Chapter 7
Bernadette
‘Bernie, what happened to your phone?’ Sarah asked, clocking the screen as she placed a large box down on the table next to it.
‘Dropped it when I was coming down the stairs earlier,’ Bernadette replied, her face flushing as she realised she was still lying for him. Why? Habit of a lifetime.
One that she had to break now.
‘Okay…’ Sarah answered, failing to hide her scepticism.
Bernadette cut her off. ‘What’s in the box?’
‘A cake. The order got cancelled last night after I’d already made it. Not sure what happened. They just left a message on my answering machine to let me know. Anyway, it’s already paid for, so thought we could use it to comfort eat our way through any flashpoints of stress today.’
With a flourish, Sarah lifted off the lid to expose a perfect cake in the shape of a push-up bra. Bernadette reckoned it was probably around a 44D.
Despite the tornado of apprehension that was twisting her guts, she couldn’t help but smile. Sarah had been her friend since high school, bonded over a mutual adoration for Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet, and shoulder pads so wide they had to turn sideways to get through a door.
Sarah had recovered from her Martin Kemp crush and gone on to marry a journalist, Drew, who – oh the cliché – had left her for a younger woman when their youngest was only months old.
Sarah had spent the next fifteen years working away at her home-based cake business, avoiding any kind of relationship, until she went on a cruise last year and met Piers, the man of her dreams. If Bernadette was being honest with herself, it was one of the events that had contributed to her final decision to leave Kenneth.
Sarah was so happy now with Piers. At fifty, she had finally found the man she was meant to be with and it had given her a second lease of life.
She radiated happiness, loved every day, and went to sleep beside a man who adored her and wanted to make her happy.
Bernadette had always thought the chance of that had passed her by. Sarah’s joy convinced her otherwise.
Not that she wanted another relationship. No way. Not for a long, long time. Maybe ever. She’d be happy just going to sleep at night, content and relaxed, not on tenterhooks or seething with unspoken disgust for the man lying next to her.
‘How are you feeling?’ Sarah asked her gently.
‘Like I want to forget the whole thing,’ Bernadette answered truthfully, ‘but don’t worry, I won’t.’
Listening, Sarah reached over for a spoon from the draining board and took a chunk of the cake, saying nothing because it had all been said.
Bernadette had shared everything with her friend over the years.
Sarah had never judged her for staying, but always made it clear that she would do anything she could to help her leave.
Bernadette could sense that she was delighted that day had finally come.
‘Want some?’ Sarah asked, pointing to the sponge.
Bernadette would normally be first in the queue to join her, but not today. Didn’t have the stomach for it.
‘So what do we do first?’ Sarah asked.
‘That’s the problem, I don’t know. Any of the things could tip him off, so I don’t know where to start.
I need to tell the kids, but either of them could tell him.
I need to take my share of our savings – I’ve set up my own account that he knows nothing about – but if he looks at the online banking he’ll notice.
And I need to move everything I love out of the house, but what if he comes home at lunchtime and there I am, trying to manoeuvre my mother’s standard lamp into the back of your van? ’
‘Your mother’s standard lamp will stick out the back window, but we’ll get it in somehow,’ Sarah retorted, trying to diffuse Bernadette’s rising panic with humour.
It wasn’t working. ‘Okay, breathe. Just breathe. Let’s think about this rationally.
Let’s pack up the stuff from your wardrobes and anything else that isn’t in plain sight, and take it to my house first.’
Sarah had convinced her to go stay with her and Piers at first. Bernadette was fairly sure it was so that she wouldn’t crumble and return to Kenneth, but her friend’s fears were unfounded.
Once she got out of there, nothing would ever bring her back.
This was the house that she’d brought the kids up in, that she’d lived in for thirty years, but she wouldn’t miss it for a second.
It was tainted. Every shade of paint, every carpet, every painting on a wall chosen by Kenneth, whether she wanted it or not.
He’d controlled everything and she would be happy if she never saw any of it again.
In fact, she was counting on today being the last day she had to look at it.
Sarah was still planning. ‘Then we can come back later, once he’s in afternoon surgery, and get anything he might notice.’
Bernadette nodded her agreement. Made sense.
Jesus, she was a charge nurse, a woman who organised and ran a busy ward like clockwork, who commanded the respect of her peers and managed healthcare plans, traumas, tragedy, and – worse – patients’ relatives, but this whole situation had completely paralysed her coping skills and initiative.
He wasn’t even here right now and still he was having an effect on her.
Come on, Bernie, time to get moving, she told herself.
‘And I think we should go speak to Nina first,’ Sarah added.
Just the very thought of it made Bernadette want to vomit.
Kenneth had always presented the best of himself to the kids, so they only ever knew the public Kenneth, the funny, charming, successful, perfect dad they’d grown up with.
How could she tell her daughter that she was walking out on her father after thirty years of marriage?
Nina was a mother, with kids of her own, but still…
no one wanted to deal with that kind of news.
Sarah didn’t give her time to ponder the devastation she was about to wreak. ‘Right, come on then, let’s get started, before I eat any more of this cake and my hips explode.’
She forced her legs to move and follow Sarah.
Upstairs, Bernadette pulled every one of their suitcases out of the hall cupboard and within an hour each one was full.
Over the last few weeks, on the pretence of having a clear-out, she’d already sorted out everything she was taking with her.
The jewellery her mum left her? Taking. The keepsake box from every one of the kids’ milestones?
Taking. Her uniforms and everyday clothes?
Taking. The outfits she’d bought for yet another one of Kenneth’s interminable work functions?
