The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

arrangements in pastel colours, a portrait of a girl on horseback in a tight green costume, and three receptionists with immaculate complexions. ‘I can’t thank you enough for your generosity, but I need to go back. If Eve is really ill, I must organize cover for work tomorrow.’

Gisela tensed impatiently. ‘Oh, well.’ She was cross because her present to me had been spoilt, and because she needed to talk to me further.

‘Let me know about Marcus.’

She took a step back. ‘Of course.’

I picked up my bag and heard myself say, ‘You will think about Roger?’ although why I should care about the man who sacked Nathan was a mystery.

She flung me a savage look. ‘Don’t worry about him. He gets exactly his side of the bargain.’

On the way back in the train, I stared out of the window at the speeding landscape and remembered the Nathan who, having left Rose, came to me alight with fervour. ‘I’ve done it, Minty.’ He kissed my arm all the way up its length. ‘I’ve left Rose. And it’s all going to be quite different.’

The discrepancy between his excited words and what we were alarmed me. This man had greying hair, a knee joint that ached and grown-up children: I fancied the Lexus, his credit card and the nice house.

But the curious thing was – the really, truly curious thing – I had believed Nathan.

*

Eve was curled into a foetal position in her bed. The window was closed so the room was stuffy and smelt of illness. There were a couple of glasses and a half-drunk mug of tea by the bed, with a packet of aspirin.

I saw immediately that the situation had progressed beyond aspirins. Within fifteen minutes, I had bundled Eve into the car and driven her to the nearest A &E unit.

Three unpleasant hours later, during which we had witnessed a drunken fight, a screaming girl put into handcuffs and a man covered with blood begging for help, a doctor announced, ‘Pneumonia,’ over the flushed, almost comatose Eve, with a veiled suggestion that it was my fault. He explained that Eve required a couple of days in hospital to stabilize her, then a period of careful nursing. Again, I caught a hint that it was up to me to make up for deficiencies in my duty of care.

I left the hospital, furious with him, with Eve, with myself, with everything.

Paige delivered the boys back to me. When I answered the door at number seven the twins, who hadn’t been expecting me, let out a collective shriek and windmilled at high speed into my stomach. ‘Careful, you two.’

‘You smell funny,’ said Lucas, sniffing my arm, which only that morning had been anointed by the handmaidens at Claire Manor.

‘Don’t you like it? It has roses and thyme in it.’

‘Dis-gus-ting.’

Paige brushed aside my profuse thanks and declined to come in. There was no mistaking the new coolness between us. ‘How is everything?’ I probed gingerly, but she wasn’t having any of it.

‘Before you ask, I can’t help out tomorrow’

‘Oh.’

Paige shook her head. ‘Can’t be done. Linda has a day off, and I’m busy with the children. Sorry.’ She softened. ‘Why don’t you try Kate Winsom or Mary Teight?’

She left with my thanks ringing in her ears. I hit the phone.

Kate Winsom’s son was going to tea with another boy after school. ‘I’m so sorry I can’t help, particularly as…’ She left me to conjecture the precise nature of her regret at my widowhood. Mary Teight had arranged to take her daughter to the doctor.

Millie’s mother, Tessa, was contrite: ‘Oh, Minty, I’m so sorry but Millie is staying with her father tomorrow. Why don’t you ring an agency?’

‘I would,’ I pointed out, ‘but today is Sunday.’

‘Can’t you take the day off?’

After Tessa my list of contacts ran out. I knew no one else – except Sue Frost, who didn’t count because I didn’t want unsolicited counselling on childcare. This state of affairs reinforced my sense of isolation.

While the twins ate chicken nuggets and chips, I paced up and down the kitchen, recalling Chris Sharp’s hard, hazel gaze – which wouldn’t soften if I rang up and said my childcare arrangements had crashed. From Barry’s point of view that eventuality came under ‘liability’ and ‘not on top of the job’.

Gisela rang to check that I’d made it back home and to tell me about the marvellous facial I’d missed. ‘They used mud imported from the Dead Sea. Have you sorted things out? What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied truthfully.

She tsk-tsked. ‘It can’t be that difficult, surely?’

There spoke the childless woman. ‘Gisela, I’m sorry we didn’t have time to talk things over further. Have you made your decision?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know.’

‘There’s an awful lot of not knowing about,’ I said.

The twins retreated to the floor and began to wrestle like puppies, my return having made them feel safe enough to lapse into boisterousness. Even so, now and then one or the other would bound up and touch base with my arm, knee or face.

I fought not to panic. I fought not to hate Nathan for leaving me in the lurch. I fought to reclaim the clear, hard sight of my former life that would urge me to ring up an agency first thing in the morning and employ anyone who was available.

The boys’ noise level rose. ‘Mum!’ Lucas shrieked, and I found myself warding off a serious head-butt.

‘You mustn’t do that, Lucas, you might hurt someone.’

I wasn’t sure I could dump them on a strange agency person.

‘Mum,’ said Lucas, ‘Dad says…’

There was a sudden wrenching hush. I knelt down and drew my boys close. Their heads nestled into my shoulders, and their little bodies sank against mine. I murmured, ‘Yes, Lukey. What did Dad say?’

A strange agency person might take against Lucas’s head-butting or Felix’s silences. An agency person might handle them roughly, or feed them eggs, which they hated. An agency person wouldn’t understand that they ached for their father.

‘Dad says…’ echoed Felix, the eyelashes round his big eyes resembling wet feathers. I looked into their blue depths, which seemed to contain so much more knowledge than his years allowed. I turned to Lucas. ‘What does Dad say?’

Lucas stared at me blankly. Then he shook his head. ‘Dunno,’ he muttered, and launched himself across me to hit Felix. There was a shriek as Felix was felled.

I allowed them to fight. Fighting gave them relief, the consolation of thumps, and I looked at the clock on the wall. Never had the numerals on it appeared so black and precisely etched. Sunday… Sunday… Time was running out.

My mind clicked into overdrive. One scenario in particular sounded a reveille to the black feelings.

‘Sorry,’ Barry would say, when I rang in to tell him I couldn’t make the meeting on Monday. ‘I’m not sure this arrangement is working.’ I pictured him spreading his hands, the wristbands rippling. ‘We need someone we can rely on, Minty. It doesn’t look like you at the moment.’

The mark of a civilized man – the civilized woman not being included – is to be able to hold contrary propositions in the head at the same time. Nathan… was dead. His children lived.

An idea took shape. Listen, it insisted, as I dismissed it. I spread my hand and studied the fingers. Think about it.

The decibels ascended to a dangerous level and I set about prising the boys apart. Felix rolled over and bit my hand hard. I snatched it back. ‘Don’t do that.’ He stiffened and rolled away. I crouched beside him. ‘Felix, you never, never bite people. Have you listened to Mummy? I’m trying to teach you something important.’

There are many ways in which to tackle survival. ‘We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence,’ Charles Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species.