Envy I’d always reckoned to be the most corrosive of all emotions, eating into one’s soul like a particularly pernicious acid. Within hours of my fleeing from Manchester back across the Pennines, I was to realise that Envy is a mere novice, a total non-starter compared to her grown-up sister, Guilt. Big G, as I would always think of her from then on, crouches at your bedside, ready to jump on you, smothering you with her desire to wreak havoc from the minute you wake. If she lets you sleep, that is ‒ because Big G loves nothing more than to sit on your chest in the middle of the night, clinging to your arms and legs as you roll over, whispering sweet reminders in your ear.
Once Rebecca had left for the airport, I went into the twins’ bedroom and closed the door. Lilian had drawn the curtains against the late morning light of a dull January day, and the room was dark and calm. The babies were both sleeping soundly on their backs, both so still I needed to check they were alive and breathing. I had risked everything, including these two little mites, for what? For a lusting after the flippy heart thingy? For an egotistical desire to be desired? For an escape from the ordinary, everyday minutiae of family life? I lay on the cream carpet between the two cots and reached out a hand to each of my babies. Their little fingers curled round mine, trusting me, as their mum, to be the centre of their world ‒ and I stayed there for a good ten minutes drawing comfort from their warmth, while trying to shut out that last image of Alex, intent on pulling my head down to his groin.
I slowly got up from the floor and went to our bathroom where I stripped, throwing the black lacy plunge bra with its matching thong into the laundry basket, and ran my second shower of the day, refusing to get under the water until it was scalding. I scrubbed off what was left of my make-up and washed my hair in India’s medicated shampoo. I’m not sure why I thought that Vosene, rather than my expensive salon shampoo, might help scare off Big G ‒ something to do, perhaps, with the fact that I didn’t deserve lovely, expensive smelly stuff ‒ but for that minute, under the shower, it seemed to help with my first step towards atonement. I went downstairs, to where Lilian was sewing name tapes on to some new socks of India’s and listening to Woman’s Hour.
‘Are you feeling better now, dear?’ she asked, peering over her Mrs Doubtfire glasses at my scrubbed face, baggy sweatpants and rugby top. I wanted to curl up at her feet like a little girl and tell her everything. I didn’t: there weren’t enough Hail Marys in the whole of Ireland she could say over my sinner’s head. She’d be horrified, back on the first plane to County Mayo ‒ or at least back to Rebecca’s place to wait for her arrival home with her girls in six months time.
‘I’m OK,’ I said, trying to smile.
‘Did Nick catch you?’ she asked, biting off thread with her teeth. ‘He rang about an hour after you left and I told him you’d gone shopping.’
‘Did he say what he wanted?’
She laughed. ‘What, apart from wanting a chat with his lovely wife? When did he say he’d be back?’
‘Not for another two weeks, at least. It’s a really big trip this time. China is such a long way away, isn’t it?… and apparently he’s got business meetings with some real head honchos.’ I’d actually been really relieved that I wouldn’t have to face Nick at the moment. That I wouldn’t have his concerned questioning about what was wrong with me.
‘I think he’s still very worried about Libby,’ Lilian smiled. ‘Wants to be here with you to help her with what she’s going through.’ Nick and I had made the decision to tell Lilian as much as we knew about what was happening with Libby. Silly not to, really. ‘And how is poor Grace coping now?’ Lilian went on.
‘She really does seem so much better, but I’m not sure what’s happening with her and Sebastian. Or with Libby and Sebastian. As far as I know ‒ but hey, I’m only her mother, and she clams up when I ask her anything. Libby hasn’t seen him, either. She hasn’t been out in the evening since Christmas, not even on New Year’s Eve when the rest of us went down to the village to the new pizza place. She refused to join us and spent the evening revising. She’s determined to go to med. school ‒ and perhaps this is Seb’s influence ‒ she’s thinking of trying for Oxford.’
