Families Might Be The Death Of You Read online

  PROLOGUE

  Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was just the time of year. Maybe it was just because he had got to that time in his life when nothing and I mean nothing could bring a smile to his face anymore.

  He was never the happiest of men, but he did know how to smile, how to laugh and occasionally how to have a good time. He was a chameleon. A shape changer who could put on the right face to suit the occasion and a mask to hide the real person that lay within. The reality however, was that despite all this show, he had been for large parts of his life deeply unhappy, unfulfilled and with a dark side to his nature that he had always struggled to keep control of.

  Today was proving to be a day where he was really struggling to keep control of the emotions that raged within his head. Today was going to be the day when the mask would eventually slip.

  CHAPTER 1

  “She’s almost a grown woman! She’s not the one who’s being unreasonable! When are you ever going to get off her back? She can’t be daddy’s little girl forever! Just give her some space and let her grow up!”

  Mary was getting fed up of constantly feeling as though she was in the middle of a war between her husband George and her 16-year-old daughter Ruth. With his shift work, he wasn’t there half the time anyway, but when he was he loved to lay the law down.

  “You’re too soft on her, she’ll end up a teenage mother and it will all be your fault. Learn to be a mother. Stop trying to be her best friend”.

  She’d heard it all before and was glad to hear the door shut behind him as he went off for work. It wasn’t always like this of course, in fact Ruth, especially the teenage Ruth, was really the only thing they ever argued about.

  She knew she could be soft. She knew she let her daughter get away with perhaps a little bit more than she should, but wasn’t that all part of letting your children grow up and find out for themselves what life is all about.

  They moved to Marlborough when Ruth was three and brought a house on the outskirts of the town, so that they could get her into the local school. It had been a good move and she loved the idea of living in a small town. A short train or car journey into the city, close enough to the open countryside, to be able to walk and all the advantages of living in a lively town. It was like having the best of all worlds.

  She sat at her dressing table, getting herself ready. She was meeting a group from work at one of the pubs in the town. One of the young lads was leaving to immigrate to Australia. She was only intending to show her face and then back home for a quiet night in front of the telly. Although most of her colleagues were local, they weren’t a group that socialised regularly together and none of them were what she would call best friends.

  She had told her husband she felt she had to put an appearance in, but hadn’t exactly been looking forward to it.

  Later that night, after he had got back from work from his afternoon shift, they were lying in bed laughing about the antics of one of her colleagues. “You know the practice manager, at the Marlborough Health Centre, Mrs Prim and Proper. She was making eyes at a lad half her age, she thought none of us had noticed, I've not had so much fun in ages. Don't you just love people watching?” She said “Anyway, I think she might have got more than she expected. He actually followed her out of the pub and came back fifteen minutes later with a silly grin on his face. It's always the quiet ones isn't it, never had her pegged as that type.”

  “Lucky buggar” her husband said, “I used to have a crush on the cleaner at work when I was the office junior. She used to talk dirty to me, just to make me blush.” “Asked me if I wanted to join her in the stationery cupboard one night.”

  “I’ve heard this one before”, laughed Mary “you followed her in and she gave you a feather duster and said how does that tickle your fancy.”

  “Are you turning the light off?” She said as she kissed him on the cheek and turned over to go to sleep.

  ‘It’s nice that we can still make each other laugh ‘, she thought.

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘Just nipping out to the shops’ she shouted as he heard the front door bang. Turning over in bed, Peter pulled the covers over his head, ‘just five minutes more’ he thought, as he closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.

  ‘Come on lazy, you can’t spend all day in bed. Coffees on the bedside table. We have to be at my mother’s for lunch in an hour. I’ve run you a bath and ironed that blue shirt, remember best behaviour and for god’s sake please just be yourself, I’m sure she will love you, almost as much as I do’.

