My Husband's Wives (21 page)

Evie rattled a few forgotten shells in the pocket of the cardigan, picked up on some walk. Yes, Annalise Connolly must have been in shock. She was ragged with sadness, not just for herself anymore, but surprisingly for Annalise and Grace too. They'd all lost Paul.

Her breath caught in her chest as an image from long ago played out in her memory. It had been love at first sight, across the crowded platform at Belfast Station. That didn't happen to people anymore. At least, Evie didn't think so. It had happened to her though. She'd been rushing from her train. Instead of heading home, she'd embarked on the first and it turned out the only true adventure of her life.

Back at the house Evie pulled her front door key from the chain that hung inside her letterbox. After the fresh breeze of the Irish Sea, the hall threw up a musty air as she took off Paul's cardigan. She threw the front door open wide, let the fresh air chase away the staleness.

The red light of the answering machine flashed dimly in the hall: A message from the solicitors. They had a cancellation for the morning. There was a codicil added to the will. She made the call to Grace Kennedy, who said she'd contact Annalise. They'd meet in a smart coffee shop near the offices of White, Blake and Nash. While they spoke, a small bottle caught Evie's eye. Pills that Paul had given her to help her sleep. She fingered the label carefully, studied it as a silence stretched across the phone line, and everything suddenly became clear to her. Although she'd just made plans with Grace Kennedy, she had no intention of seeing them through.

When she rang off, she said goodbye. She slid the tablets into her pocket, and poured a large glass of brandy. After turning off the lights in the house, she went upstairs, selected her best nightdress and brushed her hair carefully. In the end, you have to take things into your own hands. Maybe she should have done that years ago instead of dragging herself along through this half-life. She swallowed a handful of tablets and washed them down with the warming sweetness of the brandy. Then she lay back on her pillow. Her mind was unexpectedly calm as she played the years of life with Paul across her memory like a long feature film she'd just settled down to watch. Slowly, she felt sleep encroach upon her thoughts. As she sank deeper into the familiar pillows, she knew it was just a matter of waiting; waiting for Paul's arms to reach out and welcome her to their forever after.

The coffee shop was busy, packed with women who had nothing more to do than sit and catch up all day. Expensive perfume punctured the Michelin-starred aromas. The ambient music was cannibalized by the sound of persistent chatter. It was not Grace's kind of place and now that she'd met Evie, she knew it wasn't her kind of place either. It was close to the solicitors, and that was about all it had to recommend it. Annalise Connolly wore the unofficial uniform of the yummy mummy. Statement necklace, white shirt and skinny jeans, an ageless ensemble, but the older you got, the more you had to work at it. Grace thought she was far too bright for it to be real.

‘Jesus, I can't believe it.' Annalise sipped a tea concoction that smelled of silage. ‘I still can't take it in. Even this morning, I made breakfast for both of us. I thought, with the funeral, it'd be more real. But I'm obviously still in denial.'

‘I know, but this meeting today, getting things sorted; it'll help.' Grace checked her watch. Evie Considine was half an hour late. ‘I'm sorry. It's not going to be easy, with the boys being so young.'

‘My mum helps out a lot.' Annalise's voice was tight. No one said they had to like each other. ‘To tell you the truth, well, maybe you heard this already, but he moved out a couple of weeks ago.'

‘For someone else?' Grace regretted it as soon as the words tumbled out, but if they were honest, they were probably all wondering about Kasia. ‘Sorry.'

‘God, no.' Annalise tossed her mane of golden hair, shorter and finer than in her modelling days. ‘Well, I hadn't thought so anyway.' She smiled a half-smile, endearing and heart-breaking all at once. ‘Who'd have thought that he had some young one on the go at the same time?' There could be bitterness yet, but it was early days.

‘We don't know that the child is his, Annalise.'

‘Oh, come on? It's not as if he doesn't have form.' Annalise watched her. Grace supposed she must seem old and past it to this beauty queen.

‘I'd have expected Evie to be the first here.' She changed the subject fast; a little worry crept into her voice. ‘I think I'll ring her house phone.'

‘Hasn't she got a mobile? Surely she'd be on her way already.'

‘It's the only number I have for her.' Grace took out her phone and dialled the number. ‘Engaged.' Either Evie Considine hadn't hung up properly or she was still at home chatting away merrily on her telephone. ‘She sounded kind of funny when I spoke to her last night.'

