The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

an arts editor, and I met him at a Vistemax do. I could set up the meeting.’

‘Sounds good,’ repeated Barry.

On the way home I sprinted into Theo’s office. I wanted to talk over the financial and legal position and he had suggested that I call in.

He sat me down at his desk, and asked his assistant for tea, which arrived in a china pot. ‘The next few months won’t be easy,’ he said. ‘Probate will take a while and then I have to convene several meetings with the trustees to discuss the division. Meanwhile Vistemax are honouring the severance package.’

I let out a sigh of relief.

‘And, of course, there’s Nathan’s pension. That will be sorted out.’ He paused. ‘There is the question that Rose might be due a portion.’ With a steady hand, he poured me a second cup of tea. ‘Whatever you receive won’t be riches, but it will provide you with a base from which to operate. Add to that the money from your slice of the stocks and shares, and any earnings you may have, and I think you’ll be all right, providing you’re not extravagant. However, if you did lose your job, you wouldn’t be destitute, and it will tide you over the worst.’

I stared at my tea. ‘Theo, what was Nathan doing when he suggested Rose as a guardian? What was he thinking? He must have known how… difficult – impossible – that would be.’

‘He made it clear that he wanted to put the boys’ interest first. He said he had every faith that you would understand.’

‘But I don’t!’ I cried. ‘I don’t. And to make it so public! He should have talked to me.’

Theo had witnessed many such exchanges in his office. Scenes in which outrage, betrayal, bitterness had burst through the dam of good behaviour and politeness. ‘It’s difficult to absorb, perhaps, at the moment. But things change. Why don’t you drink your tea?’

Then he showed me the facts and figures of my new life.

‘If you marry again, or live with someone else,’ he said, as I rose to take my leave, ‘you will be obliged to sell the house and the proceeds will be invested for the twins.’

He left me to reflect that, since Theo’s hourly fees would make anyone’s eyes water, this had been an expensive way to learn that celibacy paid.

I climbed on to a bus. At least I knew that now, I must be vigilant. Extra, extra vigilant. In the coming months, possibly years, I would require energy and the stamina to attack. At the moment, I was not sure I possessed either. What I did have was an overwhelming sense of panic. That would have to do. In fact, its blackness and sharpness would do very well.

*

Theo advised me to draw up a list of priorities, and a financial timetable. ‘Be ruthless,’ he said. ‘Put together all the facts and figures to see the whole picture. It will make it easier for you.’

Fact. There was no one to fall back on.

Fact I must get used to it.

Fact A widow with two children was hampered as to what she could do to survive.

Fact After cataclysm, the mind indulges in curious illusions. And they are fiction.

Once, early in the morning, I stumbled downstairs and Nathan was in the kitchen making breakfast. Coffee. Bacon. Toast. All those lovely aromas. He was in his dressing-gown, whistling under his breath. ‘Hello,’ I said, with a rush of pure delight. ‘You’re up early.’ Without turning round, he reached back and pulled me close.

Then he was gone.

Yes, my mind skittered about. Concentration lapsed and I found it hard to read. Sleep was unpredictable, and I asked myself difficult questions. Would Nathan have known as he died what was happening to him? Had it been painful? I prayed not. But perhaps, if he had understood what was happening, he had been granted the chance during the final seconds to think, Thank you for a good life. I can’t imagine what it must be like to die with the conclusion, I had an unsatisfactory/woeful/beastly life.

Did he manage to think about any of us?

The self-help manual After Life, which I was now reading, said we cannot possibly comprehend Death. Anything we think we know is fantasy.

I want to know how the author knew that.

Sue Frost turned up at the house. At first I didn’t recognize the figure in pink cut-off trousers and matching loafers – she looked older than the woman I had encountered in the supermarket. ‘Surprise?’ she said.

‘Well, yes. But no.’

She held out a bunch of peonies and a couple of leaflets. ‘For Nathan’s sake I brought you these.’

Her eyes filled and so, to my distress, did mine. ‘Thank you,’ I managed.

‘We’ll miss him.’ She was weeping openly now. ‘We really loved him.’

The tears were rolling down my cheeks and I lashed out, ‘But not enough to recognize me, which would have made him happy?’

The idea clearly took her by surprise. ‘Yes. Well,’ she wiped her cheeks with her sleeve, ‘we all do things we regret. Anyway, the leaflets. I’m a counsellor, trained for these circumstances. In fact, I run the operation. If you like – if you feel you need help… If you need -’

‘Closure?’ I offered.

‘- a listening ear, just ring this number.’

Scenes from our married life… summoned to help me counter the torture of sleeplessness.

…‘These are for the bride.’ Nathan returned from his first day back at work after our honeymoon, and presented me with a bouquet of such beauty that I cried out with pleasure. ‘This is to make up for no flowers at the wedding.’

…‘Broccoli needs butter.’ Nathan stared at the plate when I served him broccoli mixed with pine nuts and raisins. ‘Why do we have to gussy-up vegetables?’

‘Because,’ I said, ‘it’s to make sticks-in-the-mud like you sit up a little. Things are changing, including broccoli.’

Nathan dropped his head into his hands and groaned. ‘Nothing’s sacred.’

… In the bedroom, I drew the bustier out of the elegant carrier-bag in which it was packed. From the bed, Nathan’s eyes flicked over it. ‘Put it on, Minty. I want to see you in it.’

I looked down at it: such a pretty, sexy thing. Into it I would insert a body altered by childbirth but pretend it wasn’t.

‘Minty!’ Nathan was impatient. ‘Put it on. It’ll be like – it used to be.’

That was what Nathan wanted. He craved the heightened excitement of our affair, the novelty of his willing, inventive mistress.

I gave a tiny sigh and did as he asked. Thus accoutred, I joined my husband on the bed – but I was no longer willing or inventive for I carried a tally of the past, of routine and regret. No bustier would ever mask those.

‘Oh, we’re absolutely fine,’ I heard myself say into the phone to Mrs Jenkins, who had rung up to ask if I needed extra help with the boys. Or ‘That would be such fun’ when Millie’s mother rang up to invite us to a picnic on the common, giving the impression that the boys and I were thoroughly enjoying Nathan being dead.

I never found Nathan’s diary although I searched his drawers and files. I went through the car, his pockets, the bookshelves. At the finish, I was forced to concede that I had lost the tussle between us. Nathan had decided to deny me the intimacies revealed on its pages and I grieved for that, too.

Yet there was a curious beauty to grief, a haunting, solitary beauty that was hard to describe and more than a little alarming. It was almost a pleasure.

Meanwhile I worked steadily through the letters in the study, determined to reply to them all.

When I got round to sorting out the piles of newspapers that had accumulated since Nathan’s death, which I had never read, I came across an advertisement in one of the supplements for the Shiftaka exhibition that Gisela had taken me to see. I examined the painting. A series of free brushstrokes created a forest glade, a mixture of deciduous and pine. Imposed on the mesh of foliage were the lines of trunks and branches so rigid and black they