peter found out. I didn’t want to break up Toby’s family. I still love Peter, deep down. I didn’t want to be . . . the person I thought I was turning into. I wanted the old me back again.’
‘Is that why you went back into career mode?’
‘Yes.’ Louise studied her fingernails. ‘I’d have gone back the next day if I could, but it took quite a few months to talk to Douglas and persuade him to juggle the department around to fit me in. I’d more or less said I wasn’t coming back until Toby was at school, so he was a bit surprised when I changed my mind. I know, I know,’ she added. ‘Don’t remind me what I said about formative years and all that crap. I said a lot of things I now know to be categorically wrong.’
‘But you could have just stayed at home and kept your knickers on,’ suggested Juliet, mercilessly. ‘You could have joined a different baby group. Taken up knitting.’
Louise let out a groan. ‘It wasn’t like that. It was about me.’
Why am I so angry? Juliet wondered. Why do I want to punish her? Is it because she’s betrayed Peter, risked her marriage and still thinks she’s some kind of victim? I’m the one whose marriage is over and I had no choice in the matter.
‘I take it you didn’t tell Peter?’
Louise looked sick. ‘No. It’d be selfish. That’s my punishment, not his.’
‘But if you’re so unhappy about living with Peter that you’re looking around for random men to listen to you, don’t you think he has the right to know? In case there’s something he can do about it?’
When she didn’t reply, Juliet persisted, annoyed. ‘You can’t just wind the clock back and be the person you were before all this happened. God, if there’s one thing I’ve learned this year it’s that. Stop being such a martyr and take this as a wake-up call. Change changes you. You’ve had a baby. And we’ve all had a bereavement. Only a raging egomaniac wouldn’t need to stop and have a think about their life after that.’
Louise didn’t look at her. ‘That’s what I’m trying to do.’
‘By getting back in touch with your fling?’ she snorted. ‘Interesting tactic. Did you get it from the Internet?’
‘That honestly wasn’t what I thought I was doing. I thought . . .’ Louise bit her lip. ‘I don’t know what I thought. It was a crap idea. I never used to have crap ideas.’
Juliet didn’t dignify that with a response, and they sat in silence, staring at the hanging baskets of wilting geraniums clinging on to life outside Michael’s brand-new townhouse.
We must look like we’re staking the place out, thought Juliet. The two of us, in a gardening van, parked outside his front door – and we’re not even here on behalf of his ex. If it hadn’t been happening to her, she’d have found it funny.
Louise cleared her throat, embarrassed. ‘Can I .
. . have the letter back?’
Juliet had almost forgotten she had it in her pocket. She withdrew it slowly. It was crumpled, and thin. ‘What did you actually say in this letter?’
‘It doesn’t matter now. I promise I’ll talk to Peter,’ said Louise.
Juliet hesitated, then handed it over. Louise ripped it in half, then ripped the halves in half, then shoved it in her bag. Her hands were trembling as she did up the magnetic fastener.
‘Just like that?’ said Juliet. ‘You came here to talk to him, but now . . . you don’t need to?’
Louise clutched her bag like a child hugging a teddy bear, her eyes staring fiercely out of the car. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m the one who needs talking to.’
She rubbed her fingers under her eyes to catch the smeared mascara, and belatedly, as her own anger subsided, Juliet saw how distressed her sister was. She reached over to comfort her, dislodging Minton from his perch. Juliet was still furious – with herself, with Louise, with Mike – but she could tell something was very wrong in Louise’s home, and it made her sad that she hadn’t known the half of it.
‘I’m so sorry, Jools,’ Louise sobbed into her shoulder. ‘It’s bad enough me doing this in the first place, but now I’ve spoiled it for you too. I’m such a bitch! I deserve this, but you don’t.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Juliet stroked her hair. ‘It was one date. Well, it wasn’t even a date. It was just a night out.’
‘Michael’s a really lovely guy. And I guess he’s definitely single now.’ Louise raised her head and tried to smile but her eyes were miserable. ‘Are you seeing him again?’
Can’t deal with this now, thought Juliet. Got to get home. Sofa. Time Team. Minton. Tea. Maybe even a sneaky Nytol and the duvet.
‘Let me take you back to work,’ she sighed. ‘Before the neighbours report us for stalking.’
The radio was on upstairs when Juliet opened the front door – she’d totally forgotten about Lorcan and his grouting lesson. Her heart sank. She needed to be alone to unpick the messy knots of what she’d just discovered. Right now, Juliet genuinely had no idea what she thought. It was all too weird.