After You Left by Carol Mason

2017

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Author:	Carol Mason
Genre:	Contemporary Romance
File Name:	after-you-left-by-carol-mason.epub
Original Title:	After You Left
Creator:	Carol Mason
Language:	en
Identifier:	ISBN:9781503942363
Publisher:	Lake Union Publishing
Date:	1490976000
File Size:	499962.88

You want to know what the worst thing is? It’s not the embarrassment, or the looks on people’s faces when I tell them what happened. It isn’t the pain of him not being there—loneliness is manageable. The worst thing is not knowing why.
When Justin walks out on Alice on their honeymoon, with no explanation apart from a cryptic note, Alice is left alone and bewildered, her life in pieces.

Then she meets Evelyn, a visitor to the gallery where she works. It’s a seemingly chance encounter, but Alice gradually learns that Evelyn has motives, and a heartbreaking story, of her own. And that story has haunting parallels with Alice’s life.
As Alice delves into the mystery of why Justin left her, the questions are obvious. But the answers may lie in the most unlikely of places…

Table of Content

1. Unnamed
2. ALSO BY CAROL MASON The Secrets of Married Women Send Me A Lover The Love Market
3. Unnamed
4. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Text copyright © 2017 Carol Mason All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle www.apub.com Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates. ISBN-13: 9781503942363 ISBN-10: 1503942368 Cover design by Debbie Clement
5. For my husband, Tony. Ever my champion.
6. CONTENTS ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN FOURTEEN FIFTEEN SIXTEEN SEVENTEEN EIGHTEEN NINETEEN TWENTY TWENTY-ONE TWENTY-TWO TWENTY-THREE TWENTY-FOUR TWENTY-FIVE TWENTY-SIX TWENTY-SEVEN TWENTY-EIGHT TWENTY-NINE THIRTY THIRTY-ONE THIRTY-TWO THIRTY-THREE THIRTY-FOUR THIRTY-FIVE THIRTY-SIX THIRTY-SEVEN THIRTY-EIGHT THIRTY-NINE FORTY FORTY-ONE FORTY-TWO FORTY-THREE FORTY-FOUR FORTY-FIVE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR
7. ONE Alice 2013 The alarm goes off, and, for a moment or two, in my semi-awake state, I think I am still in Hawaii. I slide a hand across the mattress and make contact with his mid-back. I can hear his mammoth breathing, never quite a fully-fledged snore. With the gentle clawing of my fingers on his bare skin, he rolls over now. He looks across at me, sleepily, and we smile. But the rainbow-coloured bubble of my happiness doesn’t hold. Instead of Justin’s warm, waking body, I am patting cold sheets. Then comes the blunt, quick scutter of disbelief. I am endlessly astonished how I can be hit so unexpectedly by something I already know. I’ve made a terrible mistake. I can’t go on, for everyone’s sake. I’m sorry. Events of four days ago have cruelly lain in wait on this side of my consciousness, keen to be relived – as if I haven’t played them over enough already. But each time I do, it’s neither more, nor less, real. I woke up in Kauai, like I’ve just woken up now. Justin wasn’t there. I
8. TWO ‘Realism is a tricky word. The artist sets up a narrative, but we have to bring our own story to it.’ The young journalist scribbles away. Whenever I give interviews, I always worry I’m going to encounter someone who knows more than I do, though that’s rarely the case. Usually, they’re like this one: young, impressible and slightly out of their depth, sent to cover a major exhibition, the first of its kind in the region’s history, when, really, they just need words on a page by 2 p.m. ‘This exhibition features two iconic, mid-twentieth-century American artists. Andrew Wyeth, who is famous for capturing the land and the people around him, and revealing the unspoken emotion of simple people and things. And Edward Hopper, who possessed an outstanding ability to identify the monumental drama of people engaged in doing nothing apparently extraordinary, or even noteworthy.’ He pauses, nods, scribbles. In the absence of a question, I press on. ‘Looking at Wyeth’s work, we find a bitterswe
9. THREE When I see the name in my email inbox, I almost forget who it is; that’s how far removed I now feel from anything to do with my wedding. Aimee – the photographer – is sending me a link to the photographs. I’m supposed to go through them and tell her which ones I want and in what format. I stare at the link, but can’t bring myself to open it. Not here. Instead, I pick up a folder containing applications to our summer internship programme; my assistant said she’d flagged up the best ones, but she wanted my quick input. I get halfway down the first one, then have to put my head in my hands. This is hopeless, so I wander into the gallery instead. Art can play havoc with my mood. Landscapes suit me best. My mind and airwaves seem to open up in their presence. I am revitalised to face new challenges. Portraits bother me most. I am never fully at ease with them. Something to do with the fixed nature of light, shadow and perspective that gives the eyes their uncanny ability to follow you
