Over You Read online

  The comment had come back to her time and time again over the next six months as she’d entered the twilight zombie world of twin babies: endless night feeds, puke-cleaning, bum-wiping and heaving double-buggy manoeuvres. Three more? Not likely, a voice muttered in her head. Never again would she put herself through all of this. Not for anybody. Never ever ever …

  People forget, though, don’t they? Mothers forget. Little things – car keys, sun hats, spare nappies. And big things – pain, sleepless nights, crying at breakfast every morning because she was so hideously exhausted. It had been hard, bloody hard. She had felt as if her whole identity had been sucked out of her as she battled through the days and weeks. She didn’t wear make-up for a whole year. She didn’t get a lie-in for even longer. She no longer yearned for new shoes or bags. She yearned only for sleep.

  Yet it passed. And last summer, she’d felt that her batteries had finally been recharged. She was ready to do it all over again.

  So they’d tried, Pete and Josie. How they’d tried to make Rose. Flat on her back, legs in the air, Josie would lie there each month, willing on the sperm to swim into the right area, to do the right thing. Sex became mechanical, something to be ticked off.

  ‘We have to do it tonight. I know you’re tired, but I’m sure this is the night, I’ve counted in my diary and …’

  ‘Wait, Pete! Let me put a pillow under my bum! Apparently it helps the sperm get there faster.’

  ‘Have you taken your zinc supplement? You know it’s good for your fertility, don’t you?’

  She’d lie there afterwards, hoisting her bottom in the air, uncomfortable and sticky, not daring to move. Half an hour, it said in her book. Lie on your back, legs raised, for half an hour. If nothing else, she was getting her stomach muscles back, she joked. Pete’s smile never quite reached his eyes.

  Then the finger-crossing would start. And the date consultations. Her last period had started on 22 February, so if she was pregnant now, the baby would be due on … She’d follow the line of dates in her pregnancy book. 28 November. Lovely! Just in time for Christmas!

  The alcohol would stop. Just in case.

  The positive thoughts would start. Just in case.

  She’d dream about her daughter. Rose Winter. Beautiful, strong, feisty Rose! A baby in the family again. She’d have to dig out the high chair and baby clothes from the loft, buy a brand-new single pram. No more dark blue or red or khaki – for Rose it would be pink and lilac all the way. She’d need muslins and nursing pads, a new sterilizer, a nice girly mobile to hang above the cot … She would create the perfect world for her daughter to come into.

  If only Rose would just hurry up and come!

  That was the problem. Josie’s imaginary daughter was feisty enough not to come when she was called. She ignored all the calls, in fact, for month after month after month, until sex had become a chore and Josie’s period was a peak of sheer misery every four weeks.

  Then the sex stopped altogether. Pete told her he felt depressed, that he couldn’t give her what she wanted. Maybe if they stopped trying so hard, had fun again, it would happen. Hence a carrier bag full of Agent Provocateur lingerie and what-have-you. Anything to get things going!

  But now she’d have to face facts. The baby stuff gathering dust in the loft might as well go to the next playgroup jumble sale, or the charity shops. She wasn’t going to need it now, was she?

  The phone jerked Josie out of her thoughts. A hiccup caught in her throat, and she passed a hand nervously through her hair. Right, OK. If it was Pete, what was she going to say?

  She grabbed the receiver without thinking anything else. Better answer quick before he bottled it and hung up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Barbara,’ announced a voice. ‘Is Pete there?’

  Josie felt her whole body tense. Did her mother-in-law really have to be so damn rude on the phone? she wondered. No ‘Hello, Josie.’ No ‘How are you, Josie?’ Not even a ‘How are my darling grandsons, Josie?’

  ‘Hello, Barbara,’ Josie said, unable to stop the sarcasm sliding into her voice. Sod it. She could be as rude as she liked in return today. ‘I’m very well, thank you for asking. No, Pete isn’t home. Actually, I’m surprised you’re trying to get hold of him here. I thought he’d have told you himself.’

