The English Wife

“Not at all.” I was lying through my teeth, of course. I was eaten up with curiosity.

Val leaned toward me again, her eyes willing me to agree. “Come on, Margie. It’s time to start taking risks. You don’t have Brandon breathing down your neck anymore. You’re free, girl! Go for it! Go to England, tell that tramp what you think of her and throw her out of your cottage. Then go have yourself one hell of a vacation.”

The waiter arrived with the bill just then, saving me from answering right away. This was a mistake, I thought. I should have gone home instead of going back to work. I needed time to absorb all this.

I wanted a hot bath, perfumed oil, candles, a bottle of wine and a good book. I wanted to throw my clothes all over the bedroom, leave dirty dishes in the sink, turn the CD player on full blast, now that Brandon wasn’t there to frown his disapproval.

I didn’t want to think about the cottage, or what it might mean. Not now. Not yet. Right now I wanted to be alone, to pamper myself, and give myself time to recover.

I’d spent twenty-seven years with a man who’d been leading a secret life. All those years I’d put up with his overbearing attitude and his annoying little habits, telling myself I was better off with him than without him. How wrong could I have been.

Well, now he was gone, and he couldn’t hold me back anymore. I still missed him, more than he deserved, but now I wanted to be done mourning and get on with my life. The sooner the better.

I soon found it wasn’t that easy to get back to normal. Val insisted I go home after lunch, and I was only too happy to agree. I needed to be alone to think.

After all, I was pretty much used to doing things on my own. I didn’t make friends easily—a throwback, no doubt, to my lonely upbringing. Once you get used to doing without people, it becomes a habit.

With the exception of Val, the few women I knew well enough to call friends were wives of Brandon’s business cronies, and had faded out of my life within a few days of the funeral. I didn’t miss them.

As for all those young women at the health club—well, they were mostly athletic types with a focus on perfecting their image and an annoying penchant for trying to outdo each other. All that competitiveness was not for me. I just wasn’t in their league.

I was comfortable in my own company, but as I sat outside the house I’d shared with Brandon, I felt an odd reluctance to go back in there. The memories mocked me, as if chiding me for being so trusting, so accommodating all these years. I’d taken the easier path, and I had only myself to blame if I’d missed the signals.

I climbed out of the car and left it at the curb. I still couldn’t go back into the garage. That’s where I’d found Brandon, that awful night I’d arrived home to see him sprawled half in, half out of his BMW, his head on the ground, those cold blue eyes of his wide open and staring at nothing.

He’d managed to stop the car, though it was angled across the entrance. The heart attack must have hit him before he got to the driveway. Brandon was fussy about parking in the exact same spot every single time. Then again, Brandon was fussy about everything. He wouldn’t have appreciated being seen by strangers with his hair all mussed and his ass in the air.

I let myself into the house, conscious of the deathly quiet with the door closed on the outside world. I decided to forgo the wine that evening. I didn’t want it to become a crutch.

I woke up in the middle of the night, as I’d done for the past three weeks, expecting to hear Brandon snoring next to me. Listening to the house creak and crack in the dark, I thought again about the woman who lived alone in the cottage.

Was she lying awake, too, wondering why Brandon hadn’t been in touch with her? How had he kept in touch with her? The phone? Letters? E-mail? There had to be records of some sort. Or had he ignored her once he was back home, as he’d so often ignored me?

Memories invaded my mind, little things that had meant nothing at the time but now seemed significant in light of what I now knew. The evenings when we’d be watching TV and I’d catch him staring into space, oblivious of what was playing on the screen in front of him. I’d assumed he was thinking about his work, but now I wondered if he was thinking about her.

I tossed over onto my other side and pummeled the pillow. I had to stop all this guesswork. Tomorrow I’d search the room he’d used as an office, and see if I could find any clues to the cottage and its mystery occupant.

I slept through the alarm the next morning. Staring at the neat row of suits, dresses and skirts in my closet, I couldn’t decide what to wear. For once, the thought of sitting at that desk, smiling at all those fresh, eager faces with their perfect figures and their perfect lives depressed me.

Not only that, I just couldn’t handle the prospect of having to field another barrage of questions from Val. I needed some time off. I had some huge decisions to make, stuff to take care of and I simply wanted to be alone for a while.

I called Val. She was understanding, considering I’d left her stranded without a bookkeeper or receptionist. “Don’t worry,” she assured me. “I’ll get a temp until you feel like coming back.”

“I don’t know how long—” I started to say, but she interrupted me.

“Take as long as you need. Is there anything I can do? Let me know if you think of something.”

I heard agitated voices in the background just before she hung up, and guilt pricked at me for letting her down. I felt better after I’d showered, but I put off going into Brandon’s office until I’d drunk two cups of coffee and finished off a box of cereal.

I walked down the passageway to the office and threw open the door. After being shut up for so long the room smelled of worn clothing and rotting apples.

As always, Brandon’s desk had been cleared, except for a neat pile of papers sitting in the tray I’d bought him for Christmas one year.

I flipped through them, finding nothing more exciting than a few bills, all of which had been paid after I got the second notices. The telephone bill was tucked in with them, but I could find no records of a call to Devon, England. Of course not. He would have called from work. He wasn’t a stupid man.

I turned on the computer and played with several possible combinations of words and numbers, knowing all the time how futile it was. Brandon’s E-mail would be lost forever. In any case, he’d have used his work computer if he wanted to hide anything from me.

The lower drawer held a number of files, all neatly labeled. I flipped through them but couldn’t see anything connected to a cottage in England. I should have known he was too clever to leave clues lying around for me to find. Obviously he wasn’t as trusting as I had been.

I gave up and went back into the living room, where I called James. Melanie answered, and I made an appointment to see him. I still had papers to sign, and I wanted the address and phone number of that darn cottage. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it yet, but I’d feel better knowing how to get in touch with her.

The days after that stretched before me without any real purpose, and I felt lost, wondering if I’d made a mistake by taking time off. The house seemed so empty and silent.

At first I filled my time by cleaning all the corners that sometimes got neglected during normal housework. I shoved furniture around and rearranged everything, polished windows and washed all the light fixtures.

I sorted out drawers, cupboards and shelves, managing to avoid Brandon’s closet, his dresser and his office. I’d exhausted the contents of the kitchen cabinets, and I went grocery shopping, coming home loaded with frozen dinners, packages of cookies and gallons of ice cream.

The television kept my evenings occupied until well into the night. I slept until late the next morning, and lived in jeans and oversize shirts. Val kept calling to ask me to lunch, but I couldn’t be bothered to get dressed up, much less face her constant chatter, so I made excuses until finally she stopped calling.

Through it all, an underlying guilt kept nagging at me. Thousands of miles away, a woman waited for a word, a letter, an E-mail or a phone call that would never come. James had given me the address and phone number, but I couldn’t seem to make a decision on what to do about it.

The questions still haunted me. Was she suffering, wondering why she’d been abandoned? Or was she innocent of any wrongdoing, going on with her life, happily unaware that her free ride in the cottage was about to end?

Each time I thought about her I pushed the questions to the back of my mind. I’d deal with that problem later, I told myself. When I felt stronger. After all, there was plenty of time. Or so I thought.

CHAPTER 3

Val called the day before the Fourth of July holiday. “Come on over,” she said, her voice brittle with forced enthusiasm. “I’m having a barbecue. Just a few friends, you don’t have to bring anything. You need to get out of that house. Besides, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

The thought that she might want me to meet one of her computer dates scared me. I tried to sound appreciative. “Thanks, Val, but I already have plans.”

I could tell she was miffed when she answered. “Well, don’t say I didn’t try. You’ll be missing a great party.”

“I know. Thanks for thinking of me.” I hung up, wondering how she could have known me for six years without realizing I wasn’t a party person.

A month after that I sat down one afternoon to pay the bills and realized there wasn’t enough left in the bank to pay the mortgage for longer than three months. It was wake-up time. I had to go back to work.

I paced around my spotless house, arguing with myself over my next move. I had to get on with my life, that much was obvious. Decisions had to be made. One thing was certain—I didn’t want to go back to the health club.

What I needed was to put the past firmly behind me and start over. I wanted a new place to live, a new job, a whole new life. I’d wasted enough of the former one. I had a lot of catching up to do.

I went back to the kitchen table and studied the bank accounts and the bills I owed. It dawned on me then that I couldn’t put the past behind me until I’d dealt with it. I had a house I couldn’t afford to live in for much longer, and property in England that wasn’t producing one cent of income, yet had to be accumulating debts, like taxes and maintenance. It was time to sell them both.

I wondered where Brandon had kept all the papers on the cottage. His company had sent home his personal belongings from his office, but I still hadn’t opened the box. I went to get it from the spare bedroom, where I’d dumped it on the bed.

There wasn’t much in it except a few books, a little stand with his name tag on it, a few CDs of jazz music and a slew of receipts for his expenses, which I assume had been paid with his last salary check. Nothing that had anything to do with property overseas. No photo of me to stand on his desk. Trust Brandon to prefer gazing at his own name rather than a picture of his wife.

Having drawn a blank on that issue, I called Val, and after some hedging around, told her I wanted to quit.