The Last Marriage of Dot Brightmore (Mabel Beaumont #2)

Chapter 1

I’m at the table, making a shopping list, and Dot’s chipping in.

‘We need more of those yoghurts. The lemon ones. And I read that we should be eating leafy greens and oily fish. What are we having for our dinner, Mabel?’ she asks.

It takes me a few seconds to remember. ‘A steak and ale pie.’

Dot looks stern for a moment and then bursts out laughing. ‘Apparently the leafy greens and oily fish will help us get to a hundred years old. But I think we’re doing pretty well without them, don’t you?’

‘We could have spinach with the pie,’ I suggest.

Dot screws up her nose, and it’s so like an expression she used to make when she was a girl that I have to catch my breath. ‘I’ve never been a big fan of spinach.’

‘Carrots, then?’ I ask.

‘Carrots. At least our eyes will be good, if the rest of us gives out.’

‘Right then. Here’s what I’ve got. Milk, cheddar cheese—’

‘Strongest they’ve got,’ Dot reminds me.

‘Cheddar cheese, brackets strong, six eggs, lemon yoghurts, carrots.’

‘Righto,’ Dot says. ‘You know, I don’t remember you being a list-maker.’

I smile as I tear off the piece of paper and fold it up so it will go in my purse.

‘Well, there’s a lot you don’t know about me as I am now, Dot Brightmore.

When I knew you before, I would have been able to remember these bits of shopping but now I’ve got no hope.

And anyway, don’t forget that it was a list that brought us back together. ’

We laugh about it, now. How my late husband Arthur left the start of a list that read only ‘Find D’ and I took it as an instruction to find our old friend Dot, and followed it, before remembering that it was something to do with the dog.

Find Dog’s bone, he’d been writing. Must have got distracted, forgotten to go back to it.

And then he died, and that was that. We assign so much meaning to people’s last words – whether they’re spoken or written – but sometimes they’re just reminding themselves to look for a dog toy.

Still, all of that brought me to here, with Dot at my dining table with me, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

‘It’s just always felt a bit rigid to me,’ Dot says. ‘Lists. I like to take things as they come.’

This is Dot all over. But I’m hoping that she can bring some spontaneity into my life and I can bring some simple order into hers. It’s a balance you need, isn’t it?

‘Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,’ I say, and I write ‘Dot’s first list’ on the notepad and push it towards her.

‘There must be something you want to get done, whether it’s today or this week or this year.

If you write it down, it suddenly feels like something you can actually do, rather than just an idea in your head. ’

‘Maybe,’ Dot says. ‘Now, do you want me to come to the shop with you?’

‘No, you stay here and have a think about your list. There’s nothing too heavy on here. I’ll just get a shopping bag.’

On the walk into town, I think about the Dot I knew when I was young and the Dot I know now.

We’ve missed so much of each other’s lives, and I know now that all the little things that happen to you along the way have an impact on who you become.

When we were little more than teenagers, I loved her and hoped she felt the same, but I didn’t know and I wasn’t brave enough to ask.

And now she’s back in my life, both of us in our eighties, and we’ve been much more open about the way we feel.

She’s moved back to Broughton, where we both grew up, to live with me.

And every day, we’re learning things about each other. Filling in the gaps.

It’s exciting. Scary, too. Because what if I fall for her harder than she falls for me?

What if it doesn’t mean as much to her? Every time I feel this anxiety I try to talk myself down from it.

Remind myself of all the little ways in which she shows me her love.

Bringing me a cup of tea, offering to make dinner, making me laugh by pulling funny faces when I’m on the telephone.

I’m ready to take the next step, I realise. I just hope she is, too.

* * *

When I get back, Erin is in the kitchen, the kettle boiling.

She’s my lodger, but more than that, she’s my friend.

She’s eighteen years old, right at the start of everything.

Dot’s still sitting at the table, the notepad in front of her, the page still blank but for those words I wrote: ‘Dot’s first list’.

She has a faraway look in her eyes, and I think about all the times she was quiet like this before, when we were young.

She bottles things up, does Dot. And there’s no getting them out of her.

It’s just a case of waiting. She tells you when she’s ready to.

‘Tea, Mabel?’ Erin calls.

‘Yes please.’

Erin comes in with three steaming mugs and puts them down on the dining table. Dot’s only been here a few weeks, but Erin’s already got the measure of her tea order – stronger than mine, with half a sugar.

‘What’s on the agenda for today?’ I ask Erin, for something to say.