  He turned over, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, not sure whether he was awake or dreaming. The smell of freshly brewed coffee, started to bring him to his senses, as he opened his eyes and saw her standing at the window, opening the curtains, bringing the pain of the bright sunlight, talk about being woken up gently.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked her. ‘Almost 12, come on, you need to get a move on’ she said as she took the couple of steps to the bed, sitting next to him with a bounce. He looked up at her face, the sun streaming through the window making her hair look like a halo, he knew she was no saint, but she most definitely was his angel, her eyes drew him in and her lips, were lips that he knew just needed to be kissed. He reached for her, but was firmly pushed back onto the bed, as she laughed. ‘Brush your teeth first, you smell like a brewery’.

  Life is full of firsts and one of the firsts that he dreaded more than any other was meeting ‘the parents’. At least today was just her mum, her father lived down south so he could wait for another day, or possibly another year as far as he was concerned. Meeting the parents was about making a statement of commitment and he had never been big on commitment. Big on having a good time. Big on getting drunk and big on what he liked to call his little conquests. Casting his line, letting them bite and wriggle on the hook for a bit before he reeled them slowly in, enjoying the struggle, before he eventually beached his fish and threw them back into the water. No; commitment was most definitely not on his agenda, yet this time he felt that he was the fish that had taken the bait and that he had been well and truly reeled in. All he hoped and prayed for was that she wouldn’t throw him back in the water.

  Three months they had been together and yes the sex had been great, but he hadn’t grown bored and ready to move on to the next conquest. For once in his life, he was enjoying the company of a woman for something more than the sex. He loved just being with her, waking up in the morning with her, catching her eye across a room, the way she smiled, the way she smelt and the way she made him feel special. Lust was something he knew a lot about, but for the first time in his life he had started to realise that there was something else called love and love came in a small package called Lindsey.

  He stood nervously at the door, holding Lindsey’s hand, feeling her gentle squeeze as she sought to reassure him. The door opened and stood in front of them was Lindsey’s mother, a woman who he immediately recognised, but what was her name, did he even know her name, did he even ask her name. The colour drained from his face, Lindsey’s mother was one of his conquests.

  ‘Hi I’m Eva, Lindsey’s mum, you must be Peter. I’ve heard a lot about you’. Her smile was genuine and her welcome sincere. Perhaps she had had one too many that night and didn’t remember him. He relaxed a little and followed Eva and Lindsey into the house. Small talk, cups of tea and a traditional Sunday lunch, all served in a blur, as Peter’s head started to go round in circles.

  Eva, although a lot holder than him, had something about her that had really attracted him and he had to admit still really attracted him. It was probably her eyes. She had the most gorgeous eyes, he thought he had ever seen. She had curves in all the ri
ght places and was definitely on the top heavy side, but with this woman it was most definitely her eyes and when he caught her looking back at him he found it even harder to resist the attraction. He didn’t even speak to her in the pub. They were in a large group and he was with his friends at one end of the table and she was with a group of women at the other end.

  One of his friends was emigrating and was having a few drinks with the ‘girls’ from work. Peter and his friends had decided to gate crash the party, thinking that the so called ‘girls’ were going to be single, available and under 30 and that they might get lucky. Peter had found himself in the back of a taxi, heading to what he thought was the back of beyond, somewhere out in the middle of the country, far away from what he considered the real nightlife of the city. He could see his mates were starting to have doubts to, as one of them said. “Looks like an old man’s pub.” As the taxi pulled up in front of a pub in a large square.

  The sighs of disappointment were audible when they all walked into the pub, laughing and joking to see that the party was full of middle aged women, some of whom looked like they weren’t far off pension age.

  Yet there he was staring at this woman who was probably not far off his mother’s age. Smiling back at her, when he saw the smile forming on her face and behind her eyes. It was probably a bit of a cliché, but he knew she was as interested as he was. When she left she paused at the door and looking at her she made a slight gesture with her eyes and head that left him in no doubt she wanted him to follow her.

