His Other Life by Beth Thomas

Author:Beth Thomas [Beth Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-12-28T16:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Madly, the first thought that goes through my head is, Well, well, Melissa was right after all. But then in a sickening rush I realise that an unspeakable horror has just brushed past me, and I sink down onto the bottom stair, all my breath gone. There’s a roaring in my head that feels like spinning, like I’ve just jumped out of a plane. I can’t get a grip on a single coherent thought and I drop my head into my hands to stop it from breaking up.

Then, like a dam bursting, thoughts of our wedding flood into my head in a disordered surge. The proposal, at that very posh restaurant, in the dress I borrowed from Lauren, which was a size too small and meant I had to sit up straight and take very shallow breaths the whole time. I remember Adam asking me, ‘Will you?’, but it’s a blurry, indistinct memory, eclipsed by the awful bloated, breathless feeling I endured all evening. Then the wedding preparations, how easy it was for me with Adam taking the lead in organising, even the honeymoon in the Cotswolds. In my head, a muddle of images whirls around, each leading to the next, confused, crowded, chaotic – trying on the dress, the drive to the hotel, coming home afterwards, Mr and Mrs Littleton – and as I sit there in the hallway with this swirl of images spinning past, I see myself as a tiny, fragile doll caught up in the tornado that was Adam. Picked up, spun round and round for three years with no control, no power over where I was going and what I was doing, simply spinning; and then dropped, panting, by the roadside. Amazed to be still intact.

‘Grace,’ Ginger is saying, her hand pressing my arm. ‘Come and have a cup of tea. You’re in shock.’

I shake my head. ‘No, I’m OK.’

Linda is there, looking at me, eyebrows together. She’s flicked open her mental notebook and is jotting something down. I sway a little.

‘Actually, maybe I will have a drink.’

Ginger sits me at the table in the kitchen and makes me a sugary tea, then starts ringing everyone up to tell them. ‘Come home,’ she says simply, when they answer. Mum, Dad, Lauren, Robbie. ‘Yes,’ she says to them. ‘Please. As soon as you can.’

And so, an hour later, they return from Ikea and rush into the kitchen to see me, hugging and crying and not believing it and finding it all such a relief but also terrible and awful.

‘I’m all right, actually,’ I tell them. My eyes have been smarting a lot and I feel a heavy shroud of sadness draped over me, but I don’t feel like I’m going to flip out. In fact I’m quite calm now. Linda has gone, thankfully, which means I can finally examine how I’m really feeling about this, and stop trying to act like I think she thinks I ought to be acting. I’m shocked, undoubtedly. Someone has died. But not someone I was married to.

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