‘Goodness me. That would be truly wonderful, wouldn’t it? Your little girl at Oxford.’
‘Wouldn’t it? Actually, I think Sebastian is with Amanda in Milan. Nick seemed to think they’d both been bundled off there by David ‒ there’s some sort of international clothing trade fair on at the moment, and he’s sent her because she speaks the lingo brilliantly. To be honest, I think it’s just a ploy to get them both out of the country for a bit until things have cooled down, and also to have some time to himself. I spoke to Grace on the phone a couple of days ago and Amanda was driving her nuts, calling round to see Jonty every day and staying for hours. Oh, Lilian, it’s all such a mess…’ I burst into tears again. I didn’t seem to be able to stop.
‘Harriet, it’ll all work out right in the end. It always does.’
I sniffed and blew my nose, wiping my eyes again. ‘The thing is, I’m not sure which is better: Seb and Grace staying the course, or splitting up. If they stay together, Libby will be devastated. I mean, it’s probably just puppy love ‒ and once she’s at university she’ll have forgotten about him ‒ but I think it might be difficult for her coming home to family parties and suchlike if Sebastian is always here. But if Grace and Seb decide to go their separate ways, Liberty will be in there like a shot.’
‘Oh, I doubt it,’ Lilian said sagely. ‘You’re right ‒ it’s just a bit of puppy love, and Sebastian should have known better. You’ll see, she’ll be off out with some nice young lad like that Harry boy once her exams are over. Sebastian is far too old for her. Anyway, if she did end up with him, would it be so bad? You like him, don’t you?’
‘Lilian, whether we like him or not… that’s not the point. I do like Seb, always have done ‒ I reckon he’s got a lot more of David in him than Amanda, thank goodness. He’s gorgeous, he’s bright, but he’s Grace’s partner. Jonty’s father. We can’t just pretend none of that has happened. And Libby isn’t even eighteen yet. No, the whole thing is ridiculous.’
*
The long, dark January days that followed soon began to set their own pattern. I filled them trying to exhaust myself, trying to keep Big G at bay. I’d be up at five or six with the twins, shivering in the dark until the central heating clicked on and began its warming of the house. I’d try to make sure the children had a good breakfast, preparing porridge, eggs and toast for when they came down, complaining of the dark outside. India would only eat porridge, Liberty nothing but coffee, while Kit devoured as much of everything as he could in the ten minutes he had between finally arriving downstairs and setting off for the school bus. Now fifteen, he was almost six foot, and playing with the second eleven rugby team alongside the oldest boys in the school. He was aiming to be one of the first ever fifteen year olds to be chosen for the first eleven and reckoned that, since Johnny Wilkinson had retired from professional rugby, he would no doubt eventually be called upon to take the great man’s place.
‘I’ll never get into one of the top universities,’ he’d cheerfully told me one morning through a mouthful of toast and Nutella, ‘but I can still bring you fame and fortune through my superior muscle tone and rugby playing skills.’
Thank goodness both Kit and India seemed enthusiastic and happy with their lot at the beginning of this new year. It went a long way to covering up the distinct lack of joie de vivre from both Libby and me.
Once the kids were breakfasted, I’d pile the twins and India into my Mini: I still hadn’t got to grips with the Westmoreland coach standing on the drive. Every time I glanced its way, it seemed to give me a I know what you were up to when you refused to drive me down to Surrey smirk and I avoided it, continuing to drive my beloved Mini, which would never betray the fact that it had been my accomplice on the many occasions that I’d used it to sneak off to see Alex. Blimey, Big G was really getting to me if I thought the bloody cars knew what I’d been up to.
Once I’d dropped India off, habit ensuring the continuing ritual of the daily dead eye towards Sally Saxton, I’d drive off to the supermarket in order to stock up with all the ingredients I’d need for the preparation of a full, proper meal for the children once they were back home. I was hoping that by giving all my attention to their physical needs I could make up for having, on more than one occasion, put their emotional needs second to my own. Shame, guilt and regret in equal measure followed me down the aisles of Sainsbury’s and I piled the trolley high with the things I needed to atone for my selfishness.
