The Lost Wife

Fielding his turbulent emotions, Jake said nothing and followed her. His fingers itched to reach out and touch the long chestnut tresses that flowed down her slim back, he shoved his hand into his trouser pocket to stem the renegade urge.

The compact front room was a haven of warmth and comfort, with a substantial iron wood-burner at the centre throwing out its embracing heat, its funnel reaching high into the oak-beamed rafters of the roof. There were two red velvet couches laden with bright woollen throws and cushions, and the wooden pine floor was generously covered with a rich red and gold rug. Just one Victorian armchair was positioned by the fire. Two sets of pine shelves either side of the burner were packed with books, and in one corner—its roots embedded in a silver bucket—sat an abundant widespread Christmas tree waiting to be decorated. Jake’s insides lurched guiltily.

‘Sit down. I’ll make us a hot drink … that is unless you’d prefer a brandy?’

‘I don’t touch alcohol any more. Coffee will be fine … thanks.’ Now it was his turn to glance quickly away. But not before he’d glimpsed the slightly bewildered furrowing of Ailsa’s flawless brow.

‘Coffee it is, then.’ She left the room.

Lowering his tall, fit frame onto a couch, Jake breathed out at last. For a while he watched the increasingly heavy snow tumbling from the skies outside the window, then fell into a daydream about his daughter playing on that sumptuous red and gold rug with her dolls. She’d be chatting away non-stop to them, he mused, her vivid imagination taking her far away from this world—a world that until she was five had promised a safe and secure day-to-day existence as she grew up, a comforting life that had abruptly changed beyond all recognition when her mother and father had separated.

He didn’t realise Ailsa had returned until she stood in front of him, holding out a steaming mug of aromatic black coffee. Gratefully Jake took it. ‘Just what the doctor ordered.’ He tried for a smile but knew it was a poor effort.

‘How is your mother coping since she lost your dad?’

He watched his pretty ex-wife walk across the room in that graceful, mesmerising way she had that made her look as if she glided. She’d always had that balletic quality about her, and the blue denim jeans she was wearing highlighted her slender thighs and tiny waist—especially with the broad leather belt she wore around her sweater. As she sat down on the other couch he tried to curtail his irrational disappointment that she’d chosen not to sit beside him. Her slender ringless fingers wrapped themselves around a mug of tea. From memory, Jake knew it was rare that Ailsa drank coffee. But he didn’t dwell long on that. Inside he was reeling at the unexpected sight of the missing wedding band on her finger—another painful demonstration that their marriage had well and truly ended.

Clearing his throat, he garnered the defences that he’d fine-honed during the past four years without her. ‘Outwardly she seems to be coping well,’ he replied. ‘Inwardly is another matter.’ He could have been talking about himself …

‘Well, then, perhaps it’s a good thing that Saskia stays with her for a bit longer. It’s been, what …? Six months since your dad died?’

‘About that.’ Sipping the too-hot coffee, he grimaced as the beverage scalded his tongue. If it was Ailsa’s aim to hold out an olive branch by not making a fuss about their daughter staying with her grandmother and spoiling her plans for the lead-up to Christmas, then he didn’t intend to take it. He couldn’t seem to help resenting the fact that she was clearly getting on with her life quite well without him.

‘And how about you?’ she persisted, low-voiced, leaning slightly forward, amber gaze concerned.

‘What about me?’

‘How are you coping with the loss of your dad?’

‘I’m a busy man, with a worldwide property business to run … I don’t have time to dwell on anything other than my work and my daughter.’

‘You mean you don’t have time to mourn your father? That can’t be good.’

‘Sometimes we all have to be pragmatic.’ His spine stiffening, Jake put the ceramic mug down on a nearby side-table then flattened his palms over his knees. Ailsa had always wanted to get to the heart of things and it seemed that nothing had changed there. Except that he didn’t feel like spilling his guts to her about his feelings any more … been there, done that. He had the bruises on his heart to prove it.

‘I remember that you and he had your differences, and I just thought that his passing might be an opportunity for you to reflect on the good things about your relationship, that’s all.’

‘Like I said … I’ve been too busy. He’s gone, and it’s sad, but one of the things he taught me himself was to rise above my emotions and simply get on with whatever is in front of me. At the end of the day that’s helped me cope with the “slings and arrows” of life far more than wallowing in my pain. If you don’t agree with such a strategy then I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.’

