On a Beautiful Day Page 3

  Oh my God. Was that really her, Eve Taylor, having a breakdown in public? In the Debenhams bathroom section? Common sense immediately snapped back in, like a twang of elastic, propelling her off to the Ladies to dry her eyes and splash her face with cold water. Pull yourself together, Eve. For heaven’s sake, pull yourself together!

  The loos smelled of sickly air freshener and Eve held her wrists under the cold tap, vaguely remembering that it was meant to help with shock. Or was it to bring down a high temperature? She couldn’t remember any more. Her brain seemed to have its facts jumbled up, displaced from their usual neatly filed and collated system. All she could hear in her head was that screeching of brakes, the grinding of metal. The driver’s face kept flashing up before her eyes, his terrified expression as the vehicle had lunged straight towards them . . .

  ‘Are you okay, love?’ asked a woman in a red hijab who was at the next sink along. Her brown eyes were kind as she gazed at Eve’s blotchy face. ‘Can I help at all?’

  ‘I’m—’ Eve’s breathing had become tight and strained; she had to grip hold of the basin and stare down at the rushing water for a moment. Was this what a panic attack felt like? Why couldn’t she breathe normally? ‘I’m fine,’ she said eventually and not entirely convincingly. ‘Thank you,’ she added, so that the other woman wouldn’t ask any further questions.

  She was fine, she told herself savagely. She hadn’t been injured, had she? No. So why was she making such a silly fuss, why was she overreacting like this? In bloody Debenhams, of all places?

  The woman was still looking at her sideways with an expression of concern and Eve couldn’t handle it any more. She turned abruptly, shaking her hands dry, and darted into the nearest cubicle, bolting the door and leaning against the cool tiles, her heart still pounding: boom, boom, boom.

  It’s okay. You’re okay. Keep breathing, she told herself desperately, closing her eyes. Just keep breathing.

  Sitting on the bus, India found she was shivering and put her arms around herself. Hurry up, she thought, as the traffic lights ahead changed to red and they wheezed to a halt. Hurry up. All she wanted to do was to get home, to throw her arms around Dan and the children, to immerse herself in the comfort of their warm bodies, to smell her kids’ necks and count her blessings. Shut out the rest of the world. There was nothing like coming up close and personal to blood and trauma to make a person want to dig down deeper into their own burrow.

  When the car had come hurtling towards her and her friends like that, and she’d felt for a terrifying split second that she might actually die, she’d thought, No, not like this. Not on my own, leaving Dan and the kids behind!

  Except . . . She shivered again, even though the bus was stuffy. Except that wasn’t quite the truth, was it? If she was being strictly honest about the order of things, her family hadn’t been her first thought at all. No. Because in that moment when the driver had lost control and the car had roared in their direction, her whole body had trembled as if anticipating retribution, as if this was Judgement Day. As if she’d been waiting for something like this to happen for years. And the first thing that had flashed through her head? I knew I wouldn’t get away with it forever.

  Chapter Three

  Walking back to her small rented flat in Hulme, Jo found herself wishing that, like her friends, she had someone waiting for her at home too, someone who would hold her close and exclaim, Oh God, how awful, are you okay? That must have been shocking.

  Just someone to make her feel less alone. Who would listen while she talked.

  She’d been living on her own since her marriage had broken down, first in their old house in Stretford before she and her ex decided to sell up, and more recently in her own place, but she still hadn’t quite got used to the silence of an empty flat when you walked through the door. Sure, she’d learned how to fill up her time, she’d come to know the TV listings backwards and burned through many evenings watching what her ex-husband had always scathingly termed ‘brainless TV’, but there was, most definitely, a whiff of sadness about her new place. The way the sofa sagged at one end where she sat and ate biscuits from the packet every night. The hush of the bedroom when she turned the light out and rolled over in bed. She had been lonely there, far lonelier than she liked to admit.

  Until she’d met Rick, of course, and it had been like opening a dark curtain and letting sunshine pour into her life again. Only . . . Well, where did they stand now, after what had happened last night? What was she meant to think?

