Page 4 of The Three of Us
They have been here precisely six days and there hasn’t been time yet to do a big shop but they’ve already had three takeaways, and there’s a little shop called Rick’s on the corner that never seems to close. She wonders when Rick actually gets to sleep as it’s always him there by himself behind the counter. He sells a small selection of food and booze and sends his son out to deliver the newspapers every morning, and so far he’s managed to provide most of whatever they’ve needed. Right now, what Molly needs are biscuits.
She opens a packet of chocolate digestives and nibbles at one, before she’s even finished making the coffee to dunk it in. It’s boredom, she tells herself. All this nibbling is her way of passing the time, comfort eating to help fill the void that leaving home, and her job at the little bakery-cum-café in the next village, and everything she knows, has created. So far, she’s been living in jogging bottoms with elasticated waistbands and floppy oversized T-shirts, her long hair scrunched up into a messy ponytail. Not much need to dress up when all you’re doing is pulling stuff out of crumpled boxes, scrubbing the bathroom, wiping dusty surfaces and running down to the corner shop to top up on snacks and pick out something for dinner. Good old Rick. What would she do without him? Still, she can tell the weight is starting to pile on. Perhaps, once she’s had her coffee, she’ll venture further afield, find a proper greengrocer or a butcher so they don’t have to keep living out of packets and tins and polystyrene cartons.
They haven’t brought a car with them, mainly as there is no parking near enough that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg and Jack has assured her that everywhere either of them is likely to want to go – his office, restaurants, pubs, theatres, perhaps an occasional bit of sightseeing – is easily accessible by public transport. And no drinking and driving to worry about either. Jack’s brother, Richard, has bought their old banger from them. A car like that won’t mind getting muddy, he says, so it will be useful around the country lanes. And Jack laughs, saying that the old car is still doing its bit and helping get him to work every day, as the money he got for it will pay for his travel card for a couple of months at least. To him, this is all one big adventure.
Still, Molly knows that if she’s going to explore what’s right here in their new neighbourhood, the real day-to-day stuff, she will have no real option but to walk. The exercise will do her good anyway. And the fresh air, if she can find any in London, where the air always feels so much more clogged with traffic fumes than she’s used to. Oh, for a whiff of cow dung or a freshly cut field of hay!
Molly eats four biscuits before forcing herself to stop, tipping the rest of the packet into a tin and hiding it away in a cupboard. She pulls her hair loose and runs a comb through it, changing into a pair of jeans and struggling to do up the zip. The biscuits really will have to go. And if she does as Jack suggests and gets back into cake-making, God knows what all that recipe-testing and spoon-licking and picking at stray raisins will do to her waistline. No, if this move really is to be their brand-new start, then things will have to change. She will have to change. She can’t allow herself to just sit here doing nothing but knit and bake, watch TV and get fat while Jack is out there meeting new people, making a career for himself. He is already slipping further and further away from her. She can feel it. He’s moving in a different world, his ambition soaring, changing him in ways she can hardly understand, while she stays exactly the same. Go-getter and home-body, that’s what they are. Town mouse and country mouse. Chalk and cheese. She knows she could lose him. Is probably already losing him.
She closes her eyes to try to stop a tear escaping. When did they last actually make love? Properly make love, not just go through the motions before rolling over and going to sleep, back to back? When did he last look into her eyes and tell her he loves her?
Leave him too long among all those career women in their pencil skirts and high heels and made-up faces and he will stop looking at her altogether, she’s sure of it. He thrives on challenges and excitement and power, and she has none of those things. She no longer knows how to reach him, how to give him what he needs, how to hold on to him.
But they are here together, aren’t they? He didn’t come alone, didn’t leave her behind. They are married and they come as a pair. Equal partners. A team. Team Doherty.
For the last few months everything has been about what Jack needs. A change of job, a new home in a new town, a change of scene. He had so badly needed something to stop him exploding with frustration, the chance to grab at something that had been out of reach for too long. He couldn’t turn it down when it came. And she couldn’t be the one to ask him to. So, here they are. Not quite so equal right now, but she can change that, can’t she? He has what he wants and now she can concentrate on what she wants, what she needs, for a change. But what does Molly need? Has either of them even stopped to wonder?
She locks the door of the flat, its crumbling blue paint a stark reminder that this is not really a proper theirs-forever home. It’s just a rented place, where someone else is responsible for the maintenance, for sweeping the communal stairs, for replacing the lightbulbs in the hall.
She walks down to the ground floor, steps out into the noisy street and looks both ways. Left or right? It hardly matters, as it’s all new territory and she has no idea what she’s going to find either way. She plasters a smile on her face and strides out, in the opposite direction to Rick’s for a change, her shoulder bag swinging against her side. It’s a sunny morning and after only five minutes she comes across a little park, tucked back from the main road. It has benches and rose bushes and is edged by trees. She sits for a while and lets the traffic noise subside, concentrating solely on the sound of the birds tweeting on a branch above her head. She can smell the grass, recently mown, and for a moment she can almost convince herself she is back home, in the countryside, where her heart belongs.
This is London and everything feels just a little bit scary and alien right now, but the truth is that it can’t actually be so bad here. It’s the same sun shining above her, after all, and the same birdsong she can hear, the same earthy smell oozing out from the grass. And the village is still there, just a few hours away. Home. It’s not as if they’ve come halfway round the world. They haven’t emigrated, crossed oceans, cut all ties. They can still visit, call, pop back for a weekend, anytime. The old life is not going anywhere. It’s all still there. But the new life is here, and she has to give it a chance.
They will make a go of things. They have to. Jack’s job will go well, they will settle and save, and then they will move onwards, upwards, own their own home one day. A proper home. Probably not the roses-round-the-door country cottage of her dreams, but at least they will be together. She has to let herself become a part of this new place, embrace this new life. Open her arms and her eyes to it. Move with him, not against him.
