After Ever After Read online

  ‘Um, well, okay,’ I said. It wasn’t that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend more time with him, it’s just that after his recent Freudian slip I hadn’t expected him to actually want actual coffee.

  ‘I was right, I did recognise you. I knew it was you,’ he said to himself as he led me down the steps.

  ‘Oh yes, it definitely is me.’ I answered quietly.

  And that was how we met.

  Chapter Two

  The shooting pain down my left arm and the pins and needles fizzing in my fingers combined with the dead weight on my chest confirm that I am having a heart attack. Some small part of me feels quite relieved, for although I’ll be doing most of my parenting from heaven at least I’ll get some sleep and maybe my mum’ll be able to give me some tips.

  Suddenly the weight is lifted from my chest and the life-giving scent of coffee is wafted under my nose. I open my eyes and try to dismiss a vague sense of disappointment that I’m still alive. I see Fergus with Ella slung casually over one shoulder snoring happily and the ‘World’s Best Mum’ mug he bought me steaming in the other hand.

  ‘Morning, Mrs Kelly,’ he says, with an indulgent grin. I resist the urge to look over my shoulder for my mother-in-law. ‘You’re mad, you are. Why didn’t you come back to bed once she’d gone off?’

  I want to speak but my mouth is stuck together and someone has laid bricks on my eyelids.

  ‘You know … Ninja thing,’ I say, making reference to our private joke about her light sleeping. I reach for the coffee and creak out of the chair, which gives a companionable creak in return as it rocks gently backwards. Stupid bloody chair.

  ‘I must do something about that chair …’ Fergus mumbles to himself as he transfers Ella to her cot with one fluid carefree movement, eliciting not even the slightest stir from her prone form.

  ‘Burn it?’ I suggest, and I stretch my aching back and scowl at him. ‘How do you do that?’ I ask him, frustrated, once again, that he has the edge over me on this parenthood business.

  ‘It’s because she can pick up your stress, babe. Try and relax,’ he tells me helpfully. I’ll give him try and relax. I push a tangle of greasy hair out of my eyes and pad out of the room, shaking my fingers back to life. Fergus follows me and slips his arm around my waist. I tense, instantly.

  ‘Why don’t we go back to bed now, sweetheart?’ Back to bed? I think. ‘I’ve got another ten minutes before I have to leave for work … Just enough time for a stress relieving quickie …’

  I sigh hard and push his hands away.

  ‘Fergus,’ I whisper as loudly as I can, ‘if I do get into bed and if that little angel in there doesn’t activate her extrasensory perception and decide that now is the moment that she simply must have a nappy change or a feed or twenty-two renditions of “Somewhere over the Rainbow”, or the “Waggle the Elmer the Elephant rattle” game, or the “Watch me roll over” game, or the “I want to refuse food for thirty minutes and then cry because I’m hungry” game, or, or, or something …’ I take a deep, wide-eyed breath … if she doesn’t do any of that and I make it into bed, I can assure you the very last thing I’ll be doing is partaking in a “quickie” with you!’ The very thought of it makes me contract what’s left of my pelvic floor muscles in horror.

  ‘Okay, darling, okay. I’m sorry.’ I know that he is mortified by offending me so and that the last thing he wants is to upset me. He draws me to him for a hug but my body is still rigid with tiredness and tension, and no matter how much I want to respond I just can’t. It’s almost as if each one of my nerve endings has been insulated, and trying to get my body to react to him in the way it used to is like wading through some thick and glutinous liquid. It’s hard for Fergus, I know; it used to be our thing, sex. It used to be my thing, a kind of awareness in every part of me, but since Ella it has been resolutely dormant. It’s not something you know you have until it’s gone.

  Fergus brushes my hair away from my forehead as if he doesn’t notice that it’s thick with grease and baby sick.

  ‘It’s just that I fancy you so much and, you know, we don’t get to do it much these days, do we?’

  I sigh, remembering the feeling of intimacy between us and lean into him a little, inhaling the sharp citrus scent of his aftershave.

  ‘You smell nice,’ I say. ‘Are you having an affair with a thin woman with no stretch marks?’ I look up at him, half joking but half not.

