Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
The day of Phillip's funeral
I expected to feel free, unburdened, but when the curtains close around Phillip Rochester's satin-lined coffin all I feel is indigestion.
Naomi perches in the front row, shifting uncomfortably as the congregation whispers at her back. There are creases under her eyes where cried-out mascara threads its way through the cracked veneer. I wonder what she's crying for because, after all he's done, I am certain that it is not for him.
The vicar talked of a man who bore so little resemblance to the Phillip that I knew that I almost shed a tear. It is a time for lies and cover-ups, not truthful observations.
I twist my wedding band with my left thumb. No engagement ring. Too flashy, Immie. You're not that kind of girl. Five hundred and forty-eight days have passed since Phillip left me. I know I should take the ring off, but no amount of soap can free me from the snare. Years of marital misuse have thickened my hands, my waist, and my heart.
I am sitting five rows back, in the seat closest to the wall, as befits the ex-wife. Though, in reality, am I his widow? We didn't finalize the divorce. The paperwork is still on the sideboard along with the unpaid bills and the condolence cards. Fancy that. Me. A widow.
Some might say I shouldn't be here at all. Friends from my old life try not to stare at me, but they can't help themselves. When our eyes bump into each other, there is a timid acknowledgment, an apology of sorts, before a gosh-look-at-the-time glance at wrists and a scurrying for the chapel door. Nobody called when Phillip traded me in. They went with him into his new life along with the Bruce Springsteen CDs and the coffee machine.
Mother sits by my side alternately tutting and sighing, unsure whether to be angry or sad. She promised not to speak during the service, and though the effort is nearly crippling her, she has kept her word. Her eyes burn holes into my temples. I know that her nostrils will be flaring like they always do when she is displeased. Mother tends to convey more through her eyes than her mouth, and I regret not telling her to keep those shut too.
We disagreed on whether Alistair should attend his father's funeral. She says that, at six years old, he is too young. I say that he should be here to say good-bye, to keep up the pretense that Phillip will be missed. Mother won. Some battles aren't worth fighting. We wrote notes attached to helium balloons instead. Up, up, and away. Bye-bye, Daddy. Rot in hell, Phillip.
There are simple flowers at the front of the crematorium and Pachelbel's Canon is piped in from an invisible source. Everything has been carefully orchestrated to whitewash the darkness of death and to disinfect the walls against the smell of decay. A palate cleanser, if you like, between death and the wake. Naomi has booked the function room at the Old Bell, but I won't go in case the sherry loosens my lips and I smile a smile that shouldn't be seen at a funeral.
As the mournful parade passes us by, we file out of our rows with the order of service in hand. Phillip's photograph on the front is a grotesque, grinning specter. It was taken before he was promoted to CID. A decade ago at least. I used to think he looked so handsome in that uniform.
Mother stands in line to pay her respects to Naomi. It will be a brief conversation as high opinion is in short supply. My best friend, Rachel, is talking to DC Chris Miller with a red shawl fastened about her shoulders. She refused to wear black. As she rightly pointed out, black is a sign of respect. Both she and Chris held Phillip in the same regard. I'd hoped it would be Chris leading the inquest into Phillip's death, but they've brought in someone from further afield. Neutral.
I'm aware of Ruby behind me, though I am careful not to make eye contact with her. She is wearing a diaphanous frock of fresh-bruise purple, the most somber outfit she owns. It's the first time I've seen her wearing shoes. Usually barefoot, sometimes in flimsy flip-flops. It's anyone's guess whether this is a nod to conformity or she has simply come equipped to dance on Phillip's grave. She sits at the back row, as far away from the coffin as she can get, and commensurate with her ex-ex-wife status. The first Mrs. Rochester, the woman that Naomi and I have been measured against, holds an icy-white tissue under her nose, a pomander against the contagion of grief.
I stand and edge my way past the eye-dabbers and the head-shakers until I feel the sun on my face and smell the freshly mown grass. I squint against the sudden glare and a treacherous tear escapes my eye.