He sensed his temper and his unreasonableness rising. Privately he had nothing but contempt for such a tack. Leaving his father’s death and his regret that they hadn’t found a way to communicate more healthily aside, he reminded himself that he wasn’t the only one in this one-time marriage who had been to the depths of hell and back. In the four years since their divorce Ailsa had grown noticeably thinner, and there were faint new lines around her sweetly shaped mouth. Perhaps she wasn’t getting on with her life that well? He yearned to know how she was really coping. Saskia had told him that her mother worked long hours at her arts and crafts business, even at the weekends. There was no need for her to work at all. The divorce settlement he’d made for her was substantial, and that was the way he wanted it.

Jake frowned. ‘Why are you working so hard?’ he demanded, before he’d realised he intended to ask.

‘What?’

‘Saskia told me that you work day and night at this arts and crafts thing.’

‘Arts and crafts thing?’ She was immediately offended. ‘I run a thriving local business that keeps me busy when I’m not doing the school run or tending to Saskia, and I love it. What did you expect me to do when we broke up, Jake? Sit around twiddling my thumbs? Or perhaps you expected me to spend my divorce settlement on a chic new wardrobe every season? Or the latest sports car? Or get interior designers in with pointless regularity to remodel the house?’

Wearily he rubbed his hand round his jaw. At the same time her words made him sit up straight. When he’d met her and married her he had never envisaged Ailsa as a businesswoman in the making. ‘It’s good to hear that your business is going well. And as regards the settlement, it’s entirely up to you what you do with the money. As long as you take proper care of Saskia when she’s with you—that’s all I care about. I’ve noticed that you look tired, as well as the fact you’ve clearly lost weight … that’s why I asked. I don’t want you wearing yourself out when you don’t have to.’

Her expression pained, Ailsa tightened her hands round her mug of tea. ‘I’m not wearing myself out. I look tired because sometimes I don’t sleep very well, that’s all. It’s a bit of a legacy from the accident, I’m afraid. But it’s okay … I try and catch up with some rest whenever I can—even if it’s during the day.’

If a heavyweight boxer had slammed his fist into his gut right then Jake couldn’t have been more winded. It took him a few moments to get the words teeming in his brain to travel to his mouth. ‘I told you years ago that you should get some help from the doctor to help you sleep better. Why haven’t you?’

As she shook her head, her long chestnut hair glanced against the sides of her face. ‘I’ve seen enough doctors to make me weary of ever seeing another one again. Besides … I don’t want to take sleeping pills and walk round like a zombie. And unless the medical profession has found an infallible method for eradicating hurtful memories—because it’s those that keep me awake at night—then I’ll just have to get on with it. Isn’t that what you advocate yourself?’

‘Dear God!’ Jake pushed to his feet. How was he supposed to endure the pain he heard in her voice? The pain he held himself responsible for?

Yes, they’d been hit by a drunk driver that dark, rainy night when their world had come to an end, but he still should have been able to do something to avert the accident. Sometimes at night, deep in the midst of troubled sleep, he still heard his wife’s heartrending moans of pain and shock in the car beside him … He’d promised in their marriage vows to love and protect her always and that cruel December night he hadn’t … He hadn’t. He just thanked God that Saskia had been staying with his parents at the time and hadn’t been in the car with them. It didn’t bear thinking about that his child might have been hurt as badly as her mother.

He must be a masochist, he reflected. Why had he come here to tell Ailsa himself that Saskia was prolonging her stay with his mother? He could so easily have got his chauffeur Alain to do the deed. Wasn’t that what he’d done for the past four years, so he wouldn’t have to come face to face with the woman he’d once loved beyond imagining? Wasn’t it a situation he’d willingly engineered so he wouldn’t have to discuss the deeper issues that had wrenched them apart perhaps even more than the accident?

Sighing, he tunnelled his fingers through his hair. He was only staying the night while he was snowbound. As soon as the roads were passable again he would drive to the airport and return to Copenhagen. After spending a precious day or two with his daughter and mother he would get back to the palatial head offices of Larsen and Son, international property developers, and resume his work.

‘I’ve got an overnight bag in the car. I brought it just in case. I’ll go and bring it in.’ When he reached the door he glanced back at the slim, silent woman sitting on the couch and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t worry … I promise not to outstay my welcome. As soon as the roads are cleared I’ll be on my way.’ Not waiting to hear her reply, Jake stepped out into the hallway.

As hard as she bit down on her lip, Ailsa couldn’t prevent her eyes from filling up with tears. ‘Why?’ she muttered forlornly. ‘Why come here now and shake everything up again? I’m doing all right without you … I am!’

Frustrated by the unremitting sorrow that rose inside her whenever Jake or the accident were mentioned, let alone having him near, she stoically put aside any further thoughts on the matter and instead made her way up to the spare bedroom to put clean sheets on the bed for her ex-husband’s unexpected overnight stay.