  ‘No, I’m having an affair with this ravishingly beautiful woman who has a few lovely stretch marks and an arse that drives me wild. She happens to be my wife.’ He kisses the top of my head and I follow him down the stairs, glad that we have somehow made up without ever quite falling out.

  ‘Isn’t it today that you’re off to see the girls?’ he says.

  My stomach knots. I’d forgotten. I’d arranged this lunch ages ago with Camille during one of her weekly, hour-long, work hours London news bulletins. I’d let her persuade me that I needed a life outside the house and that it’d do me good to have a break from the baby for a while. It was Camille’s idea – a sixth-month celebration of Dora’s sobriety, and Dora had taken the plan to her heart. Although I couldn’t face clubbing with the anti-drug, health food zealot that Dora had become by necessity since her last bout in rehab, I had let them both talk me into making a visit to town for lunch. Georgina was primed to watch over her granddaughter, although the builder could have done a better job, and now Fergus was handing me fifty pounds.

  ‘Is that enough?’ he says. ‘Better have another twenty.’

  I sigh, trying to remember when my own money had run out and I had become entirely dependent on Fergus. Sometime soon after I told Starbrite Records I wasn’t going back to work, I guess. It’s not that I’d especially noticed my pay cheque going into my account every month as most of it evaporated before the end of that working day; it was just that now my account languished redundantly in the black (courtesy of Fergus) I sort of missed my weekly angst-ridden, breath-holding trips to the cashpoint.

  I take the money and tuck it into my pyjama pocket wondering, as I follow Fergus down the stairs, if I could accidentally drop it in the washing machine and not have to go out at all.

  ‘Now, when Crawley gets here, tell him he’s to sort out that bloody bathroom today or he’s sacked,’ he says, referring to the builder he’s employed to turn this Victorian terrace from an old-lady’s time capsule into a decent living space.

  To say that I was rather shocked the day he drove me here and presented me with the keys is something of an understatement. It was about two weeks after I knew I was pregnant. We were newlyweds and I still expected every day from that day forward to be like every day before then: perfect.

  ‘A proper home for the lad,’ Fergus had said, nodding at my tummy. ‘Can’t bring a baby up in a Docklands flat, and I thought Berkhamsted, why not? I grew up here. Loved it, fresh air and only a short commute.’

  I’d looked at the crumbling red brick, the overgrown garden and the varieties of peeling wallpaper and burst into inconsolable tears. I hadn’t been pregnant long enough then to know that inconsolable tears were pretty much par for the course. Fergus had shepherded me into the entrance hall, his arm around my shoulder, and let me weep into his coat until finally I could catch my breath again.

  ‘It smells of pee,’ my voiced wobbled as I looked up at the dusty ceilings.

  ‘Darling.’ Fergus spoke into my hair. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get builders in, we’ll make it wonderful, we’ll triple our capital in no time. You know, you’d never get a place like this for this money in Berkhamsted unless it needed a little bit of work done on it and it’s near my mum’s, which’ll be great for you when the baby’s here. And think of all the space for the lad to play footy in. After a good airing you won’t even notice the pee.’ As Fergus ushered me from room to room detailing each one of his already extensive plans for the place I tried to see myself, to see Fergus and the barely imagined baby there and I just couldn’t. I felt
that I didn’t belong there; it was too big, too old, too far away from everything I knew, and I knew I would hate it.

  ‘It’s just not me, Fergus,’ I said, turning to face him.

  ‘I know what you mean, but think about it. You’re not you any more, are you? Not the you that lived in pokey old flats and slaved away from nine to five. You’re free of that, Kitty. You’re my wife now and you’ll be a mum soon. Think of how good it’ll be for the baby.’

  I looked through the dirty kitchen window down the hundred-foot garden and spotted what I thought were some apple trees and maybe some rose bushes deep amongst the thicket of weeds and thistle. A sudden flash of memory took me back to the small patch of flowers my nan had let me grow on her allotment; I used to go there with her every Saturday during the summer when I was seven, the summer after my mum died. I’d weed and water them and smell them and pick some to take to Mum’s grave. Geraniums I think they were. That was the summer just before Nan died. After that there was just Dad. It might be nice to have a garden … I’d looked up at Fergus, his sweet face set with the absolute certainty that he was right.