Lilian would walk up from the village around eleven and take charge of the twins while I went for a swim. I was no longer interested in the gym and had sacked the personal trainer, but continued to strive for thirty, forty and even fifty lengths daily, thrashing down the lane like a maniac, angry when the strollers and ramblers got in my way as they chatted and walked their way down the pool. I’d sworn under my breath at one pair and then been so overcome with shame I’d apologised profusely before getting out and then, still rather wet, sobbed all the way home.
I started spring cleaning even though we were only two weeks into the new year, clearing out cupboards and drawers and scrubbing the oven until my adulterous, cheating hands were raw and sore. I deserved no less. I went through wardrobes, piling stuff in to black bin liners for the charity shops. I even cleared out the loft, or Death Row as Nick had once christened it on account of the fact that anything incarcerated up there was due never to see the light of day again. My CGD ‒ Compulsive Granite Disorder ‒ that had manifested itself over a year ago when Nick had first thrown in his safe job to start the new company, returned with a vengeance as I got out the polish and duster, jumping on every smear and droplet that had the temerity to mess with me.
Norma began to get cross. ‘’Arriet, will you leave me summat to do?’ she grumbled one morning. ‘There’s nowt to do and I tell you now, it’s no fun cleaning a clean house. I need to get me teeth stuck into it, not pussyfoot round it,’ which made me laugh for the first time since my Flight from Manchester ‒ as I’d started referring to it in my head ‒ because Norma’s mouth was definitely dentally challenged.
I usually managed to keep Big G in her place during the daytime, not allowing her out to mess with my head. If she lapped at my heels, I’d bake a batch of flapjacks, clean the granite ‒ or take the babies out for a walk or to see Mum and Dad. When I was working, and then when I’d had the twins, I’d not been able to see my parents as often as I would have liked but now I found solace in their company. I’d sit with Mum while she cradled Thea or Fin in her arms, reminding her, I think, of the baby she’d had to give away when she was just seventeen. We’d look through old photographs and talk of the past, and I began to learn so much more about my family and my Yorkshire heritage.
I’d taken Mum to see Nick’s new offices in the old woollen mill where she’d started work at fourteen and first set eyes on ‘Young Mr Frank’ ‒ the boss’s son and, eventually, Amanda’s father. While her short-term memory continued to deteriorate, Mum had been able to point out the exact spot where the loom she’d worked on as a weaver had stood in the middle of the cavernous weaving shed. She also showed me where Frank Goodners’s office had been, and recalled how all the young girls’ eyes would leave their work, drawn to its door every time the young, handsome boss’s son left or returned to it. I was a bit concerned that the visit might distress her, might bring back too many memories of being made to put up Frank’s baby for adoption ‒ but she became quite animated, quite giggly and girlish, feeding me snippets of daily mill life from the 1950s.
One afternoon, I’d gone over and taken the twins up to Dad’s allotment ‒ I didn’t dare leave Mum in charge of them ‒ and, while they slept in their buggy, had helped Dad to dig over the hard soil. We’d checked over his store of dahlia tubers and taken some root cuttings for his hardy borders, tidied up the shrubberies at the edge of his allotted ground and pruned the climbers in his greenhouse. With Dad’s help, I’d started my own little patch of garden at home just before falling pregnant with the twins, and on a couple of fine days he came over, leaving Mum inside with Lilian, and together we’d done what few jobs needed to be done to a garden in January. I found the whole process cathartic: my arm and leg muscles burned, my back ached and I finally surrendered any nails not lost to the scrubbing of my oven, but it all helped to keep Big G sulking in her corner… and I loved it, loved being out in the fresh air with Dad. My grubby little affair receded a little when I was outside with Dad, at one with nature.