10. FOUR The flat is eerily quiet. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed how silence is a sound of its own. Walking in is surreal. Normally, just the very expectation of him coming home soon would lend a fullness to the air. I stand there stock still, barely in the kitchen, and for a moment his absence draws air from my body again. I can’t even tell myself he’s away, in London, on business; he’ll be back Friday. Because it doesn’t even feel like that scenario either. The numerals on the oven’s clock flash at me. The fridge suddenly ticks to life. And yet there is that same cavernous emptiness both inside and all around me. Absently, I pull off my jacket, and kick my shoes on to the small rug by the door. I walk into the bedroom, unzipping my skirt, letting it drop on the floor – things I would never do with tidy Justin around. His shirt-sleeve is still dangling out of the laundry bin like it was this morning. It seems to take up more space than a sleeve has a right to. If he was home, he would c
11. FIVE Evelyn December 18, 1983 The newspapers were full of the story. Six people dead. Seventy-five injured. Mark was seated at the opposite end of the polished walnut dining table, with only his large hands visible around the expanse of the Sunday Times. ‘The bloody IRA rang the Samaritans thirty-seven minutes before the blast! They warned them they were going to do it! So no one seems to know what took the police so long! Murderers! Daring to bomb Harrods on a Saturday right before Christmas! When will this reign of terror end?’ He hadn’t really noticed her this morning. Hadn’t noticed the change in her. Hadn’t looked twice and detected anything that might hint at the turmoil inside her, the unstoppable thrashing of contradictory impulses in her head. Mark never noticed. That was why it was so easy to hide things from him. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to tell you this. I have had a change of . . . Plan? Heart? Mind? ‘I thought we might go out to dinner tonight.’ He was looking at her f
12. SIX Alice Discovered something before wedding. Still trying to process. Need space. I read his text once. Twice. Three times. The thought that he is still there . . . I scramble to type quickly before he goes again. Pick up the phone! I am riveted to the small screen, unable to breathe. After about thirty seconds, up come the three little dots that indicate Justin is typing. I wait, but nothing follows. The dots disappear. Pick up the damned phone! I type, kneeling on the bed in a shaft of moonlight. The dots appear immediately. But then just as quickly they go again. My fingers hit all the wrong keys, and I have to keep backspacing and telling myself to calm down. What’s going on? RU ill? Tell me! Please! No, comes the instant reply. I’m fine. Then what? My legs suddenly have a mind of their own. I am propelled off the bed into the middle of the floor, then I don’t know where to go. As I stand there, I realise I am juddering with nerves. No more dots. I don’t know why he’s doing this!
13. SEVEN My assistant, Victoria, pops her head around my door. ‘You’ve got visitors from Sunrise Care Home.’ It takes me a moment, then, ‘Oh! Right!’ The old folk. The phone call with the woman, right before our wedding. Some neurologists believe that looking at visual art can awaken the memories of those suffering from dementia. The woman’s polite, well-pitched voice. The pent-up, tremoring quality in it, like an interviewee who was trying not to show how desperate they were to land the job. We thought we might be able to help our elderly friends who wander lost in their minds. We hoped Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper might be able to help them find a way back. It had sounded almost rehearsed. Yet it touched me. Her intensity had. I step into the foyer and come face to face with the elderly lady who was in the gallery the other day. She is with a man probably around my age. He’s stocky and not particularly tall, with a pelt of unruly hair and kind brown eyes. The woman is already extendin
14. EIGHT Evelyn Holy Island. June, 1983 At first, all she saw was the back of his head. He was on the other side of the vast laurel tree that divided two sections of the garden. His white van was parked right outside her mother’s gate. It was the first thing she had noticed when she rounded the corner hugging a plastic bag of groceries like a baby because its handle had snapped; she’d just had to pick a week’s supply of tins and vegetables from the middle of the road. He always came on Tuesdays, her mother had told her. The naturalness of his name on her mother’s lips during their long-distance phone calls had rubbed off on her; she felt like she knew him herself. But she wasn’t feeling sociable. She was no longer used to the introspective lens of small-town Northern England. There was something buffering about the anonymity of London, the steady revolutions of her social life there, her ability to pick and choose whom she talked to, and when. He clearly didn’t hear her when she opened th
