Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [61]
Marianne winked at Lucy. ‘And you’re coming too, aren’t you, Luce?’
Was she? Marianne was still on a mission to rescue her. Why did everyone always do that? But Marianne had taken Lucy’s coat from the stand with her own and was proffering it now.
The others topped up their glasses. Husbands were at home looking after children, and they were just getting started. Now that Marianne and Lucy were off they could return to school dinners and Mark Warner holidays.
Outside, Marianne put her arm through Lucy’s. ‘You can, you know, come with us, if you want. Can’t she Alec?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Hang on a second, let me get some money.’ Marianne turned to the cashpoint and fumbled in her bag.
Lucy stood awkwardly, shuffling from foot to foot. When she glanced at Alec, he was staring straight into her eyes, his face unreadable. ‘Course she can come,’ he said.
‘I’d better get back.’
‘That’s okay too.’ Marianne was tucking notes into her purse. ‘Long as you’re all right.’
‘I’m fine.’
Marianne stared hard at her. ‘You’re not.’
‘I am.’
‘Okay. Go. Go home to Patrick.’ She kissed her friend, then turned back to Alec and linked her arm through his.
‘Night,’ he said, and Lucy mumbled in reply, then turned to cross the road to where her car was parked.
‘Lucy?’ Marianne was calling her.
‘What?’
‘Yours is a nice story too. It really is.’
The supermarket cruising had been only the beginning, really. She was still married to Will when Patrick first spotted her, pottering up and down the aisles, filling her trolley, stroking the top of Bella’s downy head and stopping to let old ladies admire her.
Still with Will. Still a family. Still believing she had the perfect, happy life.
No one ever really believed those stories, did they? The girl who comes into Casualty with food-poisoning and ends up having a baby. The baby born at the bottom of the garden because the mother was hanging out the washing and didn’t have time to get back to the house when the contractions started. The mile-high club. The husband who disappears with absolutely no warning. Cynics tell you that there must have been signs, clues.
And they’re right, of course: Will had left signs and clues. And she had had months to find them. After he’d gone. Because, of course, she hadn’t been looking for them beforehand. She had been catatonic. She had been euphoric. She had been obsessed with Bella – with every infinitesimal detail of Bella’s routine – how much milk she took down and brought up, how long, and in exactly which position she slept, which perfect white, pink, aqua or yellow outfit she would wear today, whether she was just warm enough or too warm. Whether she herself was ever going to be able to wear clothes without elastic waists, or stop leaking, or watch the news without crying.
She had thought that Will felt the same about Bella. Like all the other mums from the antenatal classes, who had all read the same chapters in the same books, she had worried about juggling her role as a mother with that of being Will’s wife. One of her new friends had sat at a coffee morning, when the babies were about seven weeks old, taken a deep breath and told them that she was going to drink a large brandy and shag her husband that evening if it killed her, which she thought that it might, on account of the Bayeux tapestry of stitches she’d had after her episiotomy. She said her mother had told her to forget lying back and thinking of England, but to think of the exercise, do a few pelvic-floor exercises at the same time and remember that a serviced husband was a happy husband. Fifteen minutes, that’s all it takes, she had told her, and think of the benefits. They had all laughed, some more nervously than others. Lucy had let Will back into her bed, and into her body, weeks earlier than that. The health visitor had said it was okay, if you wanted to, and they both had. Or, at least, she had, and she’d thought he had.
Afterwards she had wondered whether he was repelled by her. Or whether he was confused, like the books talked about – the hackneyed