‘How do you mean?' Annalise scanned the restaurant, a bored expression on her face. Most of the clientele here were her mother's generation.

‘I mean, she just sounded a bit off. She was different, not very together? Last night, well, it was as if she dipped into la-la land.'

‘Maybe she's a bit of a drinker, at that age especially. All on her own in a big house…'

‘What age do you think she is?'

‘Old. Seventy?'

Grace scrutinized Annalise Connolly, wondered what she and Paul ever had in common apart from two sets of X and Y-chromosomes that would bind them together forever. ‘I'm going to her house to see if she's all right.' Grace took a tenner from her purse, left it on the table. ‘Well, are you coming?' She didn't really want to go on her own; something about Evie Considine scared the wits out of her. Maybe Grace still cast herself in the role as the mistress.

*

The heavy gate creaked a noisy welcome and the doorbell rang loudly beyond the heavy wood and faded Cardinal red paint. Deep inside, Grace thought she could hear the bell ring out again. They stood for a few minutes in silence; there wasn't much to say.

‘I don't think she's here, or if she is, she has no intention of answering her door to us.' Annalise looked as if she'd rather be having her toes waxed than standing at Evie Considine's front door.

‘Should we take a look around the back?' The curtains were drawn back, apart from a large angular window that jutted out at the top of the house. Here the blinds shut the world out with an obstinacy that glared at her. She wandered round the back of the house. It interested her, in some macabre way. She'd probably never be here again, and it was almost as if she was getting an altered insight into Paul's life. After all, this is what he had left for her. A garage stood pigheadedly to the side of the house. Inside, she could see the shape of a small car, covered with grey tarpaulin. Everything about the place seemed set, secure, as though strapped in for the long haul. The back of the house yielded no more than the front, apart from a view into a sparse kitchen – designed perhaps a hundred years before her own. Small steps led up to a heavy rear door, more suited to a farmhouse than the genteel surroundings of this affluent area. Grace stood for a moment, wondered how often Paul had stood here and looked across the garden. When had he been here last? Then, with as much determination as she could muster, she turned on her heels. She would ring Evie again and if there were no answer, she'd try to get inside.

‘No sign of any life round the back.' Grace dialled Evie's landline as she walked towards Annalise. She pressed her face close to the mottled glass panel of the door. If only Evie would wander towards her, perfectly put together, pearls in place. In the hall, she could just make out the phone, off the hook. She hung up before she even got the dial tone. ‘What do you think?'

‘I say we leave her to it. Give the woman a bit of space.' Annalise examined her watch again. ‘If you're worried then maybe we leave it for a few hours, try again. Obviously she forgot about our appointment.' It was long cancelled at this stage and both women, if they didn't actually say it, shared a sense of relief about that. There was never a good time to read Paul's will, but today seemed like it was too soon, but even so, her impression of Evie was that she'd show up no matter how uncomfortable if she had agreed she would.

‘There's something not right.' Something niggled at her. An inner voice, something familiar, as though Paul was at her shoulder, nudging her. She lifted the flap of the letter box to look in to the hall, left towards the heavy oak staircase dog-legging up into the high floors above. Then, something caught her eye. A long dark band of cord. Grace slipped her hand further into the letter box, flicked the cord across. At the end, the faded silver of the front door key dangled forlornly.

‘We're going in,' she said across her shoulder to Annalise. The key turned easily and the door groaned in thankful anticipation of their entrance. ‘Evie, it's Grace. Hello?' she called out towards the back of the hall. Her steps were faltering. It was strange being here like this.

‘Are you sure about this?' Annalise sounded oddly nervous and Grace wondered if she was perhaps afraid of Evie, or afraid of what they'd find.

‘No.' Grace wasn't sure of anything these days. ‘But what if she's fallen in the shower? You hear about that happening to people. Who's going to check on her if we don't? She wasn't exactly inundated with family and friends at the funeral, was she?'

From the moment she entered the house, Grace could smell Paul, feel him all about her, as though he had walked from that car and come here immediately, settled himself in and was determined not to be shifted. Perhaps that was the bullishness she felt about the outside of the house; his rare, sugar-coated single-mindedness. In the drawing room, the silence of the house echoed back at her. He'd never really left Evie and that was why she talked about him as though they were still together. Had he truly left any of them? She walked to a winged leather armchair. At its back, reclining as though in repose, was Paul's old jumper. She took it to her face, could still smell him, that light scent of Creed, citrus gold and antiseptic soap. Annalise ruptured her thoughts by calling to Evie as though she were a lost poodle, missing from her kennel. ‘Evie, we're here, it's Annalise and Grace, are you here?'