15. NINE London. 1963 ‘You have a delivery,’ Matthew, the cheeky young concierge, told her when she arrived on shift on the front desk at Claridge’s at 3 p.m. On her twentieth birthday, Evelyn’s gran had pushed a tidy sum of her savings into Evelyn’s hand and said, ‘You can live your life or you can waste your life.’ She had squeezed her fingers tightly closed around Evelyn’s, like a clam. ‘Don’t waste your life.’ Her gran had always known her well. She had sensed a restlessness in Evelyn that didn’t seem present in other girls Evelyn’s age. Evelyn was world-weary of where she lived, given that she’d been visiting Newcastle bars since she was fifteen years old, and had tried on for size a variety of menial jobs that other girls seemed so satisfied with – hairdresser in training, hostess in a prim hotel restaurant, perfume demo girl in the region’s number one department store – jobs that she could never make fit. She should have gone to college, but grammar school had eluded her by a painfu
16. TEN Alice Our relationship started like a runaway train, with no brakes and no one driving. There was nothing particularly original about it. We met in one of Newcastle’s busy, uber-trendy cocktail bars. I was with Sally, who rarely got a night out because she worked unsociable hours and was a parent. ‘Two o’clock.’ Sally nudged me as we clung to our wine glasses. We had just been lamenting the coincidence of how, over dinner two hours previously, we’d witnessed my ex – Colin, who couldn’t commit – proposing, on his knees, complete with diamond and spellbound onlookers. Colin, who actually shed tears when he told me how much he loved me but how fervently against the idea of marriage he was. Fortunately, the girl had looked mortified. My eyes moved to two o’clock. There was a dark-haired guy in a suit trying to order a drink. He was thrusting a hand into the air in that assertive way only a very tall person can pull off, and which comes across to everyone else as slightly obnoxious. I c
17. ELEVEN His face takes up half of my computer monitor. His mugshot from the ‘Partners’ page of his law firm’s website. His eyes are locked into mine. I can’t stop staring at them. The real Justin is nothing like this photo, which has an imperturbable, even slightly slick, quality to it – something about his smile. I told him to change the picture. Of course, he completely disagreed, and said he had bigger things than that to worry about. The gallery was quiet today. I click off the Internet and delete my history – evidence of my pathological time-wasting. I have visited this page too often today. I am addicted to his face. Because it’s after 5 p.m., I’m able to wander guilt-free into the Hopper/Wyeth room to visit my solitary soulmates. I am scarcely in there ten minutes when I hear my name. When I swing around, Evelyn is walking toward me, all smiles. ‘Maybe I need to find you a job here!’ I greet her with a kiss, which feels surprisingly natural to me. ‘I take the bus into town three
18. TWELVE Evelyn Holy Island. 1983 He came to her shortly after nine every morning. The weather had answered his prayers; it had poured down virtually every day. She had chosen sage-green paint for the kitchen, and a rich cream for the rest of the main floor. He would do the detail, then she would apply the roller in long strokes. He gave her lessons in the proper way to do it. Once, his hand rested briefly on her upper back while they assessed her progress, and she registered that it was the first time he’d touched her in twenty years. They talked a lot about their childhoods, their not especially happy school days, his dreams of playing professional football that ended when his dad lost his job in the pit closures. ‘My dreams didn’t matter when you couldn’t pay the rent. I went into the shipyards as an apprentice, but then, of course, that was another one of the North East’s industries that came to a sad end. So I decided to try gardening.’ He ended it there. ‘Tell me about your life in
19. THIRTEEN He didn’t come the next day, or the next. She made trips over to the mainland to buy groceries and cat food, pay bills, to peruse the windows of the estate agencies – anything to keep busy. One afternoon, she went back to Bamburgh and sat in the exact same spot where she had sat with him, wondering why she lived her life always trying to recreate things. There was a man on the beach with his son. She watched the little boy run full throttle to the water and then stop short before it touched him. Sometimes, she missed being a mother so deeply that she had to just fold in on herself and let the anguish of the lost opportunity roll over her. Maybe a baby would have made her more settled, more content, given her less time on her hands to think about herself. I want that man to be Eddy, and that little boy to be our child, she thought, in rampant desperation, recognising the drama of it – how it had all suddenly stepped up. Her common sense was telling her to get a grip; she had a
20. FOURTEEN Alice ‘What’s the prospect of you ever agreeing with me?’ Justin is lying on his side, his head propped on an upturned hand, looking down at me. ‘You’re so contrary.’ ‘All I said was, it was a completely pointless film!’ I grin at him because he’s looking at me as though I’m an idiot. ‘It had no ending. It just, well, it just petered out . . . It was a total waste of two hours of my life!’ ‘It did have an ending. You were supposed to supply it, using your im-ag-in-ation. You know, if you have one.’ I pick up a pillow and bash him over the head. He grabs it off me, throws it across the bedroom, pulls me on to his chest by my upper arms and kisses me. ‘Argumentative Alice,’ he whispers. He flips me on to my back. I chuckle and knot my ankles around his waist. We have made love twice before that unbelievably banal, waste-of-life film – before and after our takeaway curry. ‘Condom?’ I say. He looks at me, and stops. ‘Gosh! We’ve run out.’ I push at his shoulders. ‘What? How?’ ‘Exc
