Chapter 3
After a night sleeping in a cute little campsite surrounded by oak trees by the side of a river, Meg was rested and ready to set off early in the morning for the final leg of the journey. She’d made the bed (which was incredibly comfortable, although it should be, given the cost of the thing) and wiped up the little kitchen, tipping the leftover water from the kettle outside to save filling up the waste-water tank unnecessarily as she’d been instructed, and putting her cup and plate and cutlery away in their little holders. Now she was driving along, listening to 90s music and singing tunelessly. Eliza was by her side, curled up and snoozing on the passenger seat after a walk through the cool woods, which had clearly worn out her stumpy little corgi legs. Meg smiled at her as she glanced across before looking back at the sat nav map. Two hours to go, most of it winding down country roads to get to the little village where her best friend Helen had settled with her husband ten years after they’d left art school. He’d been a local there, and she’d been welcomed into the community and supported with kindness when he’d walked out a few years after their daughter was born. Now she’d lived there so long it was hard to imagine her being anywhere else. Meg felt a pang of regret that she hadn’t been to visit in so long, but things had been… well, the podcast about toxic relationships that her friend had recommended had made a lot of sense of why she’d lived the small little life she’d been stuck in since she met Michael.
Little by little, he’d chipped away at what small self-confidence she had, suggesting that she stop working for the company in York where she’d found her niche creating websites. As his furniture design company grew, he said he needed someone there to take care of the back-office side of things and keep their website up and running. As social media had become a thing, she’d set up pages for the company, acting as the cheerful voice who shared photos and fun facts with potential clients.
Eventually the company had grown to have a huge following online – something that anyone other than Michael might have put down to Meg’s skill in understanding how it all worked, not to mention her design qualifications. He would veer between briskly dismissive and then unexpectedly complimentary, managing to fly her skilfully as if she was a human kite. Somehow, the bad days were always just outweighed by the good – or just good enough. After an unhappy childhood, where her late mother had picked on every fault and failing, it seemed to Meg that the status quo of being ever so slightly miserable all the time was… no more than she expected.
So she’d found her joy in working hard on the house and garden, making it pretty and homely and welcoming – not that they had any guests.
The company grew, but with her social life tied to Michael’s disinterest in doing anything (he was always too tired from working on an installation or would say he was worn out from working at exhibitions…) there was nothing to spend the increasingly large sums of money that the company made. So she splashed out on gardening bits and pieces, or the occasional trip into York where she’d splurge in bookshops. She’d take time buying thoughtful presents and packaging them up for friends and sending them in the post. Eventually, though, a lot of the friends seemed to get lost in the flotsam and jetsam of life, not helped by the fact that Michael always had an excuse for skipping a get together or dissuading her from attending an old art school reunion.
When they’d first moved into the house, she’d spent long hours outside digging and planting, weeding and tidying. The old man who’d lived next door told her it took eight years to see a garden to maturity, and twenty years after she’d begun, she’d left the place looking quite beautiful. Thick ropes of wisteria tangled over the pergola, hanging in long deep violet bunches in early summer. In spring, the place was beautiful in a stark, skeletal manner. The magnolia blossom was pink and pretty in the corner overlooking the patio of golden stone she’d laid one weekend when Michael was working in Paris. She narrowed her eyes in thought, realising in that moment that… well, she’d never know. Had he, in fact, been working? Had he been doing what he said? There were so many unanswered questions.
Helen had remained steadfast, despite it all. She didn’t seem to mind that Meg hadn’t been to visit in years. She’d travel down from the Highlands to visit and ignore Michael’s ungracious lack of welcome. Meg lived for the weeks when she turned up, full of joy and trailing colourful, arty scarves and an air of nonchalance. Her daughter Phoebe was a delight, filling the house with chaos and noise. Then her neighbour Janey had moved in next door, and she seemed to somehow get it too. It was no surprise that Michael had thoroughly disapproved of her as well, but living next door he’d had to swallow his disapproval and politely accept the invitations to dinner parties and Sunday summer barbecues. Meg suspected privately that Janey got a kick out of making him uncomfortable. She’d been amazing when he’d died, turning up with two bottles of red wine and a shoulder to cry on until Helen had arrived, rushing straight down from Scotland to stay for those early, confusing days, helping her to clear out papers and unearth all sorts of things - not the sort of things that most new widows had to deal with. Meg grimaced, remembering.