A stranger touches his cold hand to my elbow in a shared moment of I-know-how-it-feels, but how could he? There are only three of us here-Naomi, Ruby, and I-who know how satisfying it feels to know that Phillip Rochester got the death he deserved.
Chapter 2
22 days before the funeral
The Barn was one of those new-old houses. Only one story, but never to be referred to as a bungalow. Large sand-colored bricks and small dark windows with their frames painted National Trust green show history has been given the once-over with a bleach wipe. Everything is reclaimed, sourced with the utmost integrity from salvage yards and auction houses. Old made to look new and new made to look old.
I'd never set foot inside of The Barn. It was laughable that barns were desirable residences rather than shacks for animals. Farmers made a fortune selling dilapidated sheds with planning permission, and I could think of no better habitat for Phillip and his heifer.
I rang the doorbell and waited as the echo of the bell chime ran off down the hallway. I adjusted my armor: handbag across my chest, leather gloves pulled tightly over my wrists, scarf wound about my neck like ribbons on a maypole.
It wasn't easy for me to see Phillip in his new life, in his new house, with his new girlfriend, but this wasn't about me. This was about Alistair.
We had agreed to be grown-up about the whole situation. Civil. For the sake of our son. But there was still the small matter of finalizing the divorce, and it wasn't bringing out the best in either of us.
On paper, we would split everything amicably down the middle.
For better, for worse.
For richer, for poorer.
In sickness and in health.
If it were left up to Phillip, I would be awarded worse, poorer, and sickness while he got the rest. My solicitor said no one won by going through the courts. I told her, where Phillip was concerned, I couldn't win anyway.
Alistair hadn't suffered when his father left us. In fact, he might have felt life was considerably better. I know I did. Alternate weekends were conducted through clenched teeth and false smiles. Lately, however, Phillip wanted more than I was willing to give. More family time with Alistair and a woman who wasn't family, more sleepovers where sleep was never had. The more he wanted to take, the less I wanted to give.
With calls going unanswered and solicitor's letters ignored, I'd agreed to have "a word" with Phillip, but, standing in front of The Barn as day tipped into night, I still hadn't made up my mind which word it would be.
I'd stretched out a gloved finger to press the bell again when I heard a door open. Footsteps getting louder.
The girlfriend answered the door wearing next to nothing. She was attempting to pass off a sash of denim across her hips as a skirt, and I wondered how high their heating bills must be. She folded her thin arms under her chest and leaned against the doorframe with a faint smirk tickling the corners of her mouth.
Her long red hair was out of a bottle, but I suppose it suited her pale skin and brown eyes. I was transfixed by her eyelashes, so thick and long. Real? False? Questions that could as easily have been about the woman. And the breasts.
"Imogen. What a nice surprise," she said.
She should've given her face fair warning before she spoke, because it betrayed her in her lie.
"Hello, Naomi. Is he in?" I asked.
"Not back yet."
"Can I come in and wait?"
"Does he know you're comin'?"
We looked at each other expectantly, she expecting me to go away and I expecting her to find some manners, though my manners stopped me from saying so.
"Come on in, then, but you'll have to tek off yer shoes."
She spoke with an unfamiliar, difficult-to-place twang that suggested north of Derbyshire and sheep farming. Perhaps that's why she felt at home in The Barn.
Out of politeness, I told her she had a lovely home and I wasn't even lying. The house smelled white-of vanilla, and lilies, and bedsheets drying in the sun. Everything was cream or soft gray, giving the impression of moving through low-lying clouds. Beware of turbulence, I thought. Her head snapped to look at me and I wondered whether I'd spoken out loud and out of turn.
"It's beautiful," I said. "Just beautiful."
She waited while I unzipped my boots. I saw her take in my odd socks and she seemed to grow two inches taller at the sight. I bristled, feeling shabby and unkempt beside her painted nails and stenciled eyebrows.
