Letting herself into her flat after work, Charley kicked off her shoes to ease her aching feet and padded into the kitchen. Opening the fridge, she pulled a face because, as usual, there was bugger all in it – partly because she’d not had a chance to go food shopping since she’d got back from Italy, but largely because she could rarely be bothered to cook. In her defence, she was usually either too knackered or too busy when she got back to grab anything other than a quick snack, and she spent most of her evenings either doing paperwork or making deliveries. Any nights she did manage to take off she spent at Ricky’s. Fortunately, he was a far better cook than her and could conjure up a meal from a handful of pasta and, apparently, just about anything. Only very occasionally did he stay at her place, but it was nothing to do with her cooking. It was more because she still lived in the flat which she and Josh had bought just before they got married, and inevitably, the ghost of Josh still hung around the place. His face beamed out from their wedding photo in the living room, and from the picture she kept on her bedside table – a grinning Josh in Bermuda shorts, shades and a suntan on holiday in Ibiza. On the few instances when Ricky had spent the night in her bed, she’d hidden the holiday snap in a drawer beforehand, although the gesture always felt like an act of betrayal, as if she were packing Josh away to make way for someone else. She refused to remove her wedding photo, however. Her marriage to Josh was part of her life, part of who she was, and she wasn’t going to hide that.
Shutting the pitifully empty fridge, she grabbed her bag and nipped to the mini supermarket round the corner and bought a small quiche and a pot of fruit. Back in the flat, slobbing out on the sofa with her feet on the coffee table, she ate with her fingers and made the most of the solitude. Which, now she came to reflect on it, was testament to how much she’d moved on. In the early years after Josh’s death, five years ago, the loneliness and the endless solitary evenings she’d had to endure without him had almost crushed her, and she’d have sold her soul to have someone, anyone, to talk to, if only to share the inconsequential minutia of her day. All those empty nights spent in an empty bed, marooned in the aching void of loss. But now there was Ricky, she reminded herself, and the days and nights of loneliness were over. The thought immediately struck her as disloyal. Ricky could never replace Josh. He had been, and still was, The One. She turned to her wedding photo where Josh beamed back at her, forever cheerful, hopeful for a happy-ever-after with her.
She finished eating and, although she’d have loved to just crash on the sofa and make the most of an evening to herself, idling it away with a TV quiz show or a rom-com, she dutifully took her laptop into the kitchen to try to catch up on the multiple tasks she never quite managed to keep on top of. Granted, it was worse because she’d been away for a week, but she had piles of stock to order, online orders to plough through and dozens of requests for party bags to sort out, not to mention bunch of emails she knew neither Pam nor Tara would have dealt with – Pam because she lacked confidence and Tara because she couldn’t be arsed.
Mentally rolling up her sleeves, she slogged away doggedly for an hour or so until, mercifully, her phone rang. It was Tara. Charley happily discarded her computer and slipped into to the living room to curl up on the sofa to take the call.
‘And how was Tuscany with The Lovely Ricky?’ her mate demanded instantly.
Tara’s nickname for Ricky always amused Charley. ‘Tuscany was lovely, and The Lovely Ricky was even lovelier. It was wonderful being with him and when he—’
‘And I’m going to stop you there, caller,’ cut in Tara, ‘since a) I can’t stand the gloating tone in your voice and b) I don’t want to hear the ins and outs, if you’ll pardon the pun, of your no doubt disgustingly passionate holiday!’
‘You’re a fine one to talk. You and Baz are forever taking fancy holidays!’
‘Yes, but we always have a nosey ten-year-old daughter chaperoning us from the room next door!’
‘Bad luck!’ laughed Charley but, feeling the need to confide and offload the niggling anxiety that had been plaguing her for the last few days, she added lightly, ‘I’ll tell you what wasn’t so lovely… Ricky’s family.’
‘Why?’ Tara’s voice was tinged with concern. ‘What happened?’
‘There just seemed to be this assumption that Ricky and I were… well, practically engaged, and that we’d be the next couple walking up the aisle. I mean, why else would I be dragged round half of Tuscany to meet his entire extended family? And then, when I accidentally caught the bouquet—’
There was an explosion of laughter from Tara. ‘Accidentally! Yeah, right!’
‘Oh don’t you bloody start!’ wailed Charley.
‘Is that all?’ scoffed Tara. ‘I thought you were going to say they hated you because they wanted him to marry some local girl instead. God, imagine what a nightmare that would have been.’