They walked through each room on the ground floor, and then made their way up the polished stairs.

‘Nothing has been touched here, not since we were here after the funeral,' Grace said to Annalise who was following close behind her on the stairs.

‘Perhaps she's been away?' Annalise said, but her voice sounded high pitched with nerves, so Grace did not believe she meant it.

‘Annalise, I spoke to her last night on the land line.' Grace had replaced it in its cradle, but it felt somehow portentous in her hand. The first floor didn't look as if it had been used in over twenty years. Maybe not since Evie's parents had lived here? It looked as if it got a spring clean once a year. Beyond that, it wallowed in a melancholy emptiness, distant ghosts and memories the only reminder that once there had been life and love here. A smaller version of the main staircase rose theatrically at the end of the long first floor corridor. Perhaps, back in the day, it had led to sleeping quarters for the servants. Grace placed her hand on the worn oak rail. She had an ominous feeling they were nearing Evie. Still she didn't answer when they called her name. There were two rooms at the top of the house. The first, a nursery, still filled with the toys that may have been placed there a century earlier. Grace walked to the second door. She knocked lightly, then called out Evie's name. The door opened easily. This was, without doubt, Evie's room. Beneath a chair stood the shoes she'd worn to Paul's funeral. Her pearls lay on the dressing table. The mirrors reflected the most inspiring view Grace had ever seen of Dublin Bay. It took a moment to orient herself in the room. The bed, a four-poster elaborate affair, dominated one wall of the room. It was draped in heavy gold and auburn fringed material, and there, lying as though in peaceful dreams, was Evie Considine. Grace took a deep breath, somehow it managed to quell the horror that rose uselessly within her. She heard Annalise stifle a gasp, backing into the hallway. Grace moved to the bedside, maybe more fearful than Annalise, but they had to do something, so she felt for Evie's pulse. It was weak, hardly beating, but still there.

‘Call the ambulance; we need to get her moving. Ask what we should do,' she yelled at Annalise who was punching 999 into her phone. Grace's eyes landed on the locker, grabbed the pillbox that sat there. They were Paul's, prescribed a year ago – sleeping tablets from what she could make out. She thrust them at Annalise and ran to the window, opened it wide. It was what you did, wasn't it? The sea breeze incised the room, cutting expertly the dry moulded air, stealing away the morbid staleness of death. Grace prayed they weren't too late. Annalise was giving directions as best she could. ‘Ask them what do we do? Tell them what she took.' Grace listened as Annalise repeated their instructions. She moved Evie into the recovery position. Annalise's face was limestone-white; she needed to get out of here. Grace took her by the arm. ‘I'll stay here. You go down and wait outside, try and make it easier for the ambulance to find us.' She watched as Annalise careened down the stairs, two and three steps at a time. There was a good chance she'd get sick along the way. Grace walked back to the bed, wondered if perhaps she should speak to Evie. It's what they did in films, after all. But she had nothing to say, or at least nothing that she could think of that would entice Evie back into the world of the living. So she sat on the side of the bed and tidied Evie's hair; it was the very least she could do for her and then she held her hand. At least she would not feel alone.

Within five minutes, the ambulance belted onto the tree-lined road below. The paramedics sounded as though they might be the width of the staircase, but soon, Grace found herself thinking that Evie Considine might actually make it. They were true blue Dublin charmers, their language littered with loves and darlings and any endearment that meant they weren't caught out for a patient's name. It might not sound professional, but it was certainly comforting and they knew what they were doing. Grace would stay with her until she had to collect Delilah. As she drove behind the ambulance, she left a message for Kasia to tell her about Evie. Evie's predicament had spun things into perspective. Grace had lost Paul, but she still had Delilah. She had a reason to keep moving. All her life, she had broken up her memories into before her father had left her and afterwards. From here on, she had a funny feeling that she would see things differently. That fear that had lurked beneath her polished veneer for so many years began to melt away. She had today and she had Delilah and she knew with certainty she was lucky to have both.