  Silence. There, gotcha, Josie thought. Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

  ‘Told me what?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘That he’s left me!’ Josie replied. Her voice didn’t sound like her any more. It was a voice she’d put on for interviews in the past: tinny, artificially bright. Chirpy, even. ‘I can’t believe he hasn’t told you, Barbara. He’s left me and the boys for his new fancy woman. So why don’t you call him on his mobile and ask him to tell you all about it? I’m sure he’s dying to tell you what a spineless shit he really is. Goodbye!’ The word was practically a trill as she slammed the phone down, the breath panting out of her in hot painful spurts as if she’d just been running.

  Please don’t call back, she thought. Then, almost immediately afterwards, she thought, Please call back. I need to talk to somebody about Pete, even if it is just horrible Barbara.

  The phone lay silent beneath her clammy fingers. Barbara had probably had a seizure at the revelation, coupled with Josie’s rudeness. Or if not, she’d be punching the Quickdial button for Pete’s mobile, rolling her eyes at her husband. I said she was no good, that Josie. Didn’t I always say? And now he’s left her. She obviously drove him to it. You should have heard how snippy she was to me on the phone! Roy! Roy, are you listening? Go and sort the spare room out. The lad will need somewhere to stay, won’t he?

  Chapter Eight

  Josie would never forget the day she’d met Pete. It was a momentous occasion, in the same league as their wedding and the boys’ birth. She liked imagining their lives, hers and Pete’s, as two dots on a satellite screen, travelling in their own circles for so long without being on one another’s radar, then finally hurtling towards one another and … boom! … colliding in a golden mist of attraction. It had been approaching a year since she’d split up with Nick, and Josie was in a rut. Since Nick had dumped her (for his career, he’d said … for the platinum blonde, the grapevine had it), Josie had had a few dates, a few flings, a few one-nighters, but she hadn’t met anybody who even came close to Nick. It made her shudder now to remember those men – complete strangers, most of them – that she’d allowed into her bed, into her body, and then turfed out again the next morning. She’d told herself at the time that she was taking control, satisfying her own needs, but with hindsight she’d just wanted to be held and desired again, even if only for a few hours. She’d been lucky to escape lightly, with just a few lovebites and some stubble rash to show for it.

  Weekends had been worst, back then. It was summer, and Josie felt by rights she should have been cavorting saucily in a poppy-splashed meadow with somebody handsome, or taking day-trips to the sea with other couples, or sitting in pub gardens until her nose turned pink and freckly, or all those other things that twosomes did together.

  Instead, she felt uncomfortably alone. Nell was in the joined-at-the-hip honeymoon period with a new man, Andy, and had barely been in the flat for weeks. Lisa was away for conferences and business trips all the time. Josie literally didn’t know what to do.

  Then, one Sunday, she’d woken up feeling different. The lethargy that had weighed her down recently had disappeared. Something is going to happen today, she’d said to herself over breakfast. I just know it.

  She washed her hair and blow-dried it, slathered sweet-smelling moisturizer into her skin and put on a ditsy little summer dress and sandals. She was starting to feel tingly with anticipation. Something is going to happen.

  She took a bus to Islington. It was as good a place as any. The sun was warm on her bare shoulders as she wandered towards the Green, picking her way around breakfasting couples at pavement tables. She could smell coffee and croissants, and the sharp sti
nk of cigarette smoke. A lightness had settled upon her, as if she’d broken free from her misery over Nick at last. Her eyes fell on a sign for a new gallery just off the main road, and on the spur of the moment she decided to take a look.

  Just like that. She stepped into the cool dim foyer and changed everything. In that split second she steered her life in a whole new direction, with Pete, marriage and motherhood all lined up in front of her, like glittering treasures waiting to be discovered. Just like that.

  The gallery was small, only a couple of rooms really, but it felt calm and quiet, a bubble of tranquillity away from the buses and chattering Islingtonites outside. It was light in there, all big windows and bleached wood, and the walls were filled with paintings by local artists.

  She was staring at an abstract design – lots of shades of red in overlapping squares, thick brush-strokes of paint visible in ridges – when she heard footsteps behind her.

  She smelled him before she even saw him – a light, woody cologne. He smelled fresh, like summer. Without even clapping eyes on him, Josie found herself thinking about cavorting in the poppy-dotted meadow. With him.

  It was mad. It went against all the rules. But it was chemistry.