  He definitely knew she was up for it and less than thirty seconds after leaving the pub they were down a back alley with her skirt hitched up around her waist and his trousers around his ankles. The sex was frantic and over more quickly than he would readily admit.

  It had been just the one time, but he had known as soon as he saw her that Lindsey’s mother, Eva was the woman from the pub.

  If it had been the mother of any of his previous conquests, he wouldn’t have batted an eyelid, but Lindsey was different. Lindsey mattered, Lindsey he loved and nothing was going to come between them, until now.

  He had never hidden anything from Lindsey before, he told her he had been what he liked to call a player and she had laughingly called him a male slut, ‘but you better be reformed, I can live with your past, but don’t mess up the future,’ and there lay the question. Could she live with the past, if it included having sex with her mother?

  Dinner over, Eva cleared the table and Peter helped taking the dishes through to the kitchen. Lindsey disappeared to the toilet, leaving Peter and Eva alone in the kitchen. Peter saw that Eva’s earlier composure had disappeared as she nervously looked at him with those eyes. Both of them standing there in complete silence. After what seemed like a lifetime, Eva spoke, her voice an octave higher than her normal voice and finding it hard to get the words out.

  “Lindsey must never find out, oh my god, I’m so embarrassed. I’ve never done anything like that in my life before. Please don’t say anything to her”. In her head she was thinking, why he can’t just disappear, go away, never to be seen again. Scared that if she told him to leave, if she criticised him to Lindsey, he would tell Lindsey what sort of woman her mother really was, a sex crazed middle aged nymphomaniac who has sex against the wall with a stranger outside a pub. Whereas in reality she was a lonely woman, who wanted to feel attractive, sexy and wanted and who for a brief moment had felt all of those things, before going home to sleep alone, feeling ashamed of what she had done.

  Lindsey, would never understand, Lindsey must never know, could never know, but this was the supposed love of her daughter’s life and she had had sex with him. How was she going to deal with that? How had she kept calm on seeing him at the door? How had she maintained her composure and made small talk at the table? She had seen another side of herself, she had never truly known she possessed. A side that was calm and calculating. A side that enabled her to do whatever it took for self-preservation.

  She wanted this man out of her life. She wanted him out of her daughter’s life but she did not want to hurt her daughter and she did not want to spoil her relationship with her daughter.

  “There you are, darling, I was just telling Peter, all about how you were as a little girl and promised him I’d show him, the family photo albums, next time you come round.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Lindsey was glad to see that her mum liked Peter and that everything had gone well. She had been worried at first, as she felt there was a tension in the air and that they were not going to get on. As the meal had gone on though, they had both appeared to relax a lot more and seemed to be really enjoying each other’s company.

  She had been worried, as her mother had not always approved of her choice in boyfriends. She said she fell in love too easily and the latest was always in her words ‘The real thing, this time mum, this time it’s for real”.

  Her mother had laughed at her when she found herself saying the exact same words over the phone, when she had arranged to bring Peter over for Sunday lunch.

  Her mother was always telling her she needed to give herself time. That she didn’t need to rush into relationships.

  Not that she had had that many boyfriends, just that when she did meet someone new she always seemed to fall head over heels in love with them.

  “You are your mother’s daughter” Eva had told her “I was always falling in love. A real romantic. I loved a man who made me feel special, would buy me a drink, buy me dinner, little gifts, would charm me and make me laugh. But I grew up and realised that that wasn’t the real word, and look what happened” she said laughing, “I married your father and look how that worked out”.

  Of course her mother had always been there to comfort and console her when things hadn’t worked out. However, with her last boyfriend things had got out of control. She had for a short few weeks lost the plot. She had periods when she was the normal Lindsey, upset, but functioning, moving on from another of life’s setbacks. Then a red mist would descend where she refused to accept that it was over. She had gone to his office and created a scene. She had turned up at his house, hammering on the door at 5 o clock in the morning. She had seen him out with a colleague from work at lunchtime and threw a drink over the woman, screaming abuse at her. Had she still lived in the town where she had grown up, the town where her mother still lived, her mother would have known all about it. Everyone would have known all about it. They would have known that she had had a visit from the police who had warned her that she would end up being arrested if it carried on.

