‘A fine son-in-law you’ve turned out to be. I’ve just lost my only daughter and now you say you don’t want to help me!’
‘I’m not saying I don’t want to help, and of course I’ll still visit you, but with work and keeping up my own home, there simply won’t be time for me to look after you.’ He was trying to be fair but also firm. ‘I can help with finding a suitable care company if you like and they can do almost anything, from shopping, to cleaning and cooking.’
‘If you’d been able to give Alison children then I would have grandchildren to look after me!’ Ethel snarled at him with a look of contempt on her face.
Joe was speechless; her words were like a slap in the face and totally out of the blue. When he composed himself, he tried to form a reply without getting angry at his mother-in-law.
‘It was our dearest wish to have children, as you well know, but it’s hardly fair to say I couldn’t give Ali children, we never went down the route of finding out whose “fault” it was.’
‘Of course it was your fault but Alison was too gracious to tell you!’ Ethel spat the words at Joe.
‘I told you, we never found out why we couldn’t have children and it’s really nothing to do with you.’
‘Well, how come she had a baby before she met you then? It was your fault, you see? You’re impotent; my Alison was perfectly capable of having a baby.’
Joe sat down, completely stunned and shaking with shock. He looked at the triumphant smirk on Ethel’s face and any sympathy he’d ever felt for her deserted him.
‘That’s a vicious lie,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘She would have told me...’ Joe’s eyes began to fill with tears, a weakness he didn’t want his mother-in-law to see. She has to be lying; Alison wouldn’t have kept something like that from me! His mind swam with questions; he wanted to know if it was true, but he didn’t want this woman to say anymore. Joe desperately wanted to get out of her house, but the need to know more won through.
‘Well, what happened to the baby?’ he eventually asked, hoping it was all a cruel fabrication and he would catch her out in the lie.
‘It only lived a few hours, a little girl it was, she had a weak heart.’ Ethel was smiling now at Joe’s discomfort. He looked at her in disbelief. How could she be so calculatingly cruel?
‘Goodbye, Ethel.’ He stood and walked to the door, his legs barely carrying him but his determination to get out of that woman’s presence supplying the strength he needed.
‘But what about my shopping?’ he heard her calling after him as he slammed the door.
The drive home seemed interminable. Joe longed for the comfort of his own home, but most of all he longed for Alison to tell him that her mother’s words were nothing more than bitter, vitriolic lies.
Parking in the drive, he went inside and straight to the kitchen where he poured himself a large whisky and, taking it into the lounge, sat down to drink it. Liffey jumped up on the sofa beside him, sensing his mood, and they sat together in silence. Joe’s mind raced through the past, trying to find any clues which he could have missed, trying to decide if it was possible that Alison could have had a baby and never told him about it.
Ali was twenty-four when they married and he, twenty-five. He’d only known her for three years so it was quite possible that she could have had a baby before they met, but Joe was certain that they hadn’t any secrets from each other, or he had been until Ethel’s hateful words shook that confidence. It was so out of character for Alison not to tell him something so monumental; he would have understood, whatever the circumstances, and surely she would have known that?
For the rest of the day Joe was unsettled, his mind swimming with speculation as to why Alison had never told him about the baby. The idea that Ethel was lying was still at the back of his mind, but surely even she couldn’t be so callous as to make something up just to punish him for whatever sins she felt he was guilty of. Would the old woman really stoop so low?
Joe began to wonder if there was anyone he could ask, a friend of Ali’s perhaps, someone who’d been close to her in the years before they met. There was Juliet, her old university friend, who’d also been her bridesmaid, but she lived in Canada now; he could hardly contact her just to ask about Alison’s past.
Remembering Juliet brought a pang of guilt as he’d not thought to write and let her know that Ali was dead and he should do so. He knew the two women communicated occasionally, usually by email, so he would have to search Ali’s laptop for her address.
Joe again climbed the stairs and entered Alison’s sewing room with Liffey close at his heels, as if she knew that her master would need her comforting presence. He carried three empty cardboard boxes and a roll of black plastic sacks; it was time to sort out some of his wife’s belongings, but firstly he fired up her laptop, to find the email address for Juliet.
There were over seventy unopened emails, mostly notifications from book groups his wife had been in, or friend requests from Goodreads, nothing important, they could wait or be deleted. He rarely used social media but Alison had a profile on Facebook which she said helped her to keep in touch with friends. Joe had teased her and called it ‘virtual curtain twitching’. He’d never considered the necessity to delete someone’s presence from the internet before and now he wondered if he should attempt to remove her profiles from these sites, but would it feel like erasing her life?
He made a note of Juliet’s email address and turned the laptop off; social media could wait for another day.
He’d decided to start in this room rather than their bedroom. As yet, he had no desire to remove Alison’s clothes from the room they had shared, so they still hung in the wardrobe and her toiletries remained untouched in the bathroom. Joe still needed the closeness and comfort of his wife’s possessions, and he would often touch her clothes and breathe in her scent, but he also knew that things couldn’t stay this way forever.
He looked around the room, the very essence of Alison layering every surface like dust, trying to decide where to begin. Liffey flopped down heavily on the rug, her huge brown eyes watching his every move as if she somehow understood now that her mistress was not coming back and that Joe was doing his best to carry on.
‘It’s not easy for you either, is it, girl?’ He bent to stroke her ears, receiving a lick on his hand for his trouble.
Straightening up, he began with the books, packing them neatly into the largest box, ready for the charity shop. He felt comfort in touching the things Alison had touched and loved, and as he worked he found himself talking to her about each item.
‘Someone will appreciate this, love,’ he said, and it made the task easier, knowing that this was what she would have wanted.
After a couple of hours, reasonable progress was made and Joe felt a sense of satisfaction. He would ask Helen if she wanted Alison’s sewing machine; she enjoyed making things too and the two women had often exchanged patterns and ideas, it would be a small way of repaying her for all her kindness to him.
Joe went back downstairs, made a mug of tea and fired up his own laptop in order to write the email he’d been putting off.
Hi Juliet,
Firstly, I must apologise for not contacting you sooner but sadly my reason for doing so now is to impart bad news. My beloved Alison died in a car crash on 2nd February. I know this will be a shock to you and I’m sorry to be the bearer of such awful news. It was during that horrendous spell of bad weather we suffered at the end of January and the beginning of February. I’ve never known anything like it before. We were together in the car and involved in a motorway crash which killed three people and left several others badly injured. My own injury was a broken collarbone, painful but quite light compared to others. I was informed that Alison died instantly at the scene and would have suffered no pain.