  She held her breath. Something is going to happen. Any second … now.

  ‘Nice,’ she heard him say. She turned to acknowledge the remark and saw him then, with his brown eyes and long lashes, his short dark hair, perfect skin, even white teeth. He wasn’t looking at the painting. He was looking at her.

  ‘Very nice,’ Josie replied, gazing straight back at him. She couldn’t help herself. He had a face that demanded to be flirted with.

  His eyes crinkled at the edges when he smiled. She found herself checking out his hands in case he wore a ring. He didn’t.

  ‘Like art, do you?’ he asked.

  ‘I do now,’ she replied. Her heart hammered under her floaty dress, she felt as if her nerve endings were all responding to him, with thousands of individual tingles. Thank goodness I shaved my legs, she found herself thinking, then pushed her gaze away from him, feeling prim and proper all of a sudden. Stop it, Josie! You don’t even know the man!

  ‘Me too,’ he said. And then he grinned. Leaned in, like a conspirator. ‘I’ve got a lovely pair of Pollocks I could show you, if you’re interested.’

  Josie burst out laughing. So cheeky! So rude! She loved him for it. ‘And I’ve got a very nice Constable, if you’re interested,’ she managed to splutter.

  He took her hand. Just like that, in the gallery, as if they’d known each other for years. ‘I’m Pete,’ he said. ‘Can I buy you a coffee?’

  ‘I’m Josie,’ she replied, suddenly demure. Her hand felt tiny in his warm brown fingers. ‘Yes please.’

  She should have known from the start, really. He’d been so slick, so sure of himself. How many other women had he charmed like that? How many other women had been flattered by that smile, that super-confidence? ‘I’ve got a lovely pair of Pollocks …’ I mean, really!

  But back then she’d been swept along by him, utterly bowled over. Hadn’t she been thinking to herself all day that something would happen? And something had. She had come alive again at his appearance, as if he’d enchanted her, or freed her from a spell. He was so funny, so quick, so good-looking.

  Bloody fantastic in bed, too. She’d hardly finished her coffee before they’d been at it like sluts, back at his hot, messy flat.

  That seemed a long time ago now. A different Josie had lain naked on his rumpled sheets smirking at him afterwards as he went to fetch glasses of water and fags. A different, fearless, bolder-than-brass Josie. That was who he’d fallen in love with, the Josie whose knickers were dangling from the cheeseplant where they’d been tossed in the midst of all the passion.

  She could hardly equate that saucepot – ‘a very nice Constable’, indeed! – with how she was now. And Pete meanwhile had moved on to his next conquest, leaving Josie and the boys washed up in his wake like battered pieces of driftwood.

  Josie sighed as she ushered her sons into playgroup. It was Tuesday morning, the second day that she’d woken up without Pete. She’d had to dish out another string of lies in answer to the big ‘Where’s Dad?’ question. He still hadn’t called her. Not a word. The hours he’d been away felt like a chasm between them now.

  ‘Hello, Toby, hello, Sam, we’re painting mugs for Father’s Day today!’ chirped Maddie, one of the playgroup staff. ‘Get your aprons on and sit down, that’s it. What’s your daddy’s favourite colour, then?’

  Josie winced. Of course. Father’s Day in a few weeks or so. What an irony.

  ‘Red,’ Toby said decisively, splodging a brush into the paint with gusto.

  ‘Green,’ Sam said in the next instant, grabbing a brush from the tin.

  ‘Bye, boys,’ Josie said, kissing their heads and stepping back as the paint started flying about. ‘Have fun, see you later.’

  ‘Hey, guess what, Maddie?’ she heard Sam say as she turned to go. ‘We’re going to Australia! To see polar bears!’

  She winced at his words but she couldn’t bear to correct him. She walked past the Lego table and the Play-Doh table and the little cloakroom, saying hello as brightly as she could manage to Zach’s mum and Daniel’s mum. She stopped as she saw her friend Emma bundling her daughter Clara through the doorway.

  ‘Josie, hi!’ Emma said, smiling at her as she whipped off Clara’s sun hat and hung it on a peg. ‘Are we on for a coffee this morning?’