  She frowned, feeling her head sink as she trudged along. There they’d been at the restaurant table, her with her satin knickers and perfumed skin beneath her clothes, and seconds after the waitress had whisked away their starter plates (garlic prawns, delicious, although she was already worrying about her breath and all the snogging she hoped to do), Rick’s phone had rung. ‘Sorry, I’d better take this, I won’t be long,’ he promised. But Jo only needed to hear half the conversation – ‘What, now? We’re in the middle of dinner . . . Well, I’m with a friend . . . No, not Bobby . . . No, it’s not Dave, either. Look, that’s not the point, have you tried the neighbours?’ – to get a sinking feeling. And then, when he hung up and said, ‘I’m really sorry about this, but that was my daughter Maisie and – well, to cut a long story short, she’s on her way here now because . . .’ His expression changed from apology to exasperation. ‘Because she’s locked out of the house and my ex-wife . . . Oh, you don’t want to know.’ He sighed, then reached over and took her hand. ‘I’m sorry. Maisie’s thirteen and she’s been a bit all over the place since the divorce. I can’t really say no to her at the moment.’

  The daughter that he couldn’t say no to. The words reverberated in her head warningly and she felt her skin prickle, the first red flag of disquiet. There’s always a catch, she heard her mum’s cynical voice sigh. Bloody men, they’re all the same, and I should know, I’ve tried enough of them.

  To be fair, when you reached your forties, everyone had baggage, everyone had their past dragging around behind them like a ball and chain. In Jo’s case, it was a bad marriage and the fearful conviction that she was destined to be a spinster for evermore. In Rick’s case, the baggage was apparently an unreliable ex-wife and a needy teenage daughter. Oh, he’d given them fleeting mentions before now – she knew they were there in the background – but it was quite a gear-change, from them being shadowy abstract concepts to coming face-to-face with the reality. In this case, his thirteen-year-old daughter, who turned up halfway through the main course, all flicky eyeliner and long hair and scowls for Jo; who waited until Rick was trying to catch the waiter’s eye, before giving her the finger. All of a sudden, Jo was feeling quite a lot less confident about the situation, especially when Maisie went on to talk repeatedly, and in glowing terms, about her mother, Rick’s ex.

  Hey, Dad, did Mum tell you about that amazing party she went to? It was after the opening night of Manchester Fashion Week, and loads of famous people were there. The goody bag was SO cool.

  Did you hear Mum on the radio the other day? Yeah, Woman’s Hour – they were interviewing her about her book. She was trending on Twitter for, like, two hours afterwards.

  Did Mum say: she’s going to take me and her to New York over the summer? I can’t wait!

  How to intimidate your dad’s new girlfriend in three easy steps; Jo had sat there feeling frumpier and duller by the second, as The Other Woman became real, inked in, a threat. She’d never been to New York, or on the radio, or invited to an after-show party, after all. What’s he doing with you? a mean voice kept asking inside her head, while her jaw ached from maintaining a fixed polite smile. And then, when dinner was over and it was clear that Rick, telegraphing apologies with his eyes, would be going home with Maisie, rather than Jo and her best knickers, she had felt embarrassed and self-conscious about kissing him with his daughter standing there, rolling her eyes and making vomit noises in the background. All in all, it had been a major passion-destroyer. Back i
n her quiet flat, doubt had pierced her heart for the first time since meeting him, and she’d wondered if her instincts had been wrong all along.

  It was tricky stuff, trying to negotiate the dating world in your forties, frankly, especially when you felt you didn’t really know the rules any more. Should you hold back and protect your heart, or throw yourself in with abandon and take a chance? She thought of poor shaken-up Bill, rushing across town to see his wife, and how he’d urged Jo, ‘Tell your husband you love him’. Life could change in an instant, couldn’t it? The world could knock you sideways from out of nowhere. And here she was now, on her own again, heading back to her lonely, empty flat, while all her friends hurried home to their loved ones. Was that really what she wanted?

  Twenty minutes later, Jo was just walking rather despondently towards her front door when her phone rang. When she pulled it from her bag and saw Rick’s name onscreen, she found herself giving a little sob of relief, her emotions brimming to the surface again. ‘Hello,’ she said, turning the key in the lock and shouldering the door open.