I’ll be the first to admit that my cooking has never been brilliant: passable, but never brilliant. In those January, guilt-ridden days, I’d spend the hours before picking up India from school preparing a meal for the children. As soon as the twins were down for their afternoon nap, I’d prepare casseroles, stews, curries and pasta. I tried to recreate the puddings Mum had always made for us when we were little: rice pudding, jam roly-poly, ginger sponge… I regressed back to nursery food to find the comfort I’d felt in their consumption when I was India’s age. Libby wouldn’t touch any of the puddings and I didn’t give the sugary stuff to the twins, but India tucked in and Kit wolfed them down, coming back for seconds before bed. The rest was wrapped in cling film, shared with Lilian, who had a particularly sweet tooth, frozen or sent back with Dad for their lunch the following day.
By ten o’clock at night, the twins and India had been bathed and asleep for a couple of hours, uniforms were sorted for the following day and help had been given to Kit with his French or maths homework. I’d plucked festering, wet, muddy games kit from bags, washed, dried and ironed it and returned it back to said kitbags ‒ the kids, next day, no doubt assuming the kitbag fairy had been a-visiting once again. Only then did I allow myself to stop the endless round of action and activities. I knew early nights would be an open invitation for Big G to come visiting alongside the kitbag fairy, so tended to round off the day with an episode from the Scott & Bailey DVD I’d been given for Christmas. I had to look away when the opening scenes of Manchester flashed up on the screen, and skipped the bits where Scott is having her extramarital fling with Andy, but found comfort in the fact that Bailey’s life was in even more of a mess than mine and went to bed planning my next career move as a detective in the Manchester Major Incident Team. It all helped to keep Big G at bay.
Every night, I knocked on Libby’s bedroom door, hoping she might let me in for a chat. She was invariably polite but distant, the shutters coming down as I went in. I wanted her to open up to me, tell me all about it, but she refused. While India had always told me everything ‒ a bit like me, really ‒ Libby was rather more like Nick, keeping her emotions to herself.
And then I received a very belated Christmas card from Andrea Graham, Libby’s friend Georgina’s mother, with whom Libby had gone to stay in South London the day after Sylvia’s wedding. Except she hadn’t. Stayed with them, that is. The Christmas card simply said:
Hope you are all well and are coping with the twins ‒ don’t know how you do it, Harriet!! Really sorry Libby changed her plans about staying with us overnight and caught the train back up to Yorkshire after she and Georgina visited the Observatory. Georgina said it was lovely to see her and she was looking very gorgeous and very grown-up. We’re back up in Midhope for a long weekend in the spring. Will let you know the exact date and hopefully we can get together…
I made myself a very strong coffee, sat down at the kitchen table with it and tried to remember where we were the day after the wedding. We’d got back from Surrey on the Saturday evening, but certainly hadn’t picked Liberty up from the train station until the Sunday. She’d been quite animated on the car journey from the station, saying she loved London, had adored the Royal Observatory in Greenwich ‒ and even told us about staying with Andrea, describing the house that they’d just moved into. It was the following day, the Monday, when I’d had the call from David Henderson telling me about Grace wandering the train line in the early hours of Sunday morning. My thoughts raced. Why had David and Amanda had to deal with it themselves? Seb had been somewhere, they said. I racked my brains. Oxford. A party with some old university friends, and he’d stayed overnight. Oxford. London. Not a million miles from each other, if Seb had been there at all. My heart thumped wildly: if Grace had actually succeeded in killing herself because Seb hadn’t been there to stop her… because he was in London with my daughter… It just didn’t bear thinking about.
Like mother, like daughter, Big G whispered delightedly in my ear. No amount of jam roly-poly making, manic swimming or garden digging could keep her at bay that particular night. She reigned supreme.
I made the decision not to say anything about this new revelation until Nick was back from China a couple of days hence, and together we’d talk to Liberty. I realised I was terrified of opening any more cans of worms: this particular tin was wormier than most.