Leaving. Her wedding dress? Leaving. Preferably on a pyre in the back garden before nightfall.
They humped the cases downstairs, Bernadette rejecting Sarah’s offer to have Piers come over and help them.
Her closest friend she could handle, but – much as she’d grown hugely fond of Piers in the short time she’d known him – she didn’t want any other witnesses to the most traumatising, nerve-wracking episode of her life.
It was only when they were loaded and leaving that Bernadette’s heart began to slightly decrease from a speed that would set off a monitor in her husband’s ward.
That was all she needed – to leave her husband and then end up on his operating table.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. If she made it through this day it would be a miracle.
The traffic was light all the way to Sarah’s home, only a couple of streets away in the West End of the city. Sarah backed the van into the garage and they unloaded in five minutes of pulling, pushing and exertion.
‘Am I the only one wishing I’d taken up some of that boxercise nonsense?’ Sarah asked, panting, leaning against the side of her van, hands on knees. ‘Bernie, I love you,’ she spluttered between breaths, ‘but we’re too old for this.’
Bernadette grinned, then realised that her emotional barometer had swung the other way, and felt tears falling down her face.
She had no idea why. Bugger. ‘Sorry, honey,’ she immediately apologised.
‘This is supposed to be a Thelma and Louise moment and I’m turning it into Sleeping with the Fecking Enemy. ’
‘Don’t you dare apologise,’ Sarah chided, summoning all her strength to push herself up and fold her arms around her friend.
Bernadette rested her cheek on Sarah’s shoulder.
‘I just feel… feel… like I’ve been totally spineless.
And I still am. I’m bloody terrified. How pathetic is that?
I keep thinking what if he’s right. What if I’m hopeless, if I can’t manage on my own, if I’ll fall apart without him?
I know I won’t – but I can’t stop the conversation in my head, that niggling bloody voice of his, the one that’s always doubting me, telling me I can’t do anything right. ’
‘Honey, you’ve listened to that for thirty years – it’s not going to turn off overnight. But you’re here, you’re doing this, and it’s going to be okay. It really is. I promise you.’
Bernadette lifted her head so they were face to face.
‘And what am I going to say when he turns up here, or at my work?’ Another two fat tears exploded from her eyes.
That was it. That was the crux of it, the biggest bloody terror of all.
What was he going to do when he found out?
He’d never laid a finger on her, but somehow that didn’t matter.
How many times had she told patients that emotional abuse could be as damaging as physical abuse?
When she was on general wards, before she moved to A & E, how many times had she watched a woman flinch at visiting time when her husband walked in the door, all flowers and proclamations of care.
Bernadette had learned to spot them a mile off.
The men who acted like the Billy Big Bollocks, the charmers who could win anyone over with the right words and a bit of charisma, while the pupils of the women’s eyes darted from face to face, shadowed with the fear of knowing that it could change in a heartbeat, or that they’d pay for it later.
Sometimes she felt being married to Kenneth had made her a far better nurse.
She understood. Saw the truth that others might overlook.
If her thoughts were welcome, she’d gently caution those women to build a support network, to make plans, to find ways of building their confidence in the hope that they’d find it in themselves to make the break.
Now it was time to take her own advice.
‘I can do this,’ she said, to herself more than to Sarah.
Sarah’s hug was warm and it was crushing to the chest area. ‘You can, my love. Let’s keep going. That’s what we need to do today. One thing off the list, now on to the next. But I need to go to the loo first because I’m at that age.’
She nipped in through the side door from the garage to the toilet off the utility room, then reappeared a few moments later.
Bernadette was already waiting in the car, anxiety over telling her daughter rising with every second.
After the shortest fifteen minutes of her life, they pulled into the driveway of Nina’s home in a new estate on the outskirts of Bearsden.
‘I’m going to wait here.’ Sarah told her, producing a Kindle from her handbag. ‘Just shout if you need me.’
‘Thanks. I mean it, Sarah. Thanks so much for this.’
Hands shaking, Bernadette pulled the handle on the door and climbed out.
This was it. Everything that had been done already this morning could be undone.
She could take her stuff back, unpack it again, put it where it had been and he would be none the wiser.
But once the words she was about to say next were out, there was never going to be a way to take them back.
After a lifetime of thinking about it, of planning how she’d break the news, of rumination over the sentences and coming up with arguments to counter the objections, the time had come. And her mind was totally blank.
She rang the doorbell.
Don’t be in. Don’t be in. Please don’t be in.
The thudding of little Casey’s footsteps down the wooden floor of the hall told her otherwise.
It took a few seconds for Nina to catch up, and another few for her to unlock the multitude of contraptions, designed to stop an inquisitive toddler, with a flair for the Houdini, from escaping.
Eventually the door swung open and there was her daughter, her three-year-old grandson Casey at her knee, eighteen-month-old Milo on her hip.
For a moment, Nina’s likeness to Kenneth jarred her.
The same tall, athletic frame. His blue eyes.
The dark hair that he’d raged against when it began to turn grey.
There was no denying that physically, she came from her father’s side of the gene pool.
Thankfully, emotionally, she had more of Bernadette’s DNA.
‘Mum! What are you doing here? Come on in! You should have phoned and I’d have made something for lunch and…
’ She stopped. Her gaze went to the van in the driveway, to her Auntie Sarah, as she’d always called her, sitting in the driver’s seat.
And then back to her mum, standing on the doorstep, her face grey, her eyes bloodshot with tears.
‘Oh God,’ she whispered. ‘What is it? Has something happened to Dad?’