Lessons in Heartbreak

If anyone could see her now, they’d think she was crazy, and perhaps she was: a lonely woman standing half-crazed at the shoreline, stuck in every sense of the word. Then she turned and walked home, leaving the dark of evening behind her.

The cottage was scarily silent and she went around turning on all the lights, anything to create a sense of warmth. In the sitting room, she picked up her knitting bag and looked forlornly at the tumbled skeins of coloured wools that perched on top.

She couldn’t bear the thought of the television or even the radio. But she might knit. Knitting somehow soothed her mind. It was a newish hobby. Newish in that she’d knitted things years ago: slippers, baby clothes, blankets for Beth’s dolls. But she’d never been much of an expert. She’d come back to it a year ago, after she stopped working in the garden centre and knew she needed something to occupy herself.

She’d toyed with the idea of learning another language or learning the computer, and then Marcus, her son-in-law, had helped by giving her an old laptop. Even though he apologised endlessly for its age and decrepitude, it still worked and Anneliese was thrilled with it.

‘It’s obsolete,’ he’d said apologetically.

‘It’s wonderful,’ Anneliese smiled.

‘It’s ten years old. That’s practically a dinosaur in computer terms,’ he’d gone on.

‘Like myself,’ Anneliese added, patting him on the arm.

She loved it, and surfing the Net – how she loved to say those words! – had taken her down a strange path one day to a craft site where she found all types of knitting that had nothing in common with the lumpen slippers and baby cardigans she used to make.

This knitting involved making felted handbags, crafting lace-like shawls, making wall hangings.

She loved it and instantly ordered a handbag kit. Then, in a might-as-well-be-hung-for-a-sheep-as-for-a-lamb moment, she’d also gone to the Crazee Knitters forum and signed herself up as a fledgling knitter. On the site, women from all over the world shared their knitting experiences.

It had taken her ages to write her first message: there was something scarily final about sending your thoughts out there where everyone could read them, but Anneliese felt safe in the anonymity of the internet.

Anneliese from Ireland could be anyone.

In her cottage with every light lit, Anneliese logged on, clicked on to her last message and felt a stab of utter astonishment at what she’d written only a few days before. It was so normal, so ordinary.

I’m halfway through knitting the pink-and-grey bag. It’s so pretty and I can’t wait to actually finish it because I want to see what it looks like when it’s felted. Last night, I sat up until midnight with the TV on and kept knitting. I sort of watched two medical dramas I’ve never seen before at the same time and a programme about a man-made island in Dubai and I kept knitting. I wish I was faster and I’m not sure how to knit the flower – does anyone have hints for it?

Anneliese thought of that night. Edward had laughed at her manic knitting and had gone to bed, leaving her and her circular needle in front of the television. At the time, she’d felt guilty leaving him to go to bed on his own. It was as bad as having separate bedrooms.

Just showed what she knew.

She’d been worried about sending him to bed alone, when he was probably grateful to escape her.

The pain of today was still too fresh to be anything but numb, but for a brief moment, Anneliese felt a sharp stab of agony. Edward was gone and he’d left with Nell. And all along, she hadn’t had a clue what was going on under her nose. She used to feel so intuitive, so connected with the universe. Clearly she wasn’t. That connectedness was another big misconception.

What else had she been wrong about in her life?

Suddenly, Anneliese felt that she couldn’t cope with all this on her own. She needed something to dull it. She found the corkscrew and a bottle of very expensive red wine that Edward had been saving. Blast that for a game of soldiers, she thought, pouring herself a big glass.

Then, glass in hand, she sat down in front of her laptop and felt grateful for the existence of those other people around the world, who might be sitting as she was now, alone.

The wine bit as it went down. It tasted too acidy, but perhaps that was just her. She’d had a strange metallic taste in her mouth all day: was that what grief tasted like? She drank it all the same and wondered did anyone on Crazee Knitters have any hints for what to do when your husband of thirty-seven years left you? In the five months since she’d been posting on the site, she’d only ever talked about her knitting – the pink-and-grey flower bag that had taken her three months because it was very complicated. Other people did talk about their lives, but Anneliese wasn’t the sort of person to open herself up to others. Now, when she had this unexpected longing to share her pain, it was too big to talk about.

She scrolled down through the posts. MariLee had posted a picture of the most amazing lacy shawl with a rainbow motif and Anneliese wondered absently if she’d ever be able to make anything that complicated. The flower bag was only difficult because there were so many bits to it. There were no really hard stitches, just lots of fiddly little bits to knit, felt and sew painstakingly together.

Lily had loved the finished product.

‘Isn’t it a dotey little thing,’ she’d said when Anneliese arrived to show it off in all its glory.

‘I loved knitting when I was younger although I can’t knit any more,’ she’d added ruefully, holding up fingers gnarled with arthritis. ‘It calms the soul.’