The Tuesday morning before Nick was due back, Katherine Greenwood dropped Grace and Jonty off at our place and, wrapped up against a bitterly cold east wind which held the winter’s first promise of snow, we set off down the track leading to Grace and Sebastian’s farmhouse. I realised I hadn’t been down there since the morning after my accident in the bathroom, when I’d found Grace in such a state and begun to see just how ill she was becoming. As we walked in silence across the frozen ruts, concentrating on getting the buggies through the worst of it, I longed to turn back the clock to then. I wouldn’t have done the most stupid thing I’d ever done in my life, wouldn’t be in constant fear of Nick finding out. Of losing my marriage. Of losing Nick.
We continued to walk in silence towards the farmhouse, each lost in her own thoughts.
‘Are you OK now?’ Grace suddenly asked, without looking at me.
‘Now?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you mean? After Christmas? After all the drama of Christmas Day?’
‘No.’ Grace still didn’t look at me, but straight ahead.
‘What, then?’
‘Harriet, I know.’
The blood pounded in my ears. The X Factor finalist waiting for the verdict.
I swallowed. ‘Know what, Grace?’ Could she mean about Seb staying in London with Libby overnight? I was clutching at straws.
‘About Alex Hamilton.’
Despite the bitter cold, my hands were sweating on the buggy handle. Fin chortled and waved at me from the depths of his navy spotted snowsuit.
‘What do you mean?’ I was still playing for time. Maybe she thought I’d just had a bit of a thing for him. After all she’d been with me in Harvey Nicks, and we’d both gazed after him in lust as he’d walked away from us, blue cashmere sweater flung casually over his shoulders.
Grace came to a halt and put her leather gloved hand on my arm, stopping me in my tracks. ‘I know you’ve been having an affair with him, Hat.’
‘Oh, Grace. How do you know? I’m not any more, I’m really not. I am so sorry. I am so ashamed. Oh, Grace, what if Nick finds out?’
‘My brother, Simon, saw you in some bar in Manchester with him one lunchtime a week or so before Christmas. Apparently Simon was just making his way over to you, then realised Alex wasn’t Nick and backed off. Didn’t want to embarrass you.’
‘Oh, my God.’
‘I told Simon it would be all perfectly innocent, that you would never do that to Nick. But then, after the court case, we were walking back to the car park and you suddenly went all funny. I looked over to BarBaric, where you were gazing, saw Alex with that tiny dark haired woman and realised you were in some sort of shock. Also realised that the man Simon had seen you with in Manchester was probably Alex.’
I didn’t know what to say.
‘I still wouldn’t have thought anything of it, really. Just assumed you’d bumped into Alex on one of your shopping trips to Manchester and gone for an innocent coffee with him. And, maybe, had the hots for him ‒ let’s face it, we both thought he was rather gorgeous when we saw him that day in Harvey Nicks ‒ and seeing him with another woman had made you feel a bit left out… Or something…’ Grace trailed off.
‘So what made you think I was actually having an affair with him?’
‘Rebecca.’
‘Rebecca told you? She had no right to.’ I was furious.
‘She rang me from the airport, was really worried about you. She said she’d been pretty short with you at the time. And she’s still mad with you. But thought you might need me. Said ‒ as we two always come as a pair ‒ you would probably end up telling me anyway.’
‘Well, she’s got that wrong. I would never have told you. After what you went through with Dan? Never.’ I felt really angry with Rebecca: she’d had absolutely no right whatsoever to tell Grace. There was no way I would have told her of my own volition. The last thing Grace needed was to be a party to my sordid little secret: she was very close to Nick and I didn’t want her to have to do a cover-up job for me. It just wasn’t fair.
I felt huge relief when, instead of giving me the biggest bollocking I deserved before walking off in disgust, Grace turned and hugged me. ‘I reckon both of us have had several months of insanity. Maybe that’s what having babies at our age does. The thing is, Hat, what are you going to do now?’