The Wife Before Me(88)

The interior of the van was warm, the heating full on, yet Amelia shook convulsively as Leanne helped her to change from her sodden clothes into thermal underwear and a fleece. Wrapped in a thermal blanket, she lay down on an airbed in the back of the van. Jay unzipped his wetsuit and pulled on the clothes Leanne handed him. Mark started the engine. Gradually, her trembling stopped and Amelia, drifting in and out of sleep, was barely aware of time passing. Whenever she awoke, Leanne was beside her to whisper reassurances that all was going as planned.



* * *



Her first impression of this wild place that was to become her home was an audible one. Leanne assured her she would become so used to the wailing wind that she would sleep soundly through the mightiest gales. In the bathroom, Amelia showered. Her skin felt abrasive, brine in her pores. A plan that had seemed beyond crazy had worked – but for how long?

Nicholas was bound to become suspicious sooner rather than later. She had promised to ring him as soon as she arrived in Galway. He would be angry that she had not obeyed his instructions and even angrier when he was unable to contact her later in the evening. Not enough to alert his suspicions, though; he would see this as just a small gesture of defiance. One that he would quash easily once she returned. Her legs weakened. She gripped the edge of the handbasin to steady herself. He would ring the hotel where he believed she was staying overnight and discover she had cancelled her booking? He would ring the pharmaceutical company and discover that she had told Betsy Poole she was unable to accept their commission?

At first, he would believe she had run away. He would check her laptop, looking for clues. Failing to find any, he would search her possessions, hurling her clothes from the wardrobe, upending the drawers in the dressing table that he had filled with the lingerie of his choice, searching, searching for the tiniest clue that could explain her disappearance. Then, tomorrow, the knock on the door. Two grave-faced gardai who would enquire whether her car had been stolen. When he shook his head, they would ask if his wife had been wearing red boots? They would tell him that a car had been discovered at the foot of Mason’s Pier at low tide, and that a red boot had been recovered from the silt, a second boot wedged between the driver and passenger seat. She envisaged the search that would follow, the divers, the boats and helicopters. How long would it last? Was she now a criminal? Wasting valuable resources? Her survival instincts were stronger than the shame this caused her. She touched her stomach. Another few weeks and Nicholas would have noticed the swelling, slight as it was.





Fifty





How mightily the strong fall when illness strikes. I was a healthy child, who became a healthy adult. My constitution could go fifteen rounds with an infection and win. Contagion looked me in the eye and fled. If I could claim unrequited love as an illness, it would be the only one that made my eyes water and my breathing short.

When I was afflicted by a strange tiredness and sensations of pins and needles in my legs began to trouble me, I refused to recognise this as an illness. It was easy to find reasons for my symptoms. I was working too hard, taking on too many commissions, sitting for too long at the cutting table in my New York studio and ignoring my posture. Denial became harder when I was cutting glass one day and my right arm began to shake uncontrollably. The attack passed but I knew I must consult a doctor. I found myself undergoing tests in the unfamiliar environs of a hospital. It took time for the medics to reach a diagnosis. When the disease was named, a rare and fatal syndrome with a name I wanted to instantly forget, I discharged myself back to my apartment. Ignoring something, I believed, could force my mind to conquer matter. For a while that seemed possible. But when I was no longer able to ignore the gradual weakening of my limbs, I returned to Ireland and moved to Mag’s Head.

My creative vision had always embraced large spaces but there, beside that restless ocean, I set up my studio and worked small. In those early months I wondered if the medics had been wrong. My energy was good, my productivity boundless. Looking back, I see this brief remission as a final handout from the puppet-master of fate.

I persuaded myself to endure the pain, the increasing sense of weakness, of losing possession of my own body. I thought I could tough it out, as others have done, using their guts and grit, but I was never born to endure the unendurable.

My mind was made up, my plan set when I came to Woodbine and hung the butterflies from the apple tree. When the time was right, I would go quietly into the darkness, or, if there was a bonus to be gained, I would pass into the brightness.

Amelia had been devastated when she heard what I intended to do. We’d argued fiercely. She said it was a crazy solution to both our problems; outrageous, bizarre, and without any possibility of succeeding. Fate, however, had decreed otherwise.

My hair had always been my flag of identity, so striking that people seldom noticed much else about me. I used to cry in the mornings when my father combed it, dragging the comb through the tangles until my scalp ached. He’d become impatient and, eventually, give up and fling the comb at the wall. A bad hangover kills parenting skills flat-out. I managed it myself from the age of eight. At one stage I could sit on it. After I became friends with Amelia, she brushed it every day until she’d removed the tangles of years. I was just as patient when I searched online for the wig she would use when she came here.

I became a tactician, slotting all the pieces together and plotting carefully, knowing that one slip of the cutting knife would shatter the glass. Our friendship, forged in love, would give my death meaning. What had seemed unmanageable when the thought first came to me took on a semblance of possibility, then normality. Nicholas believed I had returned to New York. Amelia had told him so, and, as he did not know about my illness, he’d believed her. I had no children who would mourn me, no partner who would care if I slipped away for ever. Jay and Mark would grieve, this I knew, and Amelia, this woman I was born to lose, would be freed from the burden of my love.