She’s on study leave, her A levels just around the corner.

She shrugs. ‘Just revision. What about you two?’

‘Nothing planned.’

‘It looks like a lovely day,’ Dot says. ‘We should get out somewhere. Give Erin some peace and quiet to get her head down.’

And I say that sounds like a good idea.

‘Well, have some fun for me,’ Erin says. ‘Because I won’t be having any for a while yet.’ And with that, she takes her tea and disappears upstairs.

‘You’ll miss her, when she goes, won’t you?’ Dot asks. It’s not really a question. She knows I will.

I think about Erin going away to university, how she’s only lived here with me for a matter of months, but I’ve got so used to her.

And I have Dot here now, so I won’t be lonely, but there are hundreds of things I’ll miss about Erin.

Her mismatched socks and her constant humming.

The way she tells me things about her life and it makes me feel like I’m not just an out-of-touch old lady.

‘I will. But it’s a while away, yet.’

‘Shall we go for a walk to the park?’ Dot asks.

‘Yes. I’ll just finish my tea and get my things together.’

* * *

We pass through the graveyard on the way to the park. Dot knows my habit by now, of stopping to talk to my late husband Arthur and my parents and my brother, Bill. I always thought I’d feel self-conscious doing it with someone else there, but with her, I’m not.

‘Hello there,’ I say when we reach the place where my family are laid to rest. ‘Just on our way to the park, aren’t we, Dot?’

‘We are.’

‘We’ll have a sit and a natter by the duck pond. It’s a lovely day. The kind you used to say was perfect for washing, Mother. Blue sky and just enough breeze to get things moving on the line.’

I start moving past, and Dot asks whether I want to stop by Arthur’s grave, too. I shake my head. Being with her still feels like a betrayal of him, in a way. I know he’s gone, of course I do. But she’s the proof that I was never really his at all. I tend to wait until I’m alone to visit him.

When the path opens out and we see all the lovely bedding plants, all neatly planted in blooms of bright colour, I feel my heart lift a little.

We head for the bench nearest the pond, like we have started to do, and I like it that we are beginning to have some habits that are just our own.

It makes me feel like we’re really building something.

‘Lovely sky,’ Dot says, reaching for my hand and resting it against the wood of the bench.

And it’s the sort of thing Arthur would have said – Arthur with his love of sunsets and spring – but when he took my hand, I didn’t feel a lot, and with Dot, it’s all fireworks and fluttering in my tummy.

I look at our hands, the fingers linked together, and I feel a peace wash over me.

Just having her near has that effect on me.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Dot asks, after a while.

‘About Arthur,’ I say, because I don’t want to keep anything from her, even if it has the potential to be hurtful. ‘I was such a misery in our last few years.’

‘I can’t imagine that,’ she says.

And it’s true that I am never like that with her, that she brings out the young side of me, makes me feel more playful and daring than anyone else.

‘I got so stuck in my ways, and I felt so old. Did you have a time when you suddenly felt like you’d become old?’

‘Not yet.’ She smiles across at me and I laugh. She is easy to laugh with. Easy to be with. Not that Arthur wasn’t. It’s just different, I suppose, when it’s the right person.

‘You didn’t think of anything for your list?’ I ask, remembering the way she looked when I came back in earlier.

‘My what?’

‘Your list. Things to do.’

‘Not a thing,’ she says, and I don’t know if anyone else would catch it, but there’s a slight hitch in her voice that gives me pause.

‘Shall we get a bottle of wine to have with dinner, on our way past the shop?’ I ask.

‘Yes. A nice red, to go with the pie.’

We get up and brush ourselves off, heading in the direction of the little supermarket where Erin works.

I used to go days without going in there, only leaving the house when I really needed to, but now it’s quite common for me to call in twice in a day.

I’m walking more, and I don’t know whether it’s the fresh air or the exercise, but I feel like a new woman.

Dot chooses an Australian wine.

‘Do you know a lot about wine?’ I ask.

‘Nothing. Only that I like it.’

‘So why that one?’

Dot grins at me. ‘I like the picture on the label.’

It makes me laugh. Because I’ve always been scared to choose a bottle for fear of showing my ignorance, and Dot doesn’t care. She’s just wading in, like she always does, and it mostly pays off.

When we get home, it’s all quiet other than a low beat of music coming from the direction of Erin’s bedroom. The notepad is still on the table, Dot’s list still blank. I take the lid off the biro before I can change my mind, and write on it.

Marry me