Promoted: to Wife and Mother

Having successfully introduced the idea of carers when Helen had been unwell with her infection, Perdita could have arranged for twenty-four hour cover, but she had put her flat on the market anyway. Partly, it was a penance for being away when her mother had needed her most, but it was also a practical move. Even part-time care at home was very expensive and there was no way Perdita could afford it long-term unless one of their properties was sold. She knew how much it had always meant to Helen to stay in her own home. If that was all she could do for her now, so be it, Perdita had decided. She couldn’t leave her mother now, in any case, so she might as well move back and be on hand for as long as she was needed.

The only problem was being so close to Ed. It was bad enough at work, although Perdita was well aware that he was making things as easy for her as possible by keeping meetings to an absolute minimum. She suspected, too, that he had authorised all the support that she was getting from Human Resources, with as much time off as she needed to sort out her mother’s care.

She rarely saw him now and, when she did, every glimpse was agony-and all she had to live for at the same time.

Sometimes Perdita wondered whether she should think about changing jobs, but she simply couldn’t cope with upheaval at work on top of everything else. Not that she could imagine anyone offering her a job at the moment. She felt beaten and bedraggled and her confidence was as low as her spirits.

In any case, a new job wouldn’t help. As long as her mother was alive, she would be living next door to Ed, with all the desperate longing and the painful memories that involved. She would just have to get used to the leap of her heart when she saw his car in the drive, Perdita told herself. She would have to accept that her eyes would jerk to the window whenever she heard the slam of his front door in case it was Ed, would have to fight the constant temptation of running out to him and throwing herself at him, just so that she could touch him, feel him, again.

It was impossible not to be aware of the comings and goings next door. There were frequent arguments conducted at the top of Cassie’s voice, followed by much slamming and stomping, and Perdita wondered how Ed was coping with it all.

Did he feel as lonely as she did? Did he ache with loss at the thought of what they had almost had, when it had seemed possible that they could have everything and be happy? Did he torture himself remembering every second of the night they had spent together, by imagining how things might have been if the phone had never rung that day, if her mother had never fallen…?

But what was the point of wondering that? Perdita told herself miserably. If not then, it would have been another day, there would have been another incident. It would never have worked.

Oh, God, now she was crying again! Furiously, Perdita blinked her tears away. There was no point in self- pity.

She shoved the fork into the earth once more. Push, bend, lift. Push, bend, lift. Don’t think about anything else. Just dig.

She had another half hour before she needed to be home to relieve the afternoon carer, and she could get this whole bed done if she stopped being pathetic and went for it. She might as well have something to show for her miserable afternoon in the rain.

Perdita was so intent on digging that she didn’t notice the figure approaching through the gloom until a pair of muddy boots and a fork appeared beneath her gaze and she jerked her head up, startled, to find Ed standing right before her.

Ed. She froze, her heart ballooning with a curious mixture of joy and dismay. She had longed and dreaded being this close to him again and, now that the moment was here, all she could do was stare hungrily at him and feel truly alive for the first time in three weeks.

He was wearing a faded old jacket. Drizzle clung to his hair and eyelashes and he looked tired and strained. He looked wonderful. He was here.

Very slowly, Perdita straightened, clutching on to her fork as if it were her last hope of sanity. Every nerve in her body was urging her to smile and smile and launch herself into his arms, while every cell in her brain shrieked caution. Don’t let yourself hope it will be all right. Don’t put yourself through it all again.

‘Ed…’ she said at last on a long, wavering breath. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you,’ he said, sounding so normal, so much himself, that Perdita’s heart cracked with longing. ‘Millie told me you would be here.’ He lifted the fork with an ironic smile. ‘She even gave me this and told me to make myself useful.’

He plunged the fork into the ground and started to dig next to Perdita. ‘What’s going to be planted here?’

‘Alliums and irises and tulips, Grace says.’ Perdita’s voice sounded as if it was coming from someone else entirely. ‘It’s hard to believe at the moment, but the way she describes it, it should be beautiful. We’ve got a lot of hard work to do before then, though.’

‘Anything worth having is worth working for,’ said Ed. He glanced up at her as he dug. ‘Even if it’s hard going to begin with, with a little effort, a little nourishing, you get something beautiful in the end. Don’t you agree?’

‘Are we still talking about gardening?’ asked Perdita after a tiny pause, and he laughed.

‘No, I thought you would like my little metaphor, though. You know, a relationship is like a garden-you have to plant it, fertilise it, prune it, and all that other stuff if you want it to flourish.’

‘I think that metaphor’s been used before,’ she said a little tartly.

Ed smiled one of his rare, startling smiles and then his face grew serious. ‘I’ve missed you, Perdita,’ he said in a quiet voice.

Perdita didn’t say anything. She was too afraid that she would start to cry and tell him how desperately, desperately she had missed him too. She started digging again instead and concentrated on swallowing the great stone in her throat.

Side by side, they dug in silence. ‘How have you been?’ Ed asked at last.

‘All right,’ she lied. ‘And you?’

He shook his head. ‘I haven’t been all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in a bad way.’

The desolation in his voice made Perdita falter in her digging. ‘I’m sorry, Ed,’ she whispered.

‘I don’t want you to be sorry,’ said Ed. ‘I want you to change your mind.’

‘I…can’t,’ she said in anguish.

‘Why not?’ Thrusting his fork into the earth in his frustration, Ed searched for the right words. ‘I’ve tried to accept your decision, Perdita,’ he said at last. ‘I thought about what you said. I even wondered if you were right. But I can’t believe that you are,’ he told her. ‘You said we’d have to accept being alone while we had responsibilities, but I’ve realised that I don’t want to be alone.’

He stopped and shook his head. ‘No, that’s wrong. What I mean is, I don’t want to be without you. I don’t want someone who doesn’t have a parent or a kid or a dog or a demanding job to distract her, even if such a person exists. I only want you,’ he finished simply.

‘Ed…’ Perdita began helplessly, not even sure how she would go on, but he overrode her anyway.

‘I’ve been married, Perdita. I know how good it can be when there’s someone there beside you, someone who’ll stick with you, cry with you, laugh with you, celebrate with you, mourn with you…love with you.’

Ed paused. ‘I loved Sue,’ he said quietly. ‘Nothing is going to change that, but I love you too, and I need you and I want you beside me to do all that crying and laughing and loving and everything else again. I want us to do them together.’

‘You’ve still got the kids,’ Perdita reminded him. She was trembling, holding on to her fork with a kind of desperation, trying to hold on to all the reasons why she knew it could never work between them…What were they again?

‘Yes, I’ve still got the kids,’ Ed agreed, ‘but they don’t change the way I feel about you.’

Reaching for Perdita’s fork, he shoved it into the ground next to his own and very deliberately drew off her bulky gardening gloves so that he could take hold of her hands.

‘I know Nick hurt you, Perdita, but his isn’t the only way of loving.’ His fingers were very warm and indescribably comforting as they curled around hers. ‘It seems to me that you can’t put a ranking on love. I can’t say that I love Cassie more than Lauren, or Lauren more than Tom, or you more or less than Sue. You’re all the same. You’re all in my heart.’