Promoted: to Wife and Mother

remember again. How can it be all right?’

Ed glanced at her rigid profile, his own heart sinking. The laughing, loving, vibrant woman who had woken him with kisses that morning had gone, wiped out by the burden of guilt. Was that how she felt about her mother? he wondered sadly. Would he ever see the Perdita he loved again? And he did love her, he knew that now.

‘You know, it isn’t your fault,’ he tried to tell her, but he wasn’t surprised when Perdita refused to be comforted.

‘I should have been there,’ she said bleakly. ‘It suited me to believe that Mum was better but deep down I knew that she wasn’t. I was just so desperate to get away that I pretended it would all be fine.’

‘Betty was there,’ Ed pointed out. ‘It’s not as if you went off and left her on her own.’

‘I know, but she needed me last night. It was too much to ask Betty to deal with an accident.’

‘Has she fallen like this before?’

‘No.’

‘Then how were you to know that she would fall the one night you went away?’ asked Ed reasonably. ‘She could just as easily have fallen when you were there.’

‘But at least I would have been there to help her. I should never have gone back to my flat at all.’ Perdita’s voice was bleak with self-loathing. ‘I should have just accepted that she’s too old to cope on her own.’

‘The doctor said she was getting better. I know she’d been getting a little vague, but the shock of her fall will have made her confused now. There was no way you could have predicted that.’

‘All the signs have been there. I put them down to her not being well, but I should have realised that it was more than that.’

‘You made sure there was someone to care for her while you were away,’ Ed said. ‘What more could you have done? I just don’t think you should beat yourself up about it,’ he added unwisely, and she turned on him, slewing round in her seat belt to face him angrily.

‘Oh, really? And what would you be doing if it had been one of your children that was hurt last night-if it had been Lauren or Cassie or Tom? If one of them had been lost and confused without you, and you weren’t there for them because you’d been off having a good time by yourself?’

Ed made himself stay calm. Perdita needed a focus for her guilt and her anger with herself, and he was the obvious target. ‘OK,’ he said evenly. ‘I probably would be beating myself up, you’re right- and you would be the one telling me that it wasn’t my fault.’

There was a long silence.

Balked of the argument she wanted-needed-Perdita turned back to stare unseeingly at the rain shrouding the hills while the windscreen wipers swept uncaringly backwards and forwards with a rhythmic ‘thwack’.

‘It’s not going to work, is it, Ed?’ she said after a while.

Ed took his eyes from the road to look at her sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Us,’ she said. ‘We can call it an affair instead of a proper relationship, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve both got too many other responsibilities to be able to give each other the attention we need to be happy.’

Perdita fought to keep her voice steady, but tears were very close. ‘I thought that if we avoided talking about commitment and tried to keep things to a physical relationship it would be easier, but there’s always going to be something,’ she said, sounding utterly defeated.

‘It was my mother this time, but another time it might be one of your kids. I don’t mean that they’ll necessarily have an accident like hers, but there’ll be something. They’ll need you for some reason and you’ll have to go, the way you had to go when Cassie rang that night at the river. We should stop trying to pretend that it can ever work between us.’

‘So what are you saying?’ Ed was grim-faced. ‘That we’re both condemned to be alone for the rest of our lives?’

‘It won’t be for ever,’ said Perdita, turning her face away so he wouldn’t see the despair in her eyes. ‘Your children will grow up and leave home.’ She took a breath. ‘My mother will die,’ she went on, accepting it for the first time, ‘but that isn’t going to happen yet. It’s just bad timing for us, Ed,’ she tried to explain. ‘Maybe we’ll both meet someone else when we’re not overwhelmed by our responsibilities, the way we are now. I hope so. It’s just…not now.’

‘What about last night?’ he asked more harshly than he had intended. ‘What about this morning? Are you just going to pretend that never happened?’

There was a raw ache at the back of Perdita’s throat, pressing behind her eyes and across the bridge of her nose, too painful for the release of tears.

‘No,’ she said unsteadily. ‘No, I’ll always keep our time there as a wonderful memory. It was like a dream, being able to run away and forget about everyone else, but you can’t live like that the whole time. That’s not how real life works. In real life we just have to get on with what we have to do. You have to look after your family. I have to look after my mother. That’s the way it is.’

She paused and, when she spoke again, her voice cracked. ‘I’m sorry, Ed.’

‘I’m sorry too.’

Ed wanted to shout at her, to shake her. He wanted to refuse to let her do this, but there was no point in trying to talk to Perdita then. She was too consumed by worry and guilt to think clearly.

And, after all, might she have a point? he wondered bitterly. He couldn’t pretend that his responsibilities didn’t exist any more than she could. Was she right in thinking that there would be too many obstacles to finding time to be together? Ever since Sue’s death, he had focused on the need to concentrate on his children, to try and be both parents to them, and that took time. What was different now?

Perdita was the difference, thought Ed. He had let himself like her, and then he had let himself love her, and now she was slipping through his fingers and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. He couldn’t force her not to worry about her mother, and how could he promise that he would never worry about the kids? She wouldn’t believe him even if he did. Did that mean that he had to accept losing Perdita, then, and be content, like her, with a wonderful memory?

Perdita stuck her fork in the ground and put a hand to her aching back as she straightened and paused for breath.

Quarter to four. It was almost dark. There was little enough light on a December afternoon as it was, and even less on a day like today when the grey clouds pressed like a thick, impenetrable blanket over the city, seeping rain and depression. Perdita squinted upwards. It was impossible to believe on a day like this that above the clouds the sky would be clear and blue. It seemed a very long time since the sun had beaten its way through the cloud cover to shine on Ellsborough.

Not since she had excitedly planned her weekend away with Ed. Maybe the weather hadn’t really been perfect then either, but she remembered feeling as if the sun was pouring down on her, pouring its golden brilliance through her, warming her and lightening her and filling her with its radiance.

It felt like a lifetime ago. Perdita could feel her face starting to crumple at the memory and she scowled ferociously to stop the tears. Grabbing the fork once more, she pushed it deep into the earth with her foot and hoisted up a great clod, wishing that she could dig out the pain that easily.

She had taken to spending as much time as she could at the garden project, which was beginning, very slowly, to take shape just as Grace had promised. Once all the rubbish had been cleared away, they had started to lay out planting areas, all of which had to be dug over until they were clear of the worst of the stones and weeds.

Perdita found it easier to dig than to think, and she often came, like today, at a weekend. Strictly speaking, she only needed to spend a couple of hours a week there, but she liked it when there was no one else around and she could dig and dig and dig until she was so tired that it blanked everything else out. At the bleakest, blackest times- and there were lots of those-it was the only thing that helped her through the days.

Her mother had recovered from her bruises eventually, but the shock of her fall seemed to have had a more lingering effect. She was much more confused now and the good days when she was alert and almost her old self were getting further and further apart.

It was breaking Perdita’s heart to see her mother slithering and sliding unstoppably into dementia. That terrible day when she had arrived back with Ed, Helen James had clutched at her as if Perdita were her only anchor in a muddled, nightmarish world-as perhaps she was. Their roles were completely reversed now. It was Perdita’s turn to offer care and comfort and calm while her mother grew increasingly helpless.