On a Beautiful Day Read online

  She looked down at the beige carpet for a moment, then lifted her head and tried again. ‘Oh yeah, by the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ she said, in more of a breezy, don’t-worry sort of way, but there was nothing convincing about her expression, nothing at all. Her lips trembled momentarily. This was hard, and that was before she was even properly saying it to anyone. ‘I’m scared,’ she found herself confessing to the mirror, and then jerked her head away, unable to bear her own vulnerability.

  No. Don’t, Eve. Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. She gripped the edges of the wooden chest of drawers for a moment, trying to buoy herself up, then let out a sigh. Maybe this was a bad idea anyway. She thought of how she’d left her husband downstairs, hunched over his laptop on the kitchen table, the birds still chirruping in the trees outside. They were almost at the point of midsummer, when the evenings were so long and light, the last vestiges of yellowy sunshine falling like syrup through the window. Neil was already under so much pressure at work. Could she really add to that? Was there any point?

  It was just a check-up, after all, she told herself bracingly. Just a few tests and a chat with the doctor. Why have both of them stressing out about it, when he was currently overwhelmed with office politics? She would go to the appointment on her own, she decided, find out the facts and then, once she knew the score, she’d be able to tell him what was happening. She’d fix it, like she always did.

  Eve was tough, she didn’t need a chaperone for anything, least of all a clinic appointment. And if Neil came, he’d probably only be taking phone calls and having to type important emails, and it would totally get on her nerves. No. She was better off alone. It would be fine.

  If Eve was the sort of person who went in for self-psychoanalysis, she’d probably have listed one of her most formative experiences as the day she’d opened her GCSE results as a teenager. She’d worked bloody hard for those exams, put everything she had into them, and had been rewarded by receiving A grades for every single one. Her dad, the person she’d always slavishly tried to please, was proud of her, hugging her and trying to take her to the pub, until her mum had pointed out that, at sixteen, Eve was still too young. Nonetheless, she had glowed. All she’d ever wanted was for him to be proud and say well done, and now he had done both.

  But then a strange thing had happened. Within minutes of his praise, she realized the words had made absolutely no difference to her. She didn’t even really like him by then; she thought he was volatile and a bully, with no boundaries when it came to self-control. So what if he was proud? She was proud of herself. Did her dad’s opinion change anything, or matter? No, actually, not a single bit.

  Pretty much from that moment on, she had made the liberating decision that she was not going to pass exams – or do anything! – in an attempt to please another person. It was all about her, how she felt, and she didn’t need anybody else’s approval to make her feel good. It was a startling, incredible turning point. She could practically feel her butterfly wings emerging, shimmering and bright and beautiful, helping her fly away from the family home eventually and leave it far behind. It was what she tried to teach her daughters: that hard work was its own reward, and independence the winner’s prize.

  Despite this noble motto, which had always served her so well, the following day at work Eve found it hard to concentrate. As she stared blankly at the unpaid invoices of Maggie Doherty, her ditzy make-up-artist client, a voice in her head kept asking questions. Questions she did not want to dwell upon. What if, the voice persisted, the doctor sits you down tomorrow and announces, You’ve got cancer, it’s very aggressive – you’re going to die within the year? What then? She pictured herself stumbling through the clinic doors all on her own, crying and shaking, trying to drive herself home with tears rolling down her face . . . It was a terrible image. Even for her, I-can-manage Eve, it felt a step too far all of a sudden.

  On impulse, she texted Jo: Don’t suppose you are around tomorrow, are you? Sort of mid-morning-ish?

  As a nurse, but also as Eve’s oldest friend, Jo was kind and competent and would know all the right things to say if . . . Well, just ‘if’. She was discreet, too, she could keep a secret and wouldn’t go blabbing to the others. But then again . . . Eve bit her lip, feeling treacherous. It would be wrong of her to tell Jo and not Neil. What would that say about her marriage, if she went to a friend before her husband? Nothing very positive, that was for sure.