Meg reached over and ran a hand down Eliza’s back. In return, she was given a lick on the wrist as a thank you, which made her smile. Her little corgi had been a delight, making her laugh and keeping her going over the last eighteen months as she’d come to terms with everything.
It was funny how driving all these miles seemed to give her time to mull things over. She smiled to herself as she checked the side mirror and indicated to overtake a horse trailer, which was trundling along even slower than she was. All those long-distance truck drivers must be like zen masters with all the time they had to think.
The time sped away, the road clear and the sky bright, and before she knew it, she was driving down the narrow curving lane that led down towards the tiny seaside village of Applemore. The hedges were still skeletal and dark, but the starry pinpricks of white blackthorn blossom danced among them, and the fields were shaded with the first tinges of acid green suggesting that spring was just around the next bend in the road. As was the village, she realised with a happy sigh, at last.
WELCOME TO APPLEMORE
Twinned with La Mardelle, France
The sign was freshly painted and decorated with hanging baskets of pretty violet and yellow pansies which swung gently in the breeze. She slowed down a little more to take in the view as she navigated the twisty road which led down to the village.
It had been so long since she’d visited Helen in Applemore that the place felt quite different from her memory of it. Parked in the car park at the start of the main street was a sleek silver Airstream caravan which - judging from the queue of people waiting to be served – was selling something in great demand. Despite the chill of the early spring day, people were sitting on the sea wall eating takeaway food from white cardboard cartons, wrapped up in waterproof coats, their hair blowing in the wind. All the way along the street on the seaside, jaunty multi-coloured bunting flapped between the lampposts and the metal railings which edged the sea wall were freshly painted a cheerful sky blue. The last time she’d visited the village had seemed much more faded and workmanlike. At the far end of the street opposite the tiny harbour, the Applemore Hotel looked positively stylish with a modern-looking black sign above the door and flowers filling the windows. She couldn’t take it all in – conscious that the road was narrow, Meg felt a vague sense of panic that something might appear and she was going to have to manoeuvre herself in the still unfamiliar – and very large and unwieldy – campervan. With a row of cute little cottages on her right, she indicated left and trundled at a sedate pace towards Helen’s place, surprised that it all suddenly felt quite familiar.
The road was lined with leafless hedges and inclined upwards slightly, curving round for a moment before the lighthouse came into view. It stood lighthouse tall and brightly painted on the sea’s edge, surrounded by the rocky outcrops which led down to one of the tiny beaches which edged the Applemore shore. As she reached the white-painted gate, Helen appeared at the door of her cottage, both arms waving madly as she dashed through her garden and up the gravel path towards her.
‘I’ll get it, hang on,’ she yelled, motioning for Meg to stay put. She unlatched the gate and swung it open, motioning for her to pull forward, and then closed it securely behind her.
‘Lambs,’ she explained, pointing in the distance to where a collection of white specks could be seen. ‘We have to be careful with the gate at this time of year or they make a run for it, and then Finlay the farmer’s son gets cross when he has to herd them back when he’d rather be in the pub.’
‘Well, that makes sense.’ Meg glanced over at Eliza, who had both front paws on the dash and was peering out with interest. Luckily, she wasn’t in the least bit interested in sheep – or any other fluffy creature, for that matter.
‘Oh it’s so lovely to see you,’ Helen exclaimed, pulling the door open and reaching up to squeeze Meg so hard she gasped and laughed in surprise. ‘Stick the van over there on the gravel. I’ve made us some soup and bread for lunch, and we’ve got so much to catch up on before I leave for Chile.’
Meg climbed down from the driver’s seat and Helen held her for a long moment in a hug that made her eyes prickle unexpectedly. She smelled of the same lily of the valley perfume she’d always worn.
‘Excuse the garden,’ Helen said, gesturing to the tangle of daffodils growing through the faded brown leftovers of last summer’s planting. ‘I had every intention of getting it all done in the autumn, but I got caught up in a series of paintings, then – well, you know how it is.’