‘No thanks!’ joked Charley, but her unease remained, especially when Tara bluntly told her she was naïve to expect to pitch up at Ricky’s sister’s wedding without certain assumptions being made by his family. Reluctantly, Charley had to accept the point, especially since Ricky had specifically asked his parents to invite her, and he had apparently never taken anyone home to meet them before, ever. So she should have seen it coming, they both should, and perhaps he had. Either way, she couldn’t really blame his family.
‘I’m just not sure if I want to marry Ricky. We’ve not even been going out that long and…’
‘You don’t have a choice,’ Tara informed her. ‘Monnie is desperate to be a bridesmaid.’
‘I’m not going to marry Ricky just so that Monnie can be a bloody bridesmaid!’ laughed Charley.
‘No, you’re going to marry Ricky because you love him, and he adores you, and because you have great sex… and don’t even start to deny that any of that is true, especially the last bit.’
Charley didn’t even bother to try.
In contrast to Charley enjoying her meal-for-one and an evening of solitude, Pam was girding her loins to face another depressingly lonely evening, despite being in the process of cooking a meal for four. She poured a generous slug of olive oil in a large frying pan and set it on the stove and then, when it was hot, she slid in a finely chopped onion, which gave a gratifying sizzle. Turning the heat down, she left it to soften while she fetched the risotto rice.
A little over a year ago she’d been happily married, sharing her home and her life with her husband. As it turned out, she’d only been happy because ignorance is bliss, and the discovery that Geoff had been having an affair for several years with a former colleague of his had abruptly and traumatically ended their forty-year marriage. A chillingly sobering visit to a lawyer had informed her she would probably lose the house if they divorced, which had distressed her far more than the thought of losing her husband. The house was Josh’s childhood home; years of memories of him were imprinted into its walls and she couldn’t bear to give it up. Wisely, she’d put the divorce on hold, kicked Geoff out, and moved back to the house alone. Short of money, she’d started hosting foreign high school students via a language academy in Bristol. The courses, and therefore their visits, were very short term, lasting just a few weeks, but they ran regularly and the school was a prompt, no-quibble payer. Currently she had three sixteen-year-old lads who were apparently from Germany although, since they barely said a word to her, they could have come from outer space, for all that mattered.
The onions had softened, so she stirred in the rice, put the vegetables to simmer in chicken stock and carried the plates and cutlery into the dining room. She’d naively imagined that having youngsters around would be good company, and had pictured them noisily flocking round the table for meals, setting the table, and cheerfully practising their English with her. The joyful fantasy had quickly dissipated when the first batch had arrived. She blamed mobile phones. The teenagers barely spoke to one another, let alone to her, with their eyes glued to their screens and their thumbs furiously working the keys, and all her attempts to engage them in conversation had faltered and failed. The most she usually got out of any of them was a brief ‘thank you’ for the meal, and very basic details about where they were going the next day, whether they’d need a packed lunch, and what time they’d be ‘home’. She couldn’t blame them, she supposed; she was old enough to be their grandmother.
The risotto was ready, so she carried it through to the dining room, pausing at the bottom of the stairs to call up, ‘Boys, supper!’
A nano beat later she was rewarded by the thump of three pairs of feet eagerly thudding down the stairs like a small herd of wildebeest and she smiled to herself, the stampede reminding her of Josh and her other son Luke at that age. The lads clattered into their places and she dished out their food and tried to start a conversation, not for her own entertainment, but because she was supposed to, as part of her hosting duties.
‘So what did you all do today?’
Three mute faces turned to her, and then to each other in panic-induced silence, until one of them, clearly having lost the eyeball battle, was forced to reply.
‘We went shopping,’ he managed.
‘Oh?’ Pam tried to look interested. ‘Did you buy anything?’
‘No.’
She glanced across to the other two, who both shook their heads hurriedly but said nothing.
‘Oh, okay,’ said Pam then valiantly tried again. ‘Did you have a good time?’
More uncomfortable looks ricocheted between the boys but eventually one of them plucked up the courage to say, ‘No. It was very boring.’
‘Oh, okay,’ repeated Pam, defeated. Right, well, we’ll leave it at that then.
The conversation having stalled into silence, the boys immediately retreated to the comfort zones of their phones and, not for the first time, Pam reflected on how lonely you could feel in a room full of people.