21. FIFTEEN Evelyn Holy Island. 1983 ‘I’m leaving Laura.’ They were standing in Evelyn’s kitchen. It was almost the end of their week. A week of him working with her on the house as he sang along to the radio, and her smiling inwardly, listening to him; of Evelyn cooking for him, them eating in the garden, and kissing under the plum tree. Of their jaunts to various little villages along the coast, where they would wander in and out of tea rooms, or buy fish and chips in cartons that they would then sit and eat at the end of the pier, feeding the odd seagull with the scraps of batter – careful not to look too cosy in case they were seen and aroused suspicion. But the last few days had been heavily weighted with the threat of it all ending. It had muted all joy and all conversation. Now she could barely meet his eyes without the tears springing. Evelyn was wearing one of her mother’s dressing gowns. They had made love. He had dressed again in his gardening clothes. He had clung to her like h
22. SIXTEEN Alice I had almost forgotten I’d ever rung Rick. I was so wrapped up in thinking about my conversation with Evelyn, over tea. Her telling me about her perfect week with Eddy. His being ready to leave his wife for her. The story just keeps echoing in me . . . Now that I see Rick’s number on my call display, though, I have to wonder what’s taken him so long. Has he lain low to work out what to say? Maybe he was never going to call back, but Dawn bullied him into it. Has he conferred with Justin? When I pick up and say, ‘Hello, Rick’, I sound like I’m walking a tightrope two hundred metres above ground. ‘Alice!’ he says, brightly. ‘I’m so very sorry I’m only just ringing you back. Dawn’s mother had a stroke five days ago. It’s pretty bad, and we’re running backward and forward to Cheltenham General . . . What with that, and working and taking care of the kids, it’s been all systems go, and I haven’t had a chance.’ Relief makes me audibly sigh. I tell him I’m very sorry to hear abo
23. SEVENTEEN ‘The girls in this painting are more glamorous than the girls in the others.’ Martin is pointing to Edward Hopper’s Chop Suey: two sophisticated ladies sitting opposite one another at a small table in a restaurant. Something about the artist’s intent focus on the silence between them reminds me of tea with Evelyn, when she began to tell me her story, and, weirdly, of Justin and Rick talking in the rain. Evelyn isn’t here today. Michael said she hasn’t been well. I remember how she seemed so changed that day, after she had finished describing her week together with Eddy. In a way, it has changed my thought process – made me ask myself some questions. Now I have been comparing Eddy’s love for Evelyn to Justin’s love for me, and finding it lacking. ‘He loved me so much that he could think of nothing except being with me,’ Evelyn had said. ‘He wanted to leave his marriage. He wanted me to leave mine. He loved me to the point where he had lost all reason.’ Her face had clouded. I’
24. EIGHTEEN I am grating Parmesan for my pasta – forcing myself to make some proper food for a change, if anything just to reclaim some version of a normal routine – distantly thinking of Evelyn spying on Eddy’s wife, like Columbo, when the phone rings. It’s Sally. I wipe my hands on a tea-towel, and pick up. ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I feel bad I haven’t rung you back!’ She’s left about three messages. ‘I’ve been so worried.’ ‘I know. Sorry,’ I tell her. I realise that whatever little grievance I had against her, it’s over now. ‘I don’t know. I just haven’t felt much like talking.’ I stuff the phone between my chin and shoulder and reach for the bag of macaroni, but it splits as I pull it open and pasta scatters on to the bench and floor. I stare at it and sigh. ‘How are you?’ she asks. ‘I mean, really. How are you doing?’ I squat to start clearing all this up, but my legs are too weak, and I wobble and have to put out a hand for balance. ‘I’m not good, to be honest. I’m not very good at all.’ I’d a
25. NINETEEN Evelyn London. 1983 Dear Eddy, I couldn’t bear to say goodbye. I thought it wise I return to London immediately. It’s best you forget me. Evelyn Mark had been called into a meeting, so his driver was waiting for her at Heathrow. She sat in the back seat of the Bentley feeling disconnected from herself, like a passenger in her own life, watching the outskirts of grey London slide past her. High Street Kensington looked the same. Yet walking into her three-bedroom flat in the small garden square just behind the high street was a bit like having an out-of-body experience. The daily routines of her life were there in abeyance like a lost memory that was returning in fragments. The place was suspiciously tidy. None of Evelyn’s perfumed cardigans hung over the chair backs. There were no platform shoes in the hallway. No errant hairpins on the dining table. In fact, not a single piece of evidence on the bathroom counter that she lived here. It was as though someone had moved her out.