Meg shook her head, laughing. ‘Never apologise. It’s so lovely to be here.’
Helen’s cottage had been built for the lighthouse keeper over a century ago, and stood in the shadow of the tall tower which had guided boats safely into the harbour of Applemore ever since. There was a disused outbuilding which joined the two, with a separate door and windows looking out over the bay.
Helen opened the gate to the garden, which was surrounded by a stone wall about four feet in height.
‘Come on, you two,’ she said, beckoning Meg and Eliza inside. Meg brushed against the dried stems of last summer’s lavender, catching a momentary scent which reminded her of the garden she’d left behind.
The cottage was tiny and cosy, and a million times more chaotic than it had been the last time Meg had visited. Back then, her daughter Phoebe was still living at home and that had clearly meant Helen’s hoarding tendencies were kept under wraps. The place was stacked with piles of everything under the sun – books, yarn, craft equipment, boxes of unopened paints, and potted plants covering every surface.
Helen glanced over at Meg, who kept her face as neutral as possible.
‘It’s a bit of a bomb site, isn’t it?’ Helen said, mistress of understatement.
‘I’m here to see you, not the house,’ said Meg, which would have made sense – except they both knew that she was there to house sit.
‘Well me and the house.’ Helen made a face. ‘I tried to clear up a bit, but I was so busy getting packed up for the trip – there’s so much stuff that Phoebe can’t get over there in Santiago.’ She motioned to a heap of suitcases. ‘And I hate under-packing.’
‘I remember.’ Meg grinned at her friend. ‘What have you got in there, out of interest? The entire contents of the MS food hall?’
‘Never mind the food hall, it’s the knickers. She sent me a huge shopping list and nice underwear was at the top. You know what it’s like when you’ve had a baby and your –’
Meg raised an amused eyebrow. ‘I don’t, I’m relieved to say.’
‘You know what I mean.’ Helen shook her head and cleared a space on the sofa, patting the cushions to indicate to Eliza that the space was meant for her. Eliza, tired after a busy morning of snoozing in the passenger seat, hopped up politely, circled three times and collapsed in a neat little pretzel shape, her chin resting on a brightly coloured crewelwork cushion.
‘She approves of your handiwork.’ Meg ran a hand over her soft fur and followed Helen into the kitchen, which was – even worse. Despite the muddle, the room smelled of freshly baked bread, and there was a pretty jug of creamy narcissi on the big wooden table which dominated the room.
‘Just shove those things over to one side,’ said Helen, ‘and we can have lunch. I’m assuming you must be hungry after all that driving. You didn’t eat on the way up?’
Meg shook her head. ‘I was saving myself for your famous sourdough.’
Helen beamed. ‘I made one especially for you. Talking of which, that’s on the list of things for you to do while I’m gone.’
‘Make sourdough?’
‘It’s not hard. There are loads of tutorials on Instagram if you get stuck, but I’ll leave you an instruction manual. You don’t have to make bread if you don’t fancy it, but you need to feed her twice a week at least, to keep her sweet. I’ll put her in the fridge before I go.’
‘Her?’
‘Mildred. My sourdough starter.’ Helen waggled a crusty-looking jar which had been sitting on the windowsill beside a vigorously flowering and very pink geranium.
‘It has a name?’
‘She is very temperamental. Well, she’s not if she’s well looked after, but we had a serious talking to the other month when I went to Edinburgh for a week, and she didn’t like the water.’
Helen sold her art at galleries all over Scotland, so it wasn’t unusual for her to travel south to deliver paintings.
‘Funnily enough, I had someone tell me yesterday that the van ought to have a name as well. There must be something in the air.’ Meg surreptitiously stacked up a pile of travel magazines and a pile of yarn strands and shifted them sideways to make space before sitting down on the bench at the clearest end of the table.
‘Abeona,’ Helen pronounced, as she placed a heavy Le Creuset pot down onto the scuffed wooden tabletop.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Goddess of departures. That’s what you should call her.’
‘It’s an inanimate object, not a her.’ Meg accepted a bowl and a spoon.