  She wished she hadn’t started imagining being at the clinic on her own now. Talk about self-sabotage. Because it was all she could think about suddenly – the trawl around the long identical corridors, the sound of her own shoes slapping on the floor as she walked, sitting quiet and frightened in a waiting room with nobody to take her mind off things. Nobody to look up expectantly with an Are you okay? face as she came out of the consultation room, to put an arm round her and steer her along to the nearest coffee place afterwards. Oh, help. Why had she ever thought she could tough this one out alone?

  There was still no word from Jo, but she was probably busily administering vaccinations to squalling infants, or dressing wounds, or rubber-gloved and in the middle of a smear test, her phone on silent. Fair enough. Perhaps she should just bite the bullet and ask Neil after all, Eve thought. Because he was her husband. Her partner and ally against the rest of the world.

  Her computer screen had switched itself off through lack of action and she clicked the mouse absent-mindedly, only for a notification to flash up telling her of a new email from Neil. Talk of the devil. Maybe he’d sensed there was something on her mind, she thought in a rush of gratitude, clicking through to the in-box. Perhaps he would have emailed providing a convenient intro – You all right? We haven’t managed to chat properly lately – and she’d be able to reply, Actually, now that you mention it . . . and just tell him. It might even be easier in an email. If kind of unorthodox.

  His email, when she opened it, was succinct to the point of being brusque, though: Don’t suppose you’ve had time to iron my blue shirt, have you? Need it for Sales Conference tomorrow.

  And that was it, the entire message. No ‘Dear Eve’, no ‘Love Neil’. Certainly no please and thank you, and I realize this is a bit cheeky, but . . .

  God! She read it again, feeling aggrieved. It was so impersonal, so offish, he might have been addressing some poor lowly skivvy, not asking a favour of his so-called beloved wife. ‘You can iron your own bloody shirt,’ she muttered to the screen, deleting the message before she sent a rude reply after it. Then the words percolated through. Wait, though. If he was going to the company Sales Conference tomorrow, there was no way he’d be able to sneak out and meet her, whatever the reason. So that was that decision made for her. Damn it.

  The phone on her desk rang just then: reception. ‘A young man’s here to see you – Lewis Mulligan? Says he’s found some more receipts, and should he bring them up?’ asked Pam, the receptionist.

  Lewis Mulligan again, popping up like her guilty conscience. I’ll go with you, he’d told her without invitation. I don’t mind.

  It would be ridiculous to take him up on his offer, though, wouldn’t it? Unprofessional and unconventional, and definitely weird. She bit her lip and noticed that a text had come through from Jo: Really sorry, manic at work right now. Some other time? xxx

  ‘Eve?’ prompted Pam from the handset.

  ‘Sorry, yes. Um . . . Thanks, Pam. Could you send him up?’

  Chapter Nineteen

  When Laura was a kid, the man who lived next door to them, Mr MacLeish, had owned a brindled Staffie called Pearl, which completely idolized him. What there was to idolize about Mr MacLeish – bad-tempered and prone to hectoring her mum, Helen, for sundry neighbourly misdemeanours – Laura could not compute, but that dog just doted on him. Whenever her owner went out, Pearl would perch in the window, soulful brown eyes patiently scanning the horizon for his return. With every approaching passerby, she would stiffen expectantly, chest taut, ears p
ricked – is it? Could it be? – only to deflate once she’d realized the answer was no. Sometimes they heard Pearl howling and whining through the wall, if he was late home from work. ‘That dog can’t stand its own company,’ Helen would sniff, rolling her eyes in irritation.

  Laura thought she understood how Pearl felt, these days. It was over a fortnight now since Matt had walked out, and she still wasn’t used to coming back to an empty house at night to find everything exactly as she’d left it, or waking up alone in the bed, feeling marooned in its lonely expanse. Sometimes she would pace restlessly through the silent rooms like a caged animal, her gaze occasionally alighting on some object or other of Matt’s – a pair of his old trainers, an ancient football scarf, his beloved Alex Ferguson book – and she’d have to snatch her eyes away, as if the sight was too painful to be endured. All those ordinary, everyday things – things she’d never thought twice about before – had become suffused with heartbreak and melancholy since his departure, symbols of the tragedy that had befallen her. Why hadn’t she appreciated the normality of her old life at the time? Why had she taken their easy domesticity for granted?