26. TWENTY Evelyn drifted through the weekend as though she were furnished with light. The routine was essentially the same as ever. She and Mark went to Buckinghamshire on Friday night, to their five-bedroom Georgian mansion that was only twenty miles outside London, set in eight acres of pasture and paddock. Normally, as soon as they arrived, Mark would become fossilised into sedentary, country life. They would walk the dogs: two basset hounds and a black Labrador – and Harry, the cocker spaniel, who lived with them in London. They would lunch together, and, in the afternoon, Mark would read the Financial Times in an armchair. Sometimes, Evelyn would bake an apple pie. On the land adjacent to the house, there was a converted coach house where the couple lived who tended to the horses and the dogs when she and Mark were up in town during the week. Evelyn liked the Kimberleys, and would pay a visit, taking over a little of what she had baked. When she was overcome with restless energy, she
27. TWENTY-ONE There were no more afternoon naps, and no more depression. His letters came quickly. He talked about his love for her, his dreams, his daily routine and how much brighter the world appeared through his eyes now that he was looking at everything around him but seeing only her. She hurried to post her replies. She told him how she was throwing herself madly into life with new gusto. How she’d had her hair done like Dynasty’s Linda Evans, how she’d shopped for clothes that she imagined he would like her in. How she’d gone to the opera and sat through Madama Butterfly without shedding one tear because she’d been fantasising about the life they might have together. By the time the opera was over, she’d seen it in all its full and glorious detail: Eddy conducting a successful landscape business to rich clients in London; Eddy and her dining with her friends on Fridays, whiling away their summer Sundays under trees in Hyde Park. She told him how she’d sold another article to the ma
28. TWENTY-TWO Alice Folding Justin’s things and putting them in suitcases and bin liners is like emptying a house after a death. I try doing it with the radio on, but the voices grate on my nerves. I try silence, and can’t bear that, either. I just keep seeing a composite of sharp, pretty features, and longish dark hair. I vowed two days ago that if one more email or text I send goes unanswered, or if I phone him one more time and he doesn’t pick up, then this is it; I can’t go on like this any more. And yet when it’s come down to it, I am strung out with doubt and uncertainty. If I tell him to come get his stuff, then I’m being the one to make it final. I’m never going to know if he would have come back eventually, after he’d taken whatever time he needed. And I don’t know if my even thinking he deserves all this time is making me a considerate person or the biggest fool I know. I manage to fill two suitcases and two bin liners. I look up at the empty wardrobe, staring at all the empty h
29. TWENTY-THREE The Rightmove website describes it as An opportunity to own a charmingly renovated, four-bedroom, Edwardian townhouse, complete with private, professionally landscaped garden, though the property sold six months ago for nearly three hundred and fifty thousand pounds. I flick through the pictures, looking at the white fitted kitchen with the dark oak flooring, the picturesque bay windows and high ceilings, the master bedroom and bathroom – obviously whoever lives in there now would have put their own stamp on things. The estate agent would know, but I’m not sure how to make the phone call. I recognise the street as I turn down it, from the Street View option on the website. The area is close to schools and a park, and is walking distance into town. I pull up a few doors down from number twenty-five, and switch off the engine. The house with the white front door. The door that presumably Justin knocked on. I sit there for a while. As with most terraces, there is little actua
30. TWENTY-FOUR When I answer the knock on the door, Sally is standing there holding up a bottle of wine in each hand. My jaw drops. She pushes out her hip, and I see two more bottles peeking out of the top of her messenger bag. ‘I didn’t want us to run out.’ ‘You really didn’t need to come,’ I tell her as I watch her walk past me and set the wine down on the bench. I know she tends to be a home bird when she isn’t running around after her daughters. Sometimes, I find it embarrassing that we are always gathering to sort out my relationship problems. She turns and meets my eyes, her own brimming with kindliness and understanding. ‘Er . . . you ring me and say, Justin’s got another wife, and you don’t think I’m going to come over?’ Insane as it is, I smile. We sit at the small pine dining table. I tell her the whole thing in detail. Right down to the patch of sweat on the plumber’s shirt. ‘I’m sure it’s not his wife,’ she says, once I’ve told her everything I can possibly think of. ‘I can’t