‘All travel things are female, I think. I can’t remember why. It’s a nice name for a van, anyway. I shall think of her as Abeona in my head when I think of you travelling the world in her.’
‘Travelling the world might be pushing it a bit. I’ve made it to the Highlands from Yorkshire, and even now I’m staying at your place, not even camping out.’
Although, thought Meg, as Helen ladled some of her delicious smelling vegetable soup into bowls, if the spare bedroom is as chaotic as the rest of the house, I might just be sleeping in the van for the next two months out of self-defence.
‘Butter?’ Helen slid the dish across and passed her a knife. There were a few minutes of silence as they both busied themselves spreading cool pats of thick butter onto the still-warm bread, the only sound the ticking of the old wooden clock on the wall. It chimed one o’clock as Helen started to speak.
‘So how was the journey? You managed okay in the van?’
Meg nodded. ‘Good. Admittedly, I was a bit spooked to start with, but once you get going, it doesn’t really feel like you’re driving something huge. I think I might need some work on my reverse parking, mind you. I can’t imagine getting that thing parked in the supermarket in town.’
‘You don’t need to worry about that. I’ve sorted the car for you – even had it cleaned and serviced. It’s so pristine you might want to sleep in there while I’m gone.’ Helen gave a chuckle.
‘Oh that’s amazing, thanks.’
‘Least I could do. I couldn’t really leave this place empty for two months, and it’s hardly in the sort of state for listing on Airbnb, is it? Talking of which, if you felt the urge to do some of your magic while you’re here, I’d be more than eternally grateful.’
Meg looked across at her friend. Her long red hair was threaded with silver highlights now, which glinted in the sunlight that shone in through the side window. She looked exactly the same as she had the day they’d met in the first week of art school, and yet… completely different at the same time. It was the strangest thing to watch your friend age alongside you. It didn’t seem any time at all since they were turning twenty, and now here they were thirty years later.
Helen hadn’t changed in lots of other ways, too – she’d always been chaos to Meg’s order. When they shared a flat together as second and third-year students, Meg had always been the one following along behind her, clearing up and making the place look nice.
‘Some of my magic?’ Meg said, after a moment, knowing exactly what her friend meant.
Helen waved an arm. ‘Your decluttering magic. I mean you don’t have to. If you want to leave things exactly as they are I would be equally delighted. Having you here to stay is saving my life and Phoebe’s delighted, as well, as you can imagine. It’s nice to have your mum around when you’re having a baby, especially when you’re living on the other side of the world. But if you felt the urge to – I don’t know, organise it all a bit? That would be fine, too.’
‘I’d love to.’ It was the least she could do. Helen had been there, always. Decluttering and tidying were her thing. Having a purpose would get her stay off to a good start, and then – after that – perhaps she’d have a think about what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
‘Nothing’s off limits,’ Helen said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘I mean there’s nothing you’re going to find that’s going to freak you out. I don’t have any dead bodies hiding in the cupboard under the stairs, or anything like that.’
They exchanged a look.
‘Sorry, that’s probably not the best analogy, under the circumstances, is it? If you could make some sort of order out of the chaos, maybe I could sort it properly when I get back.’
‘I’d love to.’ Meg glanced around the room. A plan was already formulating in her mind.
‘I don’t want you thinking I’m taking advantage.’ Helen fiddled with the petals of one of the flowers from the jug between them.
‘I’m staying in your house, for one thing,’ began Meg.
‘But you’ve bought a campervan so you can travel the globe.’
Meg wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m not sure I’m quite globe travelling material. Not when I can’t even park the thing.’
Helen waved her hands airily. ‘Whatever. I mean – what I’m trying to say in my usual roundabout manner is I’d be really grateful if you did manage to do some sort of decluttering magic, but you don’t have to do anything at all.’
‘I promise you; I’ll love doing it. It’s therapeutic for me. I can listen to one of your podcasts while I’m working.’ Meg waggled her phone to illustrate the point.
‘Talking of which, did you like the one I sent? I thought it was pretty apposite under the circumstances.’
‘Painfully so.’ Meg grimaced. ‘It’s not very edifying to realise you’ve spent the best part of your adult life unhappily married to a man who’s been living a double life.’