  Just get through each day, Jo had advised, but each day was as unremittingly bleak as the last. Laura found herself swinging chaotically between wild hopes that this would all have been a terrible mistake and that he’d return, begging her forgiveness, followed by a plunging relapse into the depths of pessimism. Then she’d feel crushed by the weight of despair that this was all her life totted up to now: a too-quiet house and the lonely sinking of a bottle of wine at night in front of inane TV programmes, because she couldn’t concentrate on anything more profound. Not to mention more cake than any sane person knew what to do with.

  ‘Not going for the heartbreak diet then?’ Gayle at work had said unthinkingly, seeing Laura chow miserably down on a large slice of coffee-and-walnut sponge. She’d brought in three full tins of baked goods so far that week, adorned with Post-its saying ‘Help Yourself’, and some of her colleagues were starting to call her Patisserie Valerie. ‘I was always the same – ate my way through the pain. You want to watch it, though; you don’t want to pile on the pounds and bump into your ex looking like a blimp!’

  Thanks a lot, Gayle, Laura thought, tipping the contents of her plate into the bin when the other woman had returned to her desk. As for bumping into him – that wasn’t going to happen, seeing as Matt had already left for Newcastle, promising to come back and sort through the rest of his possessions just as soon as he’d found a flat. Off he’d gone, striking out in his own direction without a backward glance her way. How had he managed to create all this momentum for himself, this impressive forward drive, she kept wondering, when she, meanwhile, had been left to flounder in the choppy waters of his wake, and it was all she could do to keep from going under?

  Still, there was work to keep her busy at least – endless expectant mothers to interview, in the name of product feedback; endless meetings about keywords and brand values; endless pictures of smiling fertile women to choose from; and . . . oh God. Aversion therapy, they called it, didn’t they, where you were forced to confront your fears head-on, to look them in the eye, as a means of speeding up the healing process, but Laura wasn’t convinced it was working all that well for her. She’d never been one for ripping off a plaster in one swift wrench, after all, preferring to approach it slowly, cautiously, one tiny corner peeled away at a time.

  And then one afternoon she was faced with working through the questionnaires that the panel members had filled in for her, uploading every last pertinent detail onto a database so that the company could build a solid bank of potential product-testers who could be called upon for future case-studies. This was a task she’d been putting off for ages, because it was dreary and menial, but a virus had swept through the department recently and unfortunately there was nobody else to whom she could conceivably delegate it.

  She began with the very first trio she’d interviewed: the young blonde woman with the milkmaid plaits, the rather grumpy one who didn’t like people touching her bump, and the older woman who’d seemed delighted with every aspect of her pregnancy. A mixed bunch, to say the least.

  The milkmaid’s form was full of exclamation marks, her writing rounded and childish, the content fulsome but essentially bland. The bad-tempered one had been terser in her replies, focusing on quite negative aspects of her pregnancy: how tired she was, the aches and pains, the indigestion and heartburn. (Ungrateful cow, Laura thought.) And the third one, the older woman, had beautiful cursive handwriting and was measured and thoughtful in her responses, expressing her hopes and joy. Except . . . Ah. This woman – Catherine, her name was – hadn’t completed all the sections of the form, Laura noticed. In particular, the details of any partner. Perhaps she was gay. Had she mentioned a significant other? The other two had been very keen to witter on about their husbands – Mr Turbo-Sperm and Mr Rich – but this lady had been rather more circumspect about divulging such information.

  Laura dialled her number. ‘Hi. Catherine? This is Laura Bassett from BodyWorks Beauty Products,’ she said. ‘Thanks so much for coming in as part of our panel, it was lovely to meet you and get your feedback.’