  ‘Look, Fergus, it’s a nice idea,’ I’d said. ‘And I can see the house would be lovely with a bit of work, but I won’t know anyone here, will I? And, well, no offence, but your mum gives the impression that touching a baby would bring her out in hives. I think I’d rather be in your, our, flat. With Camille nearby and Dora and the places that I know. And anyway, when I go back to work it’ll be much easier if I can drop the baby off at a nursery nearby rather than miles and miles away. I don’t think six-month-olds should commute too far, do you?’

  I’d smiled up at him and had been greeted with an oblique look of anxiety.

  ‘Fergus … What is it?’ By that time I’d learnt exactly what that look meant. ‘What have you done?’

  Fergus had smiled resolutely and put his arm around me.

  ‘It’s just that I thought, I was so sure you’d fall in love with it when you saw it and places round here go, literally, in hours … and look at it, Kitty. A garden for the baby, not just a concrete balcony, a real family home with space for more kids one day, and anyhow if my work keeps going the way it is you won’t have to worry about going back to work. Just look at it, don’t you feel that this is exactly the right place for us?’

  I’d stared around at a kitchen totally devoid of any plumbing and wondered if Fergus really knew me at all.

  ‘No, Fergus, for you maybe, but not for me. Big house, renovation – that’s not me, I’m not your Carole Smillie type. I like our flat – it’s bright, it’s small and there’s a contract cleaner.’

  Fergus’s face had fallen and I’d sighed. He was so full of determination to be exactly the right kind of husband, and I had only half-baked daydream ideas of what it meant to be the perfect wife. I’d attempted a compromise.

  ‘Well, maybe … I would like a garden to work on, I guess. A place I could make my own. Maybe in a few months when I’ve had a chance to think about it we could look for somewhere similar. Let’s go home and talk about it …’

  Fergus had given me that lopsided grin, which I have since come to understand means that he doesn’t take me seriously.

  ‘The thing is,’ he’d said sweetly, ‘that I’ve made an offer and got the mortgage in place.’ He held my shoulder and kissed me hard and fast. ‘All I have to do is tell the solicitor to go ahead and exchange. Tell me I can make that call, because I know this will be the best thing for us, I just know it.’

  I’d stared at him, the shadows of the house looming over my shoulder.

  ‘But Fergus, you’ve bought a house … a house, without asking me?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t going to buy it if you really hated it. I just wanted to get the whole scary and stressful bit out of the way first. Listen, I don’t want you to worry about a single thing, okay? Not ever again, not when you have me to look after you. Come on, Kitty, take a chance! What do you say?’

  I couldn’t say anything; it was all I could do to stay on my feet as I felt the earth reel from under me.

  ‘I just …’ I’d stuttered, and turned on my heel and headed for the front door, desperate for fresh air, desperate to get out from under those three floors of crumbling brick. ‘I just don’t believe you, Fergus. You can’t do things like that, you can’t.’

  I’d stumbled as I’d rushed out of the front door and Fergus had caught me, putting his hands on my shoulders to steady me. As we had looked at each other for a moment it had felt as if we were strangers seeing each other for the first time.

  ‘Kitty, please. I’m sorry. I thought … I thought I was being all dashing and romantic. I thought you wanted the perfect family life for your baby, the life you never had. This isn’t what I’d planned at all …’ He’d given a wry smile. ‘I thought you’d be weeping in my arms with joy by now.’

  I’d taken a deep breath and waited for the nameless panic to subside. Everything he had said sounded rational, logical, and if there was one thing I knew about him it was that he loved me and I loved him. I’d told myself it was just change I was afraid of and if anyone’s life needed change it was mine. I’d told myself marriage was about trust and giving. Above our heads the oppressively grey sky had lightened a little to let the sun break through its cover in strong assertive slants.

  ‘Maybe it’s a sign,’ I’d thought. ‘Maybe it’s meant to be, and if I know one thing for certain it is that Fergus is my fate and we are meant to be.’ I’d studied Fergus’s face and seen how much he wanted this and realised how much I wanted him to have it.