Helen’s brow furrowed as she thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps you were so busy trying to make everything look okay from the outside, there was no time to think about what was going on the inside?’
‘I think you might be onto something there.’ Meg tore a piece of sourdough crust off and spread a little more butter onto it. ‘It’s hard to look back and realise I wasted so much time trying to make someone happy when I wasn’t the problem.’
‘It’s not easy, though, is it?’ Helen stacked up a little pile of colourful post-it notes as she spoke. ‘Grief is complicated.’
‘You’re telling me. All those people at the funeral telling me how heartbroken I must be to have lost Michael, and I’m standing there thinking about the fact he died in a hotel room with a woman he met at a conference.’
Even now, saying it out loud sounded crazy. The whole situation had been so shocking and unexpected. And embarrassing. That had been the worst thing, dealing with the awkwardness.
Helen shrugged slightly. ‘There isn’t a rulebook for how to act as the grieving widow of a man you weren’t particularly happily married to, is there?’
‘Funnily enough,’ Meg said, pushing a stray strand of hair back behind her ear as she leaned forward as if to confide in Helen, despite the emptiness of the room, ‘it turns out that there’s a whole world of women out there in the same boat. You search on Google, and there they are. Thousands of us. Millions, probably. There are forums where people share their stories.’
‘I can’t believe you stayed. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me how bad it was until after he’d gone.’ Helen grimaced. ‘I mean it was pretty evident it was – he was – awful. But all the cheating and lying on top of it was the worst kind of icing.’
‘The worst kind of icing on a cake nobody in their right mind would want to eat.’ Meg straightened her knife, laying it neatly on the plate and absentmindedly arranging crumbs into a line beside it as she spoke. ‘All those trips away and exhibitions.’
Helen shook her head in sympathy.
‘I feel guilty. I knew you were trapped, but you seemed – well, I always thought if you wanted to get out, you’d find a way.’
‘We talked about this after the funeral. It’s that old saying about boiling a frog. Maybe if we’d had kids, it would have been different. Maybe I’d have escaped then, because I’d like to think I wouldn’t have made someone else live with it.’
Helen reached across the table, closing her hand over Meg’s for a brief second.
‘The thing is, it’s a mind game. It’s how they control you. You mustn’t blame yourself.’
Meg shook her head. ‘Weirdly, I don’t. The therapist said the same thing. It feels more like I was under some sort of spell, and as soon as he died, it broke. Then I could see things for what they really were.’
‘Weren’t you tempted to let people know the truth? You could have stood up at the funeral and told them what you’d found out in the days after he died. All the emails, the second phones, the trips he took abroad with other women when you thought he was on top secret business…’
‘You know I thought about it.’ They’d discussed it over wine in the days before the funeral, when Helen had shot down to be with her on a moment’s notice. Janey next door had been in on the secret, too, but apart from that, nobody else had the faintest inkling that Michael was anything other than a loving and hardworking husband who’d tragically died on a business trip at the shockingly early age of fifty.
‘But there would be so much to it. All that drama.’ Helen nodded.
‘People feeling sorry for me. People wondering what I’d done to drive him away. You know what gossip is like. That’s why I couldn’t face staying there. It would have come out one way or another in the end, and I didn’t want to be the person people were talking about the moment my back was turned.’
‘I get it.’ Helen cut another thick slice of bread, then split it in half, passing one over to Meg. ‘Believe me, when Tommy left me here, I had years where people couldn’t help but bring it up whenever they saw me. It’s exhausting being the subject of pity, even if it’s well meant.’
‘Exactly. The only blessing is that for whatever reason, between selling off the business and the life insurance policies, I never have to think about money ever again.’
It had been eighteen months since Michael died. It had taken time, and a fair amount of expensive therapy to get to a place where Meg could say calmly and objectively the facts as they lay before her: her marriage had been miserable, and she’d felt trapped and lonely - but now she was free to live the rest of her life on her terms. All she had to do was work out what exactly it was that she wanted.
Helen raised her soup spoon in a toast. ‘To Michael, who got one thing right at least.’
Meg gave a wry smile. ‘To Michael, indeed.’