  ‘Not at all, my pleasure. I’ve been enjoying trying out the samples,’ Catherine replied.

  ‘Great! Glad to hear it,’ Laura said. ‘I was just ringing today because I was adding your details to our database and saw you hadn’t filled in any partner’s details. Was there anyone you wanted me to add to the system? We can send them things to try as well, you see or—’

  ‘No, it’s fine. There’s no partner. Just me,’ came the reply.

  ‘Oh,’ said Laura, feeling as if she might have put her foot in it. Perhaps there was some very sad story in Catherine’s background that was none of her business, and she’d accidentally just poked the wound. ‘Sorry. That’s fine, then. Er . . .’

  ‘No need to be sorry! It was my choice. Got sick of waiting around for Mr Right, took matters into my own hands. So to speak.’ She giggled like a naughty schoolgirl. ‘I went with Mr Sperm Donor instead,’ she explained, just in case Laura hadn’t understood. ‘Between you and me, it was the best decision of my life.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Laura again, taken aback at such frankness. She hadn’t been expecting that. ‘Right! Well . . . Good for you.’ Was that an appropriate thing to say? ‘So . . . um . . . thanks again for your time earlier. Sorry to have bothered you. And – well, all the best.’

  N/A she typed into the ‘partner’s details’ section of Catherine’s database entry, once they’d said goodbye and ended the call. So Catherine was going it alone – whoa. That was a brave thing to do, she thought, moving onto the next section and typing busily. To say: no husband, no problem, and just get on with it anyway. To say: I choose a baby, regardless of being single. But was that fair on the baby? Wasn’t it, at the end of the day, a tiny bit selfish?

  I went with Mr Sperm Donor, she’d said, with as little drama in her voice as if she was describing how she liked her coffee. Did she even know the sperm donor, or was it just some random test-tube’s worth she’d been assigned in a clinic? And how did you break that sort of news to a child, anyway, years down the line? All of a sudden Laura felt like calling back and asking her these questions. Aren’t you scared? she wanted to ask. Aren’t you worried about having to do everything on your own?

  She remembered Catherine’s happiness from when they’d met before, and had to admit she hadn’t noticed a single flash of fear across the other woman’s face. Out of all of the panel, she’d been the one who seemed most delighted with her condition in fact, the most relaxed and optimistic. Best decision of my life! she’d cried just now, sounding positively jubilant about it.

  Interesting, Laura thought to herself, as she typed. Very interesting indeed.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Bring your arms overhead as you inhale . . . and, as they continue past your ears, nod your head and deepen your abdominal muscles, y
our upper body rolling up and off the mat . . .’

  Here they were again in the dusty church hall for Pilates, the smell of wood polish and cheesy feet lingering in the air. India was barely listening to the soothing Mogadon tones of Jan, the teacher, distracted as she was by thoughts of Robin. Since their initial startling encounter outside Alice’s funeral, he certainly hadn’t wasted any time. He’d tracked India down on Facebook that same evening and had sent her a friend request and message, to which she was yet to reply, slightly unnerved by how keen he seemed to be to reconnect.

  Not only that, but he’d also followed a link to her Mini Music page and had left a comment: Mini Music: Happy Tunes for Happy Children sounds exactly the charming sort of class my five children, Xavier, Cosmo, Tallulah, Pretentious and Loadawank, would love to attend. Please tell us more!

  She could practically hear the mocking laughter through the computer screen; she could all but see his thin top lip curled in derision. Music teacher, my arse, he must have scoffed.

  Deleting his comment with shaking fingers, she’d felt exposed somehow, as if she had laid bare her life with all its shortcomings, for him to sneer at. And now here he was, the wolf at the door, knocking and knocking. Little pig, little pig, let me come in . . .

  ‘And exhale as you continue curling up, feeling the spine supported by the abdominal muscles. Reach for your toes without losing the curve of your spine . . .’