  She was embarrassed and ashamed of the way she had felt and behaved. It wasn’t her. It was like someone else had inhabited her body and was controlling her mind. The visit from the police had snapped her back to reality. She felt as though she had managed to pull herself back from the brink and besides, there had been this cute man who had offered to buy her a drink at lunchtime.

  Meeting him had been her saving grace. He was gorgeous. A smile to die for. A man any woman would love to be seen with.

  Peter had been the one who had really helped her move on.

  CHAPTER 4

  Alex pushed the swing, as his daughter shouted, ‘Higher daddy, higher’ her laughter was infectious and there was nothing he enjoyed more than being a father and nothing he enjoyed more than spending time with little Josie. Not that he would ever admit that to Josie’s mum, Angie. She liked to think that she was the best thing in his life, but couldn’t he for once be greedy, be really greedy and have two good things in his life. Hadn’t life been unbearable before he met Angie? Hadn’t she and Josie given his life real meaning and real purpose? Hadn’t they put his life back on track?

  Fastening Josie in her trolley, a solitary father in a playground full of mothers and their children. He knew he was the lucky one. None of these women were Angie. None of these women could have made him as happy as Angie made him and besides none of these women were anywhere near as good looking as Angie.

  Tonigh
t was Josie’s night with her grandma. The Saturday night ritual, Josie stays at grandmas. Angie worked as a volunteer at the soup kitchen and he was left to his own devices, his own thoughts and his own memories. He hated Saturday evenings, yet he couldn’t do without them.

  He had a wife who doted on him, who kept the house clean, neat and tidy. She cooked the most fantastic meals and the food was always served exactly on time. She loved being there for him and Josie and wasn’t one of these women who felt the need to go out and work when she had a husband to look after. She was an enthusiastic lover, who enjoyed the same games he loved to play and to top it all she was a great mother to Josie.

  She had once mentioned about going back to work when Josie started school, but he had promised her he would look after her and she didn’t need to worry about such things. Besides, he had heard of a soup kitchen that needed a volunteer on Saturday nights and if she wanted to feel useful, why didn’t she volunteer there? She had jumped at the chance

  He didn’t begrudge Angie her volunteering and he couldn’t begrudge Angie’s mum her grandchild, but, without them there he felt alone, at a loose end with an itch that needed to be scratched. An itch that he could control the rest of the time. The past is a country that should not be visited, but to him it was like a magnet, a magnet whose pull was sometimes hard to resist.

  Perhaps that’s why he suggested the soup kitchen he thought to himself.

  CHAPTER 5

  Rosemary was one of those mothers who told everyone she met that she lived for her children. Her babies, the loves of her life, little Charlie who had just turned two and everyone said was adorable and Grace who at five was at the local primary school. Her poor husband Charles didn’t get a look in and had started to resent his long days at work and the lack of appreciation he was starting to feel when at home. Home was not a word he used easily. He liked order in his life. A place for everything and everything in its place. Home should be, the place where you feel safe, secure and able to unwind and relax. His house was anything but. The word pigsty sprang to mind. The children had no discipline. He had to sort out his own meals and he had to iron his own shirts. He hadn’t married a wife. He’d married a slob. A slob whose life consisted of somehow getting the children sorted in the morning and dropping Grace off at school. This was followed by coffees at Starbucks with her group of friends, with their small children in tow. Followed by lunch with her sister, or her mother, or one of her numerous click of sycophantic hangers on, who sponged off her for a free lunch. She would then pick Grace up from school going straight to McDonalds for tea. By the time Charles got home from his daily commute the kids were in bed and she was sat in front of the TV watching the latest episode of whatever reality TV programme it was she wanted to watch with a large glass of red wine in her hand and a half finished bottle by her side.