Josie had been uncharacteristically decisive in choosing a bold new colour for the front room. The first coat had gone on and she was pleased with the look. It was a kind of Victorian dull red. She thought it made the room cosier and, more importantly, hers. Of an evening when the girls and her mother had all gone to bed, she found decorating late into the night, on her own, very therapeutic. Especially with a glass of Chardonnay in her non-brush hand. It had also broken her out of the fog of navel-gazing misery which had descended on her recently, like a heavy winter mist hanging underneath Clifton Suspension Bridge. She was convinced how tragic her life had become. She’d ended up living with her mother in her forties. This was, of course, a completely untrue and simplistic description of the situation. Her mother had basically ‘bought’ the basement flat so that Josie could afford the house. It was also hugely convenient for her mother’s readily available childcare services. But depression and self-pity had no time for the niceties of actual truth. At times like that her bleak mood required a different, self-indulgent, interpretation. There was some truth in the fact that being around her mother all the time, or her mother being around her all the time which seemed like a more accurate description of the situation, made her feel and, at times, behave, like a fifteen-year-old. In her defence this was partly because her mother often spoke to her in the same despairing almost defeated tone that she always had done as the parent of an incomprehensible, uncomprehending alien of a teenager. Cherish’s facial expressions hadn’t changed in the intervening years, either. Why would they? But the fact that Josie associated them all with her teenage years put her right back there. So, her forty-three-year-old self often reacted like a turbulent teenager. It was a self-perpetuating cycle she couldn’t break.
She also harboured the fear that living like this meant she would never meet another partner. The children would inevitably leave home and then she’d be left alone with her mother. Two old women living together. As they got older people would inevitably ask if they were sisters. The thought of this sent shudders through her already over-shuddered frame.
This had all been brought to the forefront of her mind when she came across two large storage boxes which had been kept in the back of the flat attic. They were labelled simply ‘M’. A chill came over her as soon as she saw them. As if she’d suddenly remembered something important that she’d forgotten to do. They contained a few things she’d held onto from her life with Mark, her husband and the father of the girls. She kept them for herself, but more for the children.
Cherish had never been entirely sure about Mark. Never really trusted him. But then again, she never really trusted anyone when it came to her daughter. Mark was a social worker. A breed she had come to have a deeply entrenched suspicion of over the years. She had come to love him, though, as she began to understand his outlook on life. She admired his fervent, non-negotiable, belief that equal opportunity was a basic human right. When she witnessed how much time and emotional energy he put into his ‘clients’, as he called them, she couldn’t help but be impressed and wish the world had more young men like him. At times she even felt he overindulged them. He had an unerringly developed ability to see the best in everyone.
These were all the qualities which initially attracted Josie. She felt this charismatic and confident young man made up for her inadequacies in the compassion and humanitarian stakes. In many ways her being able to cope with Cross was a legacy of her time with Mark. Initially things had been wonderful in the relationship. They tolerated and admired each other’s total commitment to their jobs. But this was to have a deleterious effect on the marriage. They were always so busy with work. Worked so many nights. The confidence that their relationship was strong enough to ride this out actually just led to its being neglected. Before they knew it, the bedrock had crumbled and they were left looking at the dust of their former love just scattered around their feet. Unfixable. Tensions that had either not existed earlier or had been happily tolerated suddenly became the focus of each other’s frustration. She accused him of having an ingrained suspicion and dislike of her ‘being police’. She herself had had her fair share of frustration at the hands of various social service departments in the south-west during the course of her work. So, there was a reciprocal mistrust, albeit latent and mostly unspoken. More and more often they found themselves on opposing, intransigent, sides of an argument about something that had happened in their respective work lives.
They’d always wanted another child after Carla, but Josie had a couple of miscarriages. She felt Mark blamed her work for the loss of the pregnancies and eventually called him out on it. They went on to have a frank and upsettingly mature discussion of ending the marriage in an amicable way. They would co-parent in an unselfish manner. It seemed heartachingly sensible. The comfort sex which had inevitably followed such a painful conclusion resulted in Josie’s pregnancy with Debbie. This seemed to change everything. They made the decision to make the marriage work and drew up a list of compromises and allowances each would commit to. It was one occasion on which his conflict resolution skills as a social worker were put to good use. They would make their family the priority, and their work, work for them. Not the other way round.
That summer, when Debbie was four months old, they had her christened at the church Josie had grown up in. It was a beautiful day. Everyone was dressed brightly, ready to celebrate this new life and party. It was joyous in the true sense of the word. Then, without any warning, as they left the church to go back to the flat for a christening tea with their friends, Mark collapsed and died. He’d had a massive catastrophic heart attack. A myocardial infarction, the death certificate informed her coldly. There had been no warning signs. He was only thirty-eight. At the moment it happened Josie had thrust her baby into her horrified mother’s arms and given her husband CPR. She remembered later thinking, ‘Don’t do this. Please don’t do this. Not today. Not ever.’ There were dozens of small children crowded round, watching in confusion, wondering what was happening as Josie thumped her husband’s chest and vainly tried to get oxygen to his brain. It was the last time she would ever kiss him.
She opened one of the boxes. She immediately smelled him and smiled. A bottle of his cologne had leaked all over the contents. There were some photographs. Most of the good ones were in other boxes and would adorn the sitting room with his memory. There was a particularly hideous tie of his which she had always hated, and he pretended to love, just to annoy her. It was the only one she’d kept. His favourite cardigan which she had always joked he was too young for and added ten years to his age. What she would have given to have had those years now.
In many ways the manner and sudden nature of his death had shaped who she now was. In the initial stages of bereavement, she’d found people’s constant expressions and outpourings of condolence not just exhausting but also guilt-inducing. The truth was they’d pretty much decided to part before the pregnancy. Because of this she almost felt like a fraud as a grieving widow. It had also made her compulsively honest about things. She’d even told the children that everything hadn’t been rosy with the marriage. She didn’t want to make it out to be some idyllic thing they’d all lost. It was coming up to a decade since his death. She sometimes resented the fact that she still thought about it every day. She even congratulated herself when he ceased to be her first thought as she woke up and opened her eyes. She was absurdly pleased one morning when she realised the first time she’d thought about him was twenty-five past ten. Some sort of record. She was still angry with him for dying. Then angry with herself for being angry.
Her work had definitely suffered because of his death. It was hard being a single mother of two and a detective, despite help from her mother. Before Mark had died she’d been openly ambitious. But that ambition had faded quickly. Receded into the memory of a previous existence. Now she was in her forties and still a detective sergeant. She’d recently decided to put this right and work towards promotion. She felt guilty that this would mean leaving Cross’s side. But she couldn’t add him to her list of responsibilities, however fond she was of him. She’d decided, perhaps wrongly, that being a detective inspector might give her more control of her working life and hours.
Asking Carson for more time off was against all her sensibilities and natural instincts. She was hypersensitive as to how she was perceived at work as a single mother. How much she was seen giving to the job compared to others. This then progressed to her overcompensating and often working longer hours and much harder than her contemporaries. She’d expected pushback from Carson when she asked. But in his new post-natal incarnation, he was incredibly gracious and accommodating. Even telling her that family was more important than anything else. Was a privilege and should be treated as such. How long this would last was, of course, open to question.