‘I can’t knit, really,’ Anneliese replied. ‘I keep toying with the idea of getting a pattern for a sweater or something, but I’m not sure I could do anything so complicated.’

‘Anneliese, you can do anything you set your mind to,’ Lily smiled.

‘Am I too old to learn?’

Lily laughed outright at that. ‘You’re never too old to learn, darling,’ she said. ‘I’m still learning, and look at me – nearly ninety. You’re only a child, Anneliese. What’s it they say nowadays? Izzie said it to me once…’ Lily stopped to think. ‘Yes, I’ve got it: ninety is the new eighty! So fifty-six is like being a teenager, if you make yourself think that way.’

Anneliese sighed. She’d have to tell Lily about Edward too.

Not that Lily would be like poor, dear Beth and need careful handling once she heard the news. Lily was quite unshockable, for all that she looked like a delicate little old lady in the flesh. While Lily had once been tall, age had withered her until she had the look of a bird about her: still with those fiercely intelligent cornflower-blue eyes that missed nothing, but as fragile as a bird nonetheless. Yet there was nothing fragile about her mind or her opinions.

So it wasn’t the thought of shocking Lily that made Anneliese not want to tell her – it was the pity she’d seen on Lily’s face. Anneliese hated being pitied most of all.

She finished her drink and began to write. Perhaps her fellow knitters had the wisdom she needed.

Sorry to bother you all with this but I’ve got no one to talk to and I’ve got to talk. You see, my husband left me today. I won’t bore you with the minute details but basically I came home to find him and my best friend talking and I knew. They were having an affair. He left with her. I don’t know what to do or think. I haven’t told anybody yet – we have a daughter but she’s very emotional. You could say she doesn’t do reality very well.

The hardest thing is the sense that I didn’t know him at all – or her, for that matter. It’s like a death. I think I’m going through grief. I feel like people must feel when they discover someone they loved is secretly a rapist or a murderer. I’m so astonished that I didn’t know and then, I wonder if everything was a lie? It must be. And I never noticed.

How could that be? How many other things did he lie about? Loving me? That I was the only woman he wanted to make love to? Wanting to be with me? Right now, it all could be a lie because he managed to keep one huge lie, so how can I be sure that all the other things aren’t lies too?

I can see a photo of us on the wall from here and I’m looking at it trying to catch a glimpse of this different person who must have been there all along, except that I didn’t notice him. This picture of us – me and him and our daughter, when she was about ten – is a holiday shot when we were on a picnic and it looks different now. We had that old station wagon and that really ugly tartan rug is spread beside it, and I’m smiling and so is he, and Beth’s dancing – she was so into ballet then – once, I’d have sworn tears of blood that I knew what was in his head at that moment: that he was happy with us. And now – well, I don’t know.

So what he’s done now has made me question every single thing in our whole shared lives. My memories are gone because they might be fake and they might not.

It’s like being shown a picture of a vase in silhouette and then someone points out that it could also represent two faces in profile, and once you’ve seen the new picture, it’s impossible to look at it and just see the vase.

And how do I tell my daughter? She’s thirty-six, married – and that sounds like she should be here taking care of me right now, but the thing is, it’s still the other way round. No matter what happened to me, Beth would need to be taken care of. So, does anyone have any advice for me? I’m desperate.

Anneliese was about to click ‘send’ when she changed her mind. With a single keystroke, she erased the whole message.

She could hear her mother’s voice in her head, a voice made angry by Anneliese’s shutting the door of her bedroom and refusing to come out: ‘Anneliese, you can’t solve everything by shutting us all out, you know.’

Shutting the door might not have worked but it made her feel better. Always had. It could again too. Instincts weren’t called instincts for nothing.

She locked the doors and checked the windows were shut. That had always been Edward’s job: the man’s job, organising the house before bed. Anneliese dampened down the hurt and the pain of thinking of him. They were just doors: she could lock them herself.

She went round the cottage methodically, switching off lights, then climbed the stairs to their bedroom. Her bedroom, now.

The beams in the upstairs of the cottage were stripped wood, bleached pale like all the floorboards. Their bedroom was pale blue with white furniture, two demin rag-rugs on the floor and white curtains that were heavily lined to keep the cold out. Anneliese took one look at the big high bedstead with its white quilted coverlet and backed out of the room. She couldn’t sleep there tonight. It would be like lying in a bed of lies.

Beth’s bedroom was still Beth’s, even though she’d left home years before. Beth liked the comfort of her childhood things still being there: her Barbies and their various cars and wardrobes still arranged on the wooden shelves, her Enid Blyton books lined up neatly.

The spare bedroom in the cottage was barely a box room. Painted purest white, there was room only for a bed, a bleached wood chest of drawers with seashells laid on top as decoration, and a tiny one-drawer nightstand with an old brass lamp on it. In the twenty years she’d lived in the cottage, Anneliese had never slept in this room. Which made it perfect.