On the way there she pushed open her daughter’s bedroom door and glanced in. The pretty pink walls were covered in posters, from the latest Barbie doll to instantly recognisable children’s programme characters. But amongst them were two large posters of the latest male teen movie idol, and Ailsa shook her head in wonder and near disbelief that her daughter was growing up so fast … too fast, in her book. Would it be easier if Saskia had both her parents taking care of her together instead of separately?

In the time-honoured habit of caring parents everywhere, she wondered yet again if she was a good enough mother—if she was perhaps failing her child in some fundamental unconscious way? Was she wrong in wanting a career of her own? To stand on her own feet at last and not feel as if she was depending on her ex-husband? At the thought of Jake she wondered if she hadn’t been utterly selfish in pushing him away emotionally and physically, and finally driving him into asking for a divorce. She should have talked to him more, but she hadn’t. Relations between them had deteriorated so badly that they’d barely been able to look at each other, she remembered sadly.

Hearing the front door open, then slam shut again, she quickly crossed the landing to the spare room. The pretty double bed with its old-fashioned iron bedstead was strewn with all manner of knitting and materials from her craft business, and she scooped them up and quickly heaped them on top of the neat little writing desk in the corner. She wouldn’t stop to sort them all out right now. Tomorrow she would venture out to the purpose-built heated office in the garden, where she created her designs and stored her materials, and she would store the colourful paraphernalia away properly. Right now she would concentrate on making the bed, so that Jake could bring up his overnight bag and unpack.

As she unfolded the pristine white sheets she’d retrieved from the airing cupboard Ailsa noticed that her hands were shaking. They might not be sharing a bed tonight, but it was a long time since she’d slept under the same roof as her ex-husband. Once upon a time they had been so very close—as if even an act of God couldn’t tear them asunder. She’d often fallen asleep at night after they’d made love enfolded in his arms and woken the next morning in just the same position … Her insides churned with grief and regret at what they had lost. The haunting memories that Jake’s appearance had brought to the surface again were so intense that it felt as if they might drown her.

‘It’s all right,’ she muttered to herself. ‘It’s only for one night. Tomorrow he’ll be gone again.’ But as she glanced out of the window at the cascade of white flakes still steadily falling her stomach clenched anxiously. She might well be wrong about that …

Jake had gone upstairs to take a shower and get a change of clothes. Ailsa took the opportunity to retreat to the kitchen to mull over what to cook for dinner. She’d planned on having a simple pasta dish with a home-made sauce for Saskia and herself that night, but she was concerned that it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy a healthy male specimen like Jake. He loved good food and the finer things in life, and was a surprisingly good cook himself. It was another reason why she was slightly nervous about cooking for him again. She was no domestic goddess, and during their marriage her husband had patiently tolerated her culinary attempts with great good humour—even if more often than not he had ended up suggesting they go out to eat at one of his favourite restaurants instead. Many times he’d suggested they hire a full-time chef or cook, but Ailsa had always insisted she loved to cook for her husband and daughter. At heart she was a traditionalist, and would have felt as if she’d somehow failed her family if she hadn’t prepared their meals.

Having grown up in a children’s home, it was inevitable that her greatest longing had always been to have a family of her own.

A heavy fall of snow rolled off the eaves outside the window and fell to the ground with a crash. Snapping out of her reverie, Ailsa reached for the kitchen telephone and listened intently for a dial-tone. Nothing … The lines were obviously still down. She was longing to hear Saskia’s sweet voice and find out for herself if her little girl was happy with her grandmother in Copenhagen. Knowing how warm and loving Tilda Larsen was, she didn’t doubt it, but she would have liked confirmation from Saskia herself.

Biting down on her lip, she reached for the apron behind the larder door and turned on the oven. She scrubbed and rinsed a couple of generous sized potatoes, pricked the skins with a fork and popped them in the oven on a baking tray. Then she retrieved some minced beef from the fridge, a couple of onions and some garlic, and arranged a chopping board on the counter. She would add the prepared pasta sauce to the ingredients in the frying pan, along with some kidney beans and rustle up a quick chili con carne, she decided. At least it was a recipe she knew well, and therefore there was less chance of her having a disaster.

‘You look busy.’

The huskily male voice behind her almost made her jump out of her skin. Turning, Ailsa glanced into a sea of glittering iced blue, and her whole body suddenly felt dangerously weak. ‘I’m—I’m just preparing our dinner.’

‘Don’t go to any trouble on my account.’

‘It’s no trouble. We’ve both got to eat, right?’

His gaze scanning the ingredients on the marble-topped counter, Jake shrugged. ‘Need any help?’