  ‘Okay.’ I’d taken another long look at the façade of the house. ‘Tell your solicitor to go ahead.’ I’d felt curiously relieved for a while, and for the long months after that that it took to complete I managed to almost forget about it. After all, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Having your protector, your knight in shining armour to look after you. Fergus was all I’d dreamt of since as long as I could remember, and I was sure I’d love the house eventually.

  Except we’ve been here for the best part of a year now and I still feel like a stranger here.

  Fergus bundles me back up the stairs to bed, planting a firm kiss on the top of my head before bounding down the stairs and off to work. It still makes me smile a little, the way that having a wife and baby at home makes him feel so much happier to slog out his existence in the City, although I never imagined how much he’d be out of this house he wanted so badly. The way things are at the moment, he’s more of a guest than a resident.

  I listen to the quiet creaks and breaths of the house without him and feel its emptiness. Today I know that in a few minutes Mr Crawley and Tim will be here and the house will be filled with noise and activity again, but soon, soon there will be just Ella and me in these long days without Fergus. What will it be like then, I wonder?

  I don’t sleep. I lie under the duvet with my eyes tight shut letting the fizzle of exhaustion creep across my temples, listening for the faint sounds of Ella’s breathing on the monitor and waiting for the inevitable entrance of Mr Crawley and his cohort. They have a key, so when they do arrive I won’t necessarily have to get up, but Ella seems to be in love with Mr Crawley and I have found that whilst she is mesmerised by watching him work I can usually get four, sometimes even five, spoonfuls of fruit purée into her before she flings up her hands, arches her back and starts to growl. I can only call it growling. I’ve looked it up in The Book but I can’t seem to find it listed in the index, not under growling, aggressive animal noises or even experimentation with vocalisation. It’s just growling.

  I look at the clock – 8.30 – and close my eyes.

  I’m not sure how long has passed before Ella’s siren wail crowbars me awake, but I’m up and in her room before I’ve even opened my eyes. The cow jumping over the moon tells me its 8.32. As soon as she sees me she stops crying abruptly and breaks into a cheery grin, stretching her arms out in anticipation of being picked up.

  �
��Hello, pickle,’ I tell her. ‘Sleep well, did you? Because Mummy didn’t …’

  She very helpfully holds her feet up for me as I change her nappy, examining her toes with the clinical interest she exhibits for every new-found object about her person. Bored with her toes she proceeds to cheerfully pick one baby wipe after the other out of the pack, delicately dropping it to the floor like a lady who expects her hanky to be returned to her by some dashing young man.

  Below I hear the door slam and then Mr Crawley runs through the itinerary for the day with his apprentice. Ella suspends her actions in rapt attention at his voice before releasing her limbs in a carefree expression of joy, firing off a machine-gun round of baby laughter.

  ‘Wagawa!’ she says happily.

  ‘Wagawa,’ I agree with her, wondering if babies really ever do say ‘Agoo’ like it says in The Book and if they do, why doesn’t Ella and why does she growl?

  The continuous background hum that is the absence where my mum should be amplifies for a moment and I actively wish she were here to ask. Fergus’s mum is not quite the same, particularly as I have serious doubts that she is human, let alone maternal in any way. In fact if it wasn’t for Fergus’s marked lack of any superpowers I’d say he had been dropped to earth in a meteorite and that she’d taken him in against her better judgement. Apart from anything else, how did Fergus’s dad ever get her to do anything as patently unhygienic as have sex with him? I mean, Daniel’s a sexy man, you just have to look at him to see it. Georgina looks liked she’d need a sterile environment and ten square metres of clingfilm to get it on.

  I remember that Fergus told me about supervising Mr Crawley and quickly dress and take Ella downstairs.

  Ella screams with joy at the sight of Mr Crawley and I hold back a scream as I watch young Timothy, Mr Crawley’s nephew or something, spread plaster dust across my kitchen.

  ‘Mr Crawley! This area is where I sterilise Ella’s stuff, you know, and feed her! I’m fairly certain her nutritional needs don’t include bits of brick!’