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Prologue
April 2022
If my sister could see us from up in Heaven, I think she’d have been proud of me. After all – from above, anyone looking down on our Oceanview Cottage in Miltree would have been greeted by an idyllic scene that Sunday.
My wife and I were in the kitchen making breakfast. Petra – statuesque, willowy, Greek and dark-haired – was standing by the coffee machine, listening to its low whirr and inhaling the bitter aroma. I – all of five-foot-five, grey-haired and contradictorily stocky – was standing by the toaster, staring into space and daydreaming. The sound of the bread popping out of the top made me jump, despite the emergence of our breakfast being completely expected, and it brought me promptly down to Earth. With my asbestos fingers, I quickly put the two pieces of toast on a plate and slid them down to my wife, who adorned them with jam and butter before toting them to the kitchen table behind us. It took all of thirty seconds for me to join her, latte in hand.
A small smile spread across my face as I sipped it. When she was alive, Lyndsey had always badgered me to find myself a life partner and settle down – and here I was now. Nearly seven years married to the deputy headteacher of our local primary school, who was also the nicest person in the world, and living in our own little house in rural Cornwall. I looked up at Petra, and my smile grew wider as butterflies fluttered in my chest.
Perhaps, looking back, I should have made the most of everything being perfect in that moment.
Because there the idyllic scene turned… tense.
“I’m going to put more jam on mine,” I said, standing up. “Do you want some more?”
“Sorry?” Petra said, looking up from her phone.
“Jam. Do you want any more?”
“I’ve already got some.” Her gaze fell back to her phone.
“I know, but do you want any more?”
“No, thank you,” she murmured.
“Okay then!” I huffed.
My skin was bristling with irritation as I headed back to where I’d left the jam and added a little more to my toast. It shouldn’t have been – I was normally pretty easy-going, but today, this little crossed-wires exchange had gotten my goat. She hasn’t forgotten, I told myself. She just hasn’t mentioned it yet. After all, Petra was always on the go, and her occasional absent-mindedness didn’t bother me any more than my own did.
Even so, today her distractedness had riled me up. The more I thought of her blank stare as she looked up at me, and of the way she’d missed my point a second time, the more I seemed to itch with frustration. Although that may have been the menopause talking, I reminded myself. It was certainly bringing with it its fair share of hormones.
I took the four steps across the kitchen to the back door and opened it, hoping that the cool April air (and its sea breeze) would ease the signs of an impending hot flush. No such luck – my temperature sky-rocketed and I undid the belt of my dressing-gown before the fluffy material stuck to my front. I looked down and tutted to myself – I had somehow gotten jam on the pyjamas underneath. I was really in need of a new set. Or indeed a whole new wardrobe, given that clothes shopping was something I avoided like the plague. Out of the two of us, it was Petra who was the fashionista. Society was adamant that it was a woman’s favourite pastime, but there was little I disliked more than trudging around Lygate shopping centre, turning red every time I darted to the men’s sections to find clothes that were more my style.
“God, it’s getting cold in here! I know you’re overheating, but my feet feel like they’re about to fall off! Can we shut the door yet?” Petra said from behind me. I heard the sound of her plate in the sink and my hackles rose again. Without a word, I stepped inside, shut the door and locked it. Do you really have nothing to say about today?
“Those look a bit worse for wear,” she said, motioning with her head towards my sleepwear. I looked down again – and they did look worse in the dimmer light of the kitchen. A blush rose in my cheeks and I stepped around her, heading back through the living room towards the stairs, as much as to get away from her gaze as to get dressed. I heard her footsteps behind me, though, and before my foot hit the first step I felt her hand on my arm through the dressing gown. I wrenched my arm away on instinct.
“Hey,” she said gently, and I froze. “What’s the matter? Did I say something?”
Suddenly, randomly, tears rose in my eyes. I turned and looked up at her concerned expression, then back down again at her slim, negligee-clad frame. The contrasts between us couldn’t have been more stark, and I shook my head, trying to blink away the tears.
“Jean,” she said, “talk to me. What did I do? What’s bothering you?”
I should have told her. I should have shared what was on my mind. Such communication is essential for a healthy relationship, I knew that.
But I couldn’t. I didn’t have the words – and never had – for the peculiar maelstrom of uncertainty that I’d always carried around with me, which manifested itself now and again, particularly on tough days like today. So I shook my head again.
“Nothing you can help with,” I mumbled, and strode away up the stairs.
I was just at the top and turning the corner towards our bedroom when I heard her sigh, barely audibly, “Why do I bother?”
That was the day I knew for definite that Petra and I were on rocky ground.
Chapter One
It had just started drizzling when I got out of the car, despite the sun shining throughout the ninety-minute drive. April showers indeed. Armed with a Guinness in one hand and a small bottle of pink Prosecco in the other, I must have made a strange sight to anyone passing by. A dumpy middle-aged woman with short purpley-grey hair and two different forms of alcohol on her person, walking through the graveyard in the rain, was not exactly an everyday sight.
That certainly wasn’t going to stop me, though. Not when it had been my parent’s wishes. That said, I’d never quite known how serious they were. The alcohol was all based on a conversation we’d had about a decade ago, back when the pair of them were still fighting fit and full of vigour. I had been in the early stages of my relationship with Petra, and had been enjoying a cup of tea with them on a rare visit up to Bude after they moved back. Somehow, the conversation had taken a morbid turn, quite possibly fuelled by my sister’s recent passing the year before.