  Josie hesitated for a second. Emma lived a couple of streets away and the two of them often stopped at the deli just opposite playgroup on their way home. Over many, many coffees and slices of cake, she, Emma, and a couple of other local friends, Laura and Harriet, had discussed the minutiae of their lives. They’d been taking it in turns over the years, it seemed, to get their lofts converted, their kitchens done, their halls recarpeted. One of them always had a new car, new baby or new holiday lined up. Four nuclear families: well-to-do and doing well. Until now. Now Josie had gone and broken all the rules, hadn’t she? Her own nuclear family had … well, gone nuclear.

  But she needed to talk. She’d been existing in a goldfish bowl of shock since Pete had left. She hadn’t told anybody yet – apart from Barbara, of course, but that old bag didn’t count for anything.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘Coffee sounds good.’

  ‘I’ll be two minutes,’ Emma said. ‘Come on, Clara. Oh, look! Painting mugs for Father’s Day! Do you want to make one for Daddy?’

  Josie tried not to listen to Clara’s bright chatter. It hurt too much. Clara still had a daddy at home, after all. And, come Father’s Day, Clara and her big sister Millie would be helping Emma upstairs with the breakfast tray, Clara’s pigtails bouncing as she jumped around saying, ‘Happy Father’s Day, Daddy! Look what I made for you!’

  ‘Are you all right, Jose?’

  Josie snapped out of her thoughts to see Emma right next to her, a puzzled expression on her face.

  She tried to smile, but could feel the tears gathering again at the kindness of Emma’s voice. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘No, I’m not all right.’

  Emma took her arm as they left the playgroup building. ‘What’s up? You sound like you’ve got a cold,’ she said sympathetically.

  Josie sniffed. If only she had a cold. If only that was all she had to care about! ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s … It’s something worse than a cold. Pete …’ Oh God, say it, just say it. The words were hard to get out when she wasn’t using them to attack her mother-in-law. Said to a friend, they stuck in her throat. ‘Pete’s walked out. He’s left. He’s … He’s got another woman.’

  There was a stunned silence, and Emma stopped walking, right in the middle of the pavement. ‘He’s what?’ she asked, incredulous. ‘You mean … You mean he’s having an affair? Pete?’

  Emma was right to sound shocked. Nobody in their group of friends had ever done anything quite so soap-opera-esque.

/>   Josie swallowed. ‘Em, I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered. ‘I’m really scared.’

  Emma looked as if she didn’t know what to do either. ‘How did it happen?’ she asked, aghast, steering Josie to the crossing. ‘I mean, are you sure it’s not just a mid-life-crisis thing?’

  Josie shook her head as they waited for the lights to change. ‘I don’t know, Em. I hope so. I’m floundering about trying to make sense of it all.’ She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘All I know is that he said he’d fallen in love with someone else – Sabine, she’s called – and that he felt we’d …’ She bit her lip. ‘That we’d outgrown each other. That things had gone stale between us.’

  ‘Outgrown each other?’ Emma echoed indignantly. She lowered her voice as they neared the deli. ‘Stale? Honestly! Me and Will are as dull as hell yet we jolly along together …’ She stopped. Not helping. Try again. ‘I mean, you can’t expect it all to be fireworks and weekends in Paris when you’re our age.’ She sighed and pushed open the door of the deli. Their favourite table, the one by the window, was empty, and she guided Josie over to it. ‘Wait there. I’m going to get you some food. Have you eaten anything lately? Did you have any breakfast?’

  Josie shook her head. ‘I forgot,’ she said, picking at a loose flake of skin on her thumb.

  ‘You forgot? No wonder you’re so pale. Wait there, I’ll be really quick.’

  Josie stared at her fingers while Emma went up to the counter. It seemed so long ago that she’d been amazed at Lisa forgetting to eat, back on their London weekend. Aeons ago. It was hard to believe it was merely a matter of days. Back then, she’d thought it incredible that someone should actually forget to put food in their mouth and swallow it at regular intervals. Now, she understood perfectly. Food was nothing. Everything was nothing.

  Emma bustled back again with a tray of lattes and an almond croissant each. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Eat.’ She eyed Josie anxiously over the rim of her cup as she sipped her coffee. ‘Josie, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I still can’t believe it. You must be completely blown apart.’