"Renovations have been a chuffing nightmare. The beams"-she pointed above our heads to the exposed rafters-"are the original beams of the local abbey. They reckon they used them to build the farm after the abbey burned down. There's a conservation order on 'em. We had to get special permission to open all this up, and even then we had to be dead careful what we did."
She'd adopted an air of false irritation that belied her pride in her home.
"Really?" I said. "Fancy all that fuss for secondhand wood."
I took off my gloves and scarf, folding and pushing them into my Mary Poppins bag to get lost among the used tissues, old receipts, and Pokmon cards.
Even without her being a weekend stepmum to my son, and only half my age, and weight, I still wouldn't have liked Naomi. People who didn't know what Phillip was like assumed I was jealous. If I complained about him, they thought I was bitter at being thrown over for a younger woman, and if the tables were turned, I might have thought the same. I didn't know Naomi, nor did I care to spend the time getting to know her. She'd be gone before long. From where I stood, she was shallow and self-obsessed. She was far too pretty to be a nice person, because the universe just didn't work that way.
Naomi made Phillip look good. She was the lover, the coconspirator, the neon sign that proclaimed his dick still worked. To the outside world, Phillip had found love again after the breakdown of our marriage. Or slightly before, if you read his text messages when he left the room. I was a single mother gripping onto the final years of her thirties. Left behind. A solitary battered suitcase, doing another lap on the airport carousel.
"Coffee or tea?" she asked.
"Is it filter coffee?"
"Instant."
"I'll have tea, thanks."
She held my gaze and blinked rapidly, eyelids tapping out Morse code for cow, then disappeared into the kitchen. I simply couldn't help myself. I found it impossible to make life easy for her.
The only drink I wanted was clear and served over ice, but how else would we survive awkward situations if we didn't make tea to fill our time, hold tea to busy our hands, and drink tea to stop our mouths from running away?
I looked around the sparsely decorated room, my hands playing with the strap on my handbag. Phillip hated clutter. He was too embarrassed to bring people to our home, because I could never elevate it to his standards. I wondered whether he had made me fearful of mess or whether I'd always had the tendency. Of course, he was Phil nowadays. A reinvention. I wondered who he was trying to convince.
On the beech table beneath the window were thirteen mismatched photo frames. Thirteen. I tensed. Good God, why were there thirteen? I picked up the picture of Phillip wearing a snorkeling mask and slid it into my bag between the folds of my scarf. Twelve. Far better. A curved, round, gentle number. My shoulders loosened and the flow of anxiety in my chest reduced to a mere trickle.
I smiled to myself, pleased I had defused a potentially difficult situation. The therapist had taught me some breathing exercises, but sometimes it was easier to remove the problem entirely. The last thing I needed was to have a panic attack in front of The Girlfriend.
I looked at the remaining, even-numbered photos. Phillip and Naomi on a beach, at a wedding, kissing dolphins. Naomi as Catwoman and Phillip as a plump Batman. It had been his standard party outfit through the years. His crime-fighting persona had always been important to him. Phillip had what I liked to call a hero complex. He failed the tests to become a firefighter and his poor attendance at school, and even poorer grades, barred him from the RAF, and though the uniform wasn't as seductive, the police force was good enough.
His job had even brought the lovely Naomi to his door. He told me about the woman who laughed uncontrollably when he caught her speeding. He'd implied that she was a dotty old dear who shouldn't be driving rather than an attractive adolescent who shouldn't be making sheep's eyes at another woman's husband.
Traffic violations usually went one of two ways. Either the drivers came up with excuses: being late, not seeing the signs, wife in labor, dying parent. Or they accused him of being a jobsworth; of conning innocent people out of their hard-earned money, asking why he wasn't out arresting real criminals.
But the woman at the wheel simply threw her head back and laughed.
"Do you know why I stopped you?" Phillip had asked.
"Because I'm an idiot?"
"This is a thirty-mile-an-hour zone."
"I weren't doing thirty," she said.
"What's so funny?"
"There's no point denying it, is there? That's the end of me license too. I've been collecting points like there's no tomorrow. If I don't laugh I'd cry."
