The Other Woman(70)

The other drawer of the dresser was awkward to slide, and I had to jemmy it this way and that to get it open. There were two stacks of garish cards, each bundled together with a ribbon. I slid the top card out, a birthday greeting to her from Adam. The one furthest back was a sympathy card, with a note inside, written in Adam’s writing,

Dearest Mum,

Only you can understand how it feels to lose someone so suddenly, so needlessly. I keep asking myself, ‘What if . . . ?’ as I’m sure you must have done a million times. What if I’d been there? Would it have been different? Could I have saved her? Do these questions ever stop, Mum? Can you ever sleep soundly at night knowing that if things had been different . . .



My heart broke for him as I read his poignant words, and a tiny part felt for Pammie too. I couldn’t begin to imagine how it must feel to lose somebody so close. The other pile, much bigger in comparison, was to her with love from James, for every possible occasion: birthdays, Christmas, Mother’s Day, and even those that I didn’t know there were cards for – Easter, St David’s Day. She was lucky to have two sons who thought of her as often as Adam and James did. What a shame she didn’t want to share that side of them, choosing instead to see every advancing female as a threat to the amount of time and love they had for her. By now, she could probably have had two equally doting daughters-in-law as well, both happy and willing to see her through what might or might not be her toughest battle yet.

There were no other nooks or crannies that held any mystery in the sitting room, so I did a quick sweep of the kitchen, but aside from the obligatory ‘man drawer’, which housed old batteries, takeaway menus and keys that no longer had locks for them, there was nothing but cutlery and utensils.

I’d pictured myself going back into the sitting room, picking up my tea, and listening to ‘Homeward Bound’, the track now playing on the CD. So how come my foot was now on the bottom step of the staircase? I looked up at the narrow treads, the carpet wearing thin, and I wondered what happened once the staircase turned right and disappeared. The chintzy lemon wallpaper, with its flamboyant trails of rhododendron, was beginning to fade where the sun ate away at it at various times of the day. But at the top of the staircase, where there was a constant shadow, the green of the leaves was still vibrant and bright.

I convinced myself that I was going up to have a closer look, to really appreciate the depth of colour, but I didn’t even stop. My feet just seemed to lift themselves up onto those last three steps, the ones you couldn’t see from the hall, and into the room with the open door.

The double bed and small wardrobe were enough to fill the room, but opposite, in the alcoves either side of the chimney breast, were tall chests of drawers. I swear I could still smell the pine scent emanating from the furniture, each piece its own shade of orangey-brown.

The sunlight filtered through a gap in the thin curtains, casting a sliver of light across the room. I moved around the bed, the floorboards creaking as I went, and sat on the floor in front of the chest furthest from the window.

The bottom drawer felt heavy, so I lifted the weight up and off its support as I slid it out. It was full of ornamental boxes and decorated trinkets. The nerve fibres in my hands tingled as my clumsy fingers struggled with the clasp on the wooden jewellery box that was just begging to be opened. There were little milk teeth laid carefully on a red velvet cushion, the white enamel having yellowed over the years, and two name-tag bracelets bearing Adam and James’s names. Guilt washed over me as I caught sight of a pair of tarnished, silver men’s cufflinks, presumably Jim’s, and I slammed the top shut. I leant my head back on the mattress, my folded limbs trapped between the chest and the bed. What the hell was I doing? This wasn’t me. This wasn’t what I did. I’d allowed this woman to turn me into someone no better than her. Of all the terrible things she’d done, I would not allow her to change the very foundation of me: to distort the values and morals my parents had worked so hard to instil. I placed the box back inside the drawer, tilting it to make it fit. I jumped as it dropped heavily onto its back, its underside staring outwards, revealing a hidden compartment underneath.

I looked at it for a while, remembering the mantra I’d just recited, and willed myself to ignore it. ‘Close the drawer,’ I repeated out loud, in the hope that hearing myself actually say it would stop me from doing what I already knew I was going to do. I carefully lifted it back out again and slid the bottom section backwards. I don’t know what I was expecting to see, some old bones or something, so it was an anti-climax to find nothing more than an old inhaler, the type I’d seen a girl at school with. Molly, I think her name was. I would never forget watching her collapse in PE, just after we’d been told to run around the field twice to warm up for netball. We thought it was a joke at first, but then she’d started wheezing and clutching at her chest. I hardly knew the girl, but I couldn’t sleep that night, and almost cried when they told us in assembly the next morning that she was going to be okay.

I didn’t know Pammie suffered from asthma, but perhaps it was Jim’s, I reasoned. People find the oddest mementoes comforting. There was something beneath it, a cutting or a picture, and I carefully lifted the inhaler out to get a clearer view. My eyes snapped shut, as if desperately trying to stop themselves from sending the message they’d already received to my brain. I tried to retract it, battling furiously with myself to eradicate the image before it reached the part of me that recognized it. But I’d seen it and there was no way it could be undone. Rebecca. Smiling out at me, with the man she loved by her side. The missing photo from the album.