After they’d wolfed down the risotto, followed by large slabs of her home-made sticky toffee pudding with hot caramel sauce, the youngsters fled to the sanctuary of their rooms. Pam cleared the table and stacked the dishwasher, thinking that if they’d been her sons she’d have expected them to help. Pouring herself a mug of tea she wandered through to the living room where she switched on the TV and, not caring what was on, sank onto the sofa to while away the evening until she could reasonably go to bed. The images flickered in front of her eyes but she was barely aware of what she was watching, her thoughts having drifted to Charley and the conversation they’d had about Ricky’s family. She turned to the photo on the windowsill of Josh and Charley at their wedding. Her son beamed back at her broadly, his eyes brimming with joy, and she remembered how confident the two newly-weds had been that they were going to be happy for the rest of their lives. But now Josh was dead, and Charley had found someone new, and the thought cut Pam like a jagged knife. She didn’t for one second begrudge her widowed daughter-in-law the chance of a happy future after Josh – a future without Josh – because Charley, lovely, adorable Charley, had made her son’s short life complete. Yet the knowledge that the young woman she had grown to love would soon become part of someone else’s family, and no longer any part of hers, broke her heart.
‘I’m going to lose her,’ she told Josh sadly.
She knew it was probably inevitable one day, but Charley’s trip to Tuscany had brought the loss one step closer. The old adage sprang to her mind, ‘You’re not losing a son, you’re gaining a daughter’. Well nobody warned me that if I lost my son, I’d lose my daughter-in-law too.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her phone ringing. She wasn’t entirely surprised. Zee, her oldest friend, had taken to calling her more frequently since her separation from Geoff. She muted the TV and reached for her phone.
‘Is this your responsible citizen, “Care in the Community” call?’ she asked dryly as she answered.
‘No, it’s my nightly check-up on the aged and decrepit.’
‘How very dare you! You’re older than me!’ spluttered Pam, her spirits lifting, as they always did, chatting with Zee. The two of them had been close friends for decades.
‘How’s things?’ Zee asked lightly.
‘Oh, fine,’ replied Pam, equally lightly.
‘“Fine” as in really fine, or “Fine” as in “actually a bit crap but I don’t want to go on about stuff like a broken record”?’
Guilty as charged, thought Pam but she managed a laugh before admitting, ‘I’m just a bit low.’
‘Any reason in particular?’
For a moment Pam considered confiding in her old friend her sadness about losing Charley, but thinking she would sound selfish, she lied.
‘No, just the usual. Except – and can you believe this? – I’m missing that damn dog!’
‘Seriously? You only had him a week.’
‘I know. How insane is that?’
In all her sixty-plus years, Pam had never owned a dog and she was surprised at how quickly she’d got used to the lurcher’s lumbering, lovable presence. She missed having him follow her around like a faithful shadow, and the warmth of his rough body as he heavily plonked himself down next to her on the sofa, heaving melodramatic, heartrendingly soulful sighs designed to let her know how much he was missing his beloved Ricky.
‘Why don’t you get one?’
‘I’m tempted, honestly I am. A dog would be better company than the school students, bless them.’
‘Better company than a husband too,’ replied Zee, much to Pam’s amusement.
‘Definitely more faithful!’
‘So why don’t you?’
‘Because I’d have to send it out to work to pay for the food and vet bills!’
Maybe she should get a dog, she mused, after Zee had rung off. Other working people did. At least the house wouldn’t feel so empty. Plus, she’d have company, and good company at that – the kind that wanted to be with you, that actually wanted to share the sofa with you, if nothing else. Then she realised that she was literally missing a dog she’d only lived with for a week more than she was missing the man she’d lived with for forty years which, when she thought about it, spoke volumes. Idly, she wondered whether she should consider getting a permanent lodger instead of a series of temporary students. At least then there’d be a sporting chance of some interesting company in the evenings, but she baulked from making a long-term commitment to living with someone she barely knew and might not even really like.
Her previous dejection soon reasserted itself, a low level depression sliding back into her stomach like a dull weight. She seemed to be having a constant battle with it these days, and nothing she did could banish it. Ever self-perceptive, she knew what had triggered it today. It was the thought of losing Charley, as well as having lost everyone else. Luke, her eldest son, had moved away for his career, Josh had died, Geoff had left her, and now Charley was slipping away from her. It wasn’t surprising she was left feeling unwanted, unnecessary and abandoned.