  ‘Hi – oh, thank God,’ he said, and she could hear the breath rushing out of him as if it had been stoppered up until that second. ‘I’ve just seen the news. Are you okay? Wasn’t that crash, like, about fifty yards from where you were having lunch?’

  A spark flared inside her at once, a warm glow kindling at the concern in his voice. Rick sounded so worried for her. He had seen the news and thought immediately about her well-being, and had actually said ‘thank God’ at the sound of her voice. Hadn’t she just been wishing for someone to care about her as well? She loved that he’d asked. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, kicking off her shoes and wandering through to the kitchen, ‘but yes, we were just on the other side of the road. It was pretty awful to be honest. Oh no!’

  ‘What?’

  Crossing the floor towards the kettle, she’d walked through a large puddle on the chipped laminate floor and now her tights were full of water. ‘Shit, there’s been some kind of . . .’ Water was pooling out from the bottom of the freezer, she noticed, and she yanked open the door to see that her food in there – the sad single-lady stuff of leftover curries in Tupperware containers and massive special-offer tubs of ice cream bought on sod-it days – was all gently thawing, drips of water collecting on the bottoms of the drawers. ‘Oh, bollocks. Either the freezer has died or . . .’ She flicked at the light switch – on, off, on, off – but nothing happened. ‘Damn it, there’s been a power cut. Can I call you back?’

  ‘Sure.’ He hesitated for a second. ‘Or I can come over, if you . . . ?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said quickly because this was the new Jo, who was resolute in coping without a man and his toolbox and advice. ‘I’ll ring you back in five. Sorry about this.’ She ended the call before she could change her mind and prodded what had once been a frozen chicken breast. From its spongy texture now, though, she estimated that the power had been lost hours ago, certainly too late to save this particular dinner from the dustbin. Great. As if she hadn’t had enough drama for one day.

  Letting out a groan, she went in search of the fusebox. It was only groceries, she reminded herself, thinking back to Miriam’s white, anxious face and trying to get some perspective. She could do this.

  Because Greg, Jo’s ex, had been a handyman – and something of a male throwback in terms of feminism – she had never been trusted with any DIY jobs around the house throughout their marriage. Even when she’d picked up a paint tray and roller one weekend when he’d been off at a stag do, and painted their bedroom as a surprise, he’d come back and immediately gone over her work with a new brush, shaking his head at her wobbly lines and uneven coverage. If she ever went to change a bulb, he’d laugh and say, Step aside, princess, this is man’s work, and pluck the light bulb from her hands as if her delicate princess brain couldn’t possibly cope with the responsibility. It had been a bit of a joke at first – she would roll her eyes and call him a sexist pig – but gradually she came to realize that he actually meant it. He genuinely thought that way. And it hadn’t been good for either of them.

  Luckily she wasn’t married to Greg any more – and was perfectly competent herself, moreover, able to do all those little jobs denied to her for so many years. She had rewired a plug a few weeks ago. She could pump her bike tyres, without him watching beady-eyed and telling her she was doing it wrong – give it here, let me. She had changed light bulbs, and set the timer on the cooker, and hung up all her own pictures. So a piddly little power cut – although inconvenient and frozen-curry-destroying – was not about to set her back now.

  Unfortunately, when she eventually located the fusebox and googled what to do on her phone, she could see that the fuse hadn’t tripped after all. In fact, everything looked as if it should be working just fine. She glanced at her phone, weakening for a second as she thought about calling Rick and asking him to come and help, but then – no – back came her resolve, and instead she called the electricity company to find out if there was a problem in the street that might explain her own power loss.

  ‘Did you not see the red bill? And the final warning? I’m afraid you’ve been cut off, darling,’ the woman from the helpline told her, when she eventually got through.

  ‘Cut off? But . . .’ Jo’s mouth dropped open before she could finish her sentence. There must be some mistake. Her rent at the flat included the bills – gas, electricity, council tax, water: the lot. The landlord, Dennis, was meant to take care of such services, not allow them to be severed unexpectedly. ‘But . . . I’m not the bill-payer. My landlord must have fallen behind . . .’ She could hear her own voice petering out in dismay. What did the helpline-woman care?

