The Younger Wife(36)

RACHEL


Someone was knocking at Rachel’s door. She had no intention of answering, obviously. How could she? Peter and Emily’s wedding cake had been destroyed. Rachel had eaten the top two layers. She was utterly stuffed, with cake, self-loathing and shame. There was no way she could repair or remake the cake in time, which meant she was not only an unspeakable glutton, but also that her business was ruined. She could just see the reviews. It might even make the news.

Another knock.

‘Go away!’ she shouted. She sounded like a madwoman.

‘Rachel?’

She swore internally. It was Darcy. Of course it was Darcy. Only someone who looked like he did could have the confidence to show up at your house after you’d cancelled a date with a pathetic excuse.

‘I know you have a wedding cake to deliver and I thought I’d deliver it for you since you aren’t feeling well,’ he called through the door. ‘You can just put it out on the doorstep and I’ll take it. I don’t need to see you without your . . . beauty products or anything. Not that you need beauty products. But I have sisters and I know they don’t even like the postman to see them before they’ve put their faces on. I can even close my eyes,’ he offered.

Rachel opened the door. She felt like the ugliest, most revolting woman alive.

‘Hey, you don’t look sick. You look great!’ He looked at her searchingly. ‘What is it? Headache? Stomach-ache?’

‘All of the above.’

‘You need to get to bed,’ he said, and to his credit there didn’t seem to be any double entendre. ‘Off you go. I’ll grab the cake. Where is it?’

She pointed towards the kitchen. Darcy got as far as the doorway before he stopped short. ‘Uh . . .’

‘Please don’t say anything obvious,’ Rachel said. ‘And if you make a baking joke, so help me.’

To his credit, he didn’t. He took another moment, then asked, ‘And . . . the cake is due at the reception when?’

‘An hour and a half.’

Darcy closed his eyes, his hands steepled over his mouth. After what felt like an eternity, he nodded.

‘I have an idea,’ he said.





19


HEATHER


For most of the time that Heather worked for Stephen and Pam, things between her and Stephen were strictly platonic. She did her job creating the cosy space that was Pamela’s style, and Stephen paid her invoices on time. It was a mutually acceptable arrangement. Or, it would have been, had Heather not been in love with Stephen.

The irony was that one of the reasons Heather fell for Stephen was the way he loved Pam. When they met to talk about plans for the house, he always insisted that she be part of the conversation, making sure she was on board with the plan, even if it took two or three tries to get her to understand. If she got up and went for a wander, he followed her with his eyes and was on his feet in seconds if she put herself in harm’s way – like trying to boil the kettle or walk up the stairs. His patience, it seemed, was endless.

But Pam’s condition deteriorated quickly. Each time Heather came to the house for a meeting, Pam’s eyes were a little duller. She was more confused. Slower to understand. Stephen and Pam had planned to stay in the house during the renovation, but the more Pam started wandering, the more they realised how dangerous this could be. After a few months, Stephen and Pam decided to find a rental property a few streets away, and Heather started seeing Stephen at the house alone for meetings. It was during one of these meetings that Heather arrived at the house to find Stephen balancing on the wooden frame of what would soon be the new oak floorboards of their kitchen, his face wet with tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to come back?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Come in.’

‘Are you sure?’

He nodded, and she crossed the floor from beam to beam, coming to a stop at the beam beside his. ‘Are you okay?’

He smiled. ‘When my patients ask, Am I going to be okay? I never know what to say. In the odd case I can say, Yes, after the surgery you will be as good as new. But in most cases I can’t say that. I have to give them a long answer, like, We hope that your heart will work as it should for some time to come, but we don’t know how long that will be. And the life that you have known up until now will likely never be the same. There will be daily medication, treatment, lifestyle amendments. As for whether I’m okay, that’s complicated too. I’m already feeling better after having a good cry. But Pam is going to get consistently worse and then she’ll die. We don’t know when that will be, or how it will happen. We’ll never have her the way we used to have her.’ His face tensed with the effort, it seemed, of holding back tears. ‘We made the decision today to move Pam to a nursing home sooner rather than later. Which means she won’t even get to enjoy this bloody renovation, which was all for her.’

Now he did cry, in earnest. His face became mangled, and the tears began to flow. It was a powerful thing, Heather thought, watching a man cry while discussing his feelings so eloquently. Unfortunately, she didn’t share his eloquence. Finding herself without words, she did something totally out of character. She stepped across to his plank of wood, and put her arms around him. As Stephen leaned into her, they overbalanced, landing heavily on the beam below them.