All Molly needs now is a purpose, something to restore her confidence in herself, something to do.
Chapter 4
Carly
It’s been two days since Suze hit me with the bombshell that Jack is back and I still haven’t summoned the courage to go up to the second floor and find out if it’s true.
I remember the last time I saw him. He was wearing faded jeans and a dark-green jumper, his wavy brown hair a bit too long, but I didn’t mind that because it suited him and made me yearn to reach across and push it slowly away from his beautiful deep-brown eyes. There was an uncharacteristic frown crinkling his forehead too, as he tried to take in what had happened. He’d just found out, as they all had, that the company he worked for was in serious trouble and he wasn’t needed anymore. There was no real option for him but to pack up and head back home to Norfolk. He hadn’t taken on a flat of his own, knowing all along that his time in London was limited. A lease, a deposit, all that rent payable up front. It didn’t seem worth it, he’d said. The hassle, the cost, not just for a few months. And, besides, he was a farm boy, used to roughing it. There had been a few weeks in a cheap B & B hotel, then Rosie’s Syd had helped out and let him sleep on the tatty old lumpy sofa in the even tattier flat Syd would be giving up in the next few months anyway, so he could move in with Rosie as soon as they were married. So, all in all, there wasn’t a lot for Jack to sort out, not many possessions to pack, before he left.
We met in the pub that last evening, a whole gang of us. Most of them all worked at the same place as Jack, but there were a few other halves there too. There was an air of gloom, all of them moaning about the company closing, the loss of their jobs, with no real answer but to drown their sorrows. Syd was one of them, which is how Rosie had got herself included in the group. We were close back then, Rosie and me, before she had the babies to occupy her time, and I was between boyfriends, so it wasn’t unusual for her to let me tag along. I remember how she just sat there that night with her worried face on. Syd losing his job just as they were about to get married did not bode well, but it meant she was all wrapped up in her own thoughts, not watching me, utterly oblivious to any connection that had been building between Jack and me, or to the way I was feeling knowing I was about to lose him.
We ate something tasteless that has made no impression on my memory at all, the men downing beers, the girls sharing too many bottles of wine. ‘Might as well, while we can still afford it,’ someone said, which just made the whole nightmare seem suddenly more real.
I sat as close to Jack as I could, my hand itching to wrap itself around his, my mind desperately telling me I should do something, anything, to make him stay, but it wasn’t going to happen. We had had that one night, just a couple of weeks before, when we’d all gone straight to the pub after work, drunk too much, giggled and hugged outside on the pavement, and, when the others had all said their goodnights and wandered away, we’d walked by ourselves, Jack and I, our fingers entwined, through the dark streets and then along the riverbank, the lights twinkling on the water, stopping every now and then to gaze at each other beneath a lamp-post. That one time, when we had clung to each other and his lips, cold and still tasting of beer, had met mine, when we had come so close to taking things further that I had felt I was going to burst with love for him. But it hadn’t happened. Honour, duty, I don’t really know what it was that made him pull away, hold me at arm’s length, remind me he was engaged, tell me how sorry he was…
But there had been tears in his eyes. Tears just as real as mine. He cared. I know he did. But there was nothing I could do.
We had carried on for a couple of weeks after that, still part of the same crowd, neither of us mentioning what we had so almost done, acting as if it had never been, not knowing what to say, and so saying nothing. I didn’t know how long I could do it, keep my distance, keep on pretending. And then, without warning, it was over. The job, the future, the possibilities of this thing between us that had never even started. He would be gone in days. Back to where he had come from and had always intended to return to. And to a wedding he couldn’t miss. His wedding.
There had been a last hug goodbye, a pulling back as his fingers slipped between mine for the last time and then out again, everyone crowding around, talking, crying, hugging too. And then Syd and Rosie had come to reclaim me so we could travel home together, and Jack had walked away, quickly and alone, into the dark, and I had never seen him nor heard from him again.
I stand in the small kitchen area now, my mind not on work at all, my memories as stirred up as my coffee, the spoon banging against the sides of the mug as I try to decide what to do. If he’s here, I have to see him. I have to know why he’s back, how long for, how being in the same building and likely to bump into him at any time is going to make me feel. But what I really need to know, of course, is how he feels. Does he still think of me? Does he even remember me? Does he know I’m working here too, just two floors down, and still as in love with him as ever I was? Of course he doesn’t. How could he?
And what about her? This Molly woman? She’ll be his wife now, assuming he went through with it. A part of me hopes beyond all hope that he didn’t, that she’s not here in London with him, or that the marriage has failed and he’s free again. Or that she’s been relegated to some kind of madwoman hidden in the attic and we can all pretend she doesn’t exist. That’s what comes of reading Jane Eyre so many times. My head is full of brooding heroes and lovelorn governesses and the eternal search for happy endings. Reader, I married him. I wish!
I close my eyes for a moment and take a deep breath, put my mug down by the sink and steel myself to face him. Because it has to be done.
I grab a pile of papers from my desk. Invoices, receipts, I don’t know what. Anything to make it look as if I have a reason to go up there, to make it look like I’m just doing my job. I walk straight to the lifts, feeling more than a bit wobbly, press the button and wait.
I peer down at myself. My plain work trousers, my ordinary everyday shoes. Will I do? Is this the me I want him to see? I should have gone to the Ladies first, checked my hair and lipstick in the mirror, straightened my necklace and the collar on my oh-so-boring blouse. I still can, I suppose, only the lift’s here and someone else has hopped in, is holding the door for me to follow, asking me which floor…
I travel up in silence, practising holding my stomach in, while also, strangely, holding my breath as well, to the point that I feel almost dizzy as I step out on the second floor.