  ‘I’m sorry, love, but the account’s in arrears and we can’t switch the electricity back on again until we’ve received full payment,’ came the response. Sorry, but not sorry, in other words – and actually, fair enough, Jo thought wearily, when she was told the amount that was owing, a sum of money that left her feeling faint. ‘If you speak to him, get him to contact us urgently about payment, otherwise we’ll have to take further steps.’

  Oh, great. Did this mean that her gas supply might be in similar peril? she wondered, despair welling as she hung up and searched for her landlord’s number. The next thing she knew, someone from the council would be banging on the door because the council tax hadn’t been paid, and then the water would be cut off and all, and she’d drop dead from dehydration. Probably.

  Surprise, surprise, her landlord wasn’t answering his phone and her call went straight through to voicemail. ‘Dennis,’ she said firmly, ‘this is Jo Nicholls, from Harold Street. My electricity has been cut off because the bill hasn’t been paid. Please could you settle the account as soon as possible, as this is really inconvenient to me. Thank you.’

  She sank into a chair, feeling thoroughly fed up, before remembering the puddle on her floor and getting up again to find the mop. Bloody hell, this was the last thing she needed. She’d have to go and stay with Laura, she supposed, or – last resort – camp out in her mum’s spare room. But Jo was really trying not to lean on Laura quite so much these days, and she wasn’t sure she had the energy to endure an evening spent listening to the latest lurid instalment of her mum’s soap-opera life. Or, worse, being dragged out on the pull with her. Us single ladies have to stick together! Not a good idea. Was there anything more demoralizing than going out with your own mum and discovering that she was apparently way more of a catch than you?

  Just at that moment, her phone rang again and it was Rick, wondering what had happened to her – at which point she found herself telling him the whole dismal story.

  ‘You could pay the bill yourself, and get the money back off the landlord in lieu of rent,’ he pointed out when she’d finished.

  ‘I did wonder about that, but . . . well, it’s quite a lot,’ she had to say, feeling embarrassed at her own budgetary constraints. Until the sale of her old marital home was completed – a matter
of weeks now, she hoped – things were pretty tight on the financial front, a situation that hadn’t been helped recently with all the impulse spending she’d done: lipsticks and perfume and that new dress, not to mention their nights out together.

  ‘Okay, so why don’t you pack a bag and come and stay at mine for a few days, just until this landlord of yours pulls his finger out and gets everything sorted?’ he suggested next.

  Jo shut her eyes, not trusting herself to speak for a moment, because she really did not want to be the sort of woman who always needed to be rescued by a man. Plus there was that whole awkward daughter thing now, too. ‘Well . . .’ she said, then hesitated because despite all that, she’d had a tough day that had left her feeling vulnerable and she did actually quite want to be with someone tonight, to be held and comforted. Experienced as she was at dealing with a trauma situation, she was not a complete robot.

  ‘Are you still there?’ he asked, sounding confused. ‘No worries if you’ve got other plans, it was just a thought.’ He laughed. ‘You can say no, Jo, I’ll take it on the chin, honestly. I’ll live!’

  There – so he didn’t think she was incapable, she assured herself. He thought she might have other plans anyway and be too busy to come over. And wasn’t this what being a couple was all about, looking after each other when things went wrong? She found herself thinking of Bill Kerwin again, imagining him at his wife’s side in an A&E cubicle by now, holding her hand on the crisp white hospital sheets. Not all couples were doomed. ‘That would be great, if you’re sure,’ she said meekly. She had tears in her eyes for some stupid reason; perhaps this was the shock catching up with her at last. ‘Thanks, Rick.’

  She blew her nose, then went to her bedroom to pack a few things, where she made the mistake of glancing over at an old photograph of her mum. Helen Nicholls in her prime: great legs in a pea-green mini-dress, that huge mane of fox-coloured hair around her face, sharp eyes pinning you to the spot. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Jo heard her admonish. Staying for a few days at his place, when you’ve been having doubts? Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire!