‘You should get an au pair.’ It sounded pointless even to her.
‘A what?’
She could see David thinking, How did we get from there to here?
‘I just mean it might help having another person around. With the girls, I mean, and . . .’ Jo couldn’t help glancing at the washing-up, a pile of clothes sprawling on the floor by the washing machine . . .
‘You mean the mess?’ He forced a grin. ‘I have a cleaner. I just gave her a few weeks off. I couldn’t, you know, cope with all her . . .’ he grimaced, ‘. . . sympathy. The nanny’s bad enough.’
Jo nodded, waited for him to continue.
‘I don’t think I could stand having someone around full time,’ David said eventually. ‘An au pair, I mean. Living here, with us. Not yet, anyway. It would be too much.’
‘Tea?’ Jo waved the kettle at him. ‘Or something stronger?’
David grimaced again. ‘Better be tea. I already tried something stronger. It just gave me a headache.’
The phone rang just as the kettle began to boil. Instinctively, Jo reached for it, as if it were her own. Sorry, she mouthed, seeing the expression that flashed across David’s face, and held it out to him.
He shook his head.
‘Hello?’ she said, and paused. ‘Hello? Hello?
No one there,’ she shrugged a few seconds later. ‘Must have been a wrong number.
‘That’s odd,’ David said. ‘Had a few of those lately. Wonder if it’s a call centre or there’s a problem at the exchange. Anyway,’ he added, watching her move around his kitchen as if it were her own, ‘I’m guessing you didn’t just drop in on the off-chance. What is this? Project check-up on David? Or something else?’
‘Does it matter?’ Jo said.
David said nothing. Instead he waited for her to turn to look at him. He’d been wondering when she’d come. And he’d known it would be her. Jo was the doer, the efficient one. Lizzie was too beaten down by that idiot she’d married to volunteer for a confrontation. And Mona – the bolter, his mother called her – she’d run to the other side of the world to get away from her family, and then run all the way back to get away from her cheating husband. And poor Dan, the evidence of that marriage, had packed his little rucksack and come with her.
No, when it happened, it was always going to be Jo.
‘You do know, don’t you?’ Jo said, after she’d dragged out the tea-making as long as possible.
Know what? David wanted to say. But he didn’t have the energy.
‘Of course I know.’
Even as he felt his anger rising, he tried to suppress it. This wasn’t Jo’s fault. There was no way she’d have come up with a stunt like this: four letters; life divided like a pie. No, there was only one person who could have come up with this.
Of course, Jo had been enabling Nicci for years. So had he. Every little thing Nicci wanted to do he’d tried to help her with, from the moment he’d fallen for the peroxide pixie.
‘What?’ Jo asked.
David shook his head. ‘Nothing.’ How did you explain your heart just twisted?
Nicci hadn’t been peroxide for a decade now, more, but the memory of that meeting was burnt in his brain. That was how he thought of her. Even now he felt bad about using Lizzie as an in. But from the moment Nicci had walked into the party, he’d known – like in some dodgy rom-com – she was his one, and he would do anything to get her.
‘David?’ Jo was standing in front of him. ‘Are you OK? I mean, I know you’re not . . .’
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Just thinking.’
‘So did she tell you about the letters?’ Jo ventured. ‘Consult you, I mean?’
‘You mean, did I choose Mona?’ Amongst the confusion and disgust, despite himself David could feel his fury take hold.
Jo stepped backwards. It was instinctive; she couldn’t help it. ‘I’ll take that as a no.’ Her voice was full of sympathy.
‘I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . .’ David’s anger was gone. Dragging out a chair, he slumped at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. ‘No, Jo, she didn’t tell me. She didn’t consult me. She left me two letters. The first was instructions for delivering your letters; the second, to be read after I had, told me what she’d done. That she’d planned my future for me. Because she didn’t trust me to do it myself. Like an idiot, I did what she asked, it didn’t occur to me not to.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Jo said. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t. Nicci adored you. She loved us all. She was just worried what would happen when she . . . when we found ourselves where we are now.’
‘Maybe,’ said David, hoping he could keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘Or maybe Nicci just wanted to make sure we did it her way.’
Perhaps he should have been the one who went to the bereavement counsellor. Were you allowed to be furious with your wife for dying on you? She’d wanted the house, she’d wanted children, she’d wanted the business, she’d wanted their life. Then she’d left it. Was he allowed to be angry about that? Because he was. So gut-wrenchingly furious that thinking about it brought tears flooding to the surface.
‘She left my garden to Lizzie, my children to you, and me – her husband – to Mona. What the fuck, Jo? I mean, seriously, what the fuck was she thinking?’
Pulling out the end of a bench, Jo sat next to him and slid her arm around his shoulders. And felt, rather than heard, him begin to sob. She didn’t know what to say. So she held him tight and let him slip down and weep against her.
The house was quiet now, but alive with sound the way old houses are: pipes creaking as they heated and cooled, floor-boards moaning with memories of past footsteps. Jo had circled the house, turning off the countless lights and electrical appliances, before returning to the kitchen to collect her bag.
‘Will you start coming back now?’ said David. ‘The three of you? And Si, and Gerry, and Dan? You still eat Sunday lunch, don’t you?’
‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep us away,’ Jo said. ‘Except maybe Mona.’
She smiled, to show she was joking, and he forced a laugh.
Now she’d gone, David punched 1471 for the fifth time in as many days, only to be greeted with the same message: number withheld. Despite what he’d said earlier, David didn’t think it was a call centre or a fault on the line, not really. In his darkest nights he’d started to fear Nicci had been keeping more from him than he’d realised. That she’d even – he could hardly bring himself to think it – been having an affair. No, he knew she wouldn’t do that. Not his Nicci.
In an attempt to calm his brain, David made himself sit and listen to the quiet. Many, many times he’d yearned for this silence. Well, now you’ve got it, he thought. This is it. Better start getting used to it.
Outside next-door’s tabby tortured the last drop of life from a small undeserving rodent, a car passed the end of the road, music so loud he could almost hear the words, teenagers shouted abuse as they made their way home from the town centre. He forced himself to listen to it all.
Floodlights came on suddenly, triggered by a small creature using his garden as a shortcut. Almost April, and still the soil was