31. TWENTY-FIVE Evelyn London. 1983 Her mother had left her some money. Plus, she had her income from journalism. She didn’t need to take anything from Mark. Evelyn wrote down on paper her net worth divided by the number of years she might live to get a rough idea of what they’d have to exist on, excluding anything Eddy might earn. She calculated that if they lived frugally, there would be enough to see them through the rest of their lives. Eddy didn’t earn much, but they didn’t need much. And besides, what was expensive was her lifestyle, not necessarily life itself. She had never been attracted to Mark purely for the money. His parents’ stately home certainly hadn’t made him more appealing, only less self-made. She hadn’t gone to London to meet a prince, become a princess and live in a castle, much as Eddy might joke. The flat would be the hardest material thing to leave. Admittedly, she was fond of it. While the bricks and mortar of it cost a disproportionate fortune, they were really p
32. TWENTY-SIX Alice On Friday at 5:30 p.m., I have no choice but to go out for dinner with Victoria and a few of the girls from marketing. The fact that it’s Victoria’s birthday had completely skipped my mind. I’d popped out in my lunch hour and grabbed a card and a bookshop gift voucher. When she told me that she’d picked the same bar where I was first introduced to Justin’s friends, it seemed like one more reason why I should have just said I couldn’t go. As is the way of these things, we don’t end up ordering right away because some of Vic’s friends are late and she wants to wait. My eye is constantly on my watch, and by 6:10, our main courses haven’t even arrived, and I am almost eating my own nerves. I have to get out of here. But how? The music is loud. The girls are chattering and looking at me, but I’m sure they can see I’m not here. I am searching for the waitress. Where is the bloody food? I’m lip-reading rather than listening. The smile is dying on my face. Someone is making a
33. TWENTY-SEVEN He’s wearing a high-collared, pea-green shirt, open at the neck, and a new gunmetal-grey suit. He has one arm extended along the back of the couch, legs wide apart, like a sitting statue, the kind you see in the gardens of Parisian stately homes. I sink into the nearest chair. ‘Justin.’ Despite wanting to hate him, when I look into his face right here and now, I just want to go back to the way it was. I’d give anything. ‘I thought you’d been and gone. That I’d missed you . . .’ I’ve never seen such shadows under his eyes. Such rapid weight loss, especially in his face. He looks like he hasn’t slept for days. He’s ill. I knew it all along. ‘Been and gone? Good heavens. No. Why would you think that?’ He’s still wearing the ring I slid on to his finger just over two weeks ago, which gives me a crazy sense of hope. And yet I see the distance in his eyes. He studies the hand I’ve placed over my stomach. ‘Are you okay?’ I nod, then quickly say, ‘No, Justin. How can I possibly be
34. TWENTY-EIGHT Evelyn London. 1983 ‘What is it, Ev?’ Evelyn was lying on the sofa like an alabaster sculpture, with her head turned away from him. She was staring vacantly at the fire. ‘Look at you. You’re so pale.’ He hovered over her, stymied by the sense of his own helplessness. ‘You’ve got me very concerned. What is wrong?’ Mark always worried about his wife. Someone had once told him that happiness is something you feel only when you’ve given up focussing on its absence. But Mark wasn’t sure Evelyn could ever be happy. Mark was convinced that Evelyn was depressed and it had come to some sort of head. She looked at him, without really seeing him. ‘What is the matter? Please tell me. You’ve not been the same since yesterday, since the bomb.’ They had shared that pinprick of time, when she had suddenly caught sight of him, and he had caught sight of her, and his heart had somehow taken flight. Her face had been full of love for him in a way that he didn’t think he’d seen before. Her ey
35. TWENTY-NINE Alice I’m just stepping out of my office to go and fill my water glass when I come across Michael standing there, almost loitering, by my door. We practically knock noses. ‘Ah! Michael!’ My flatness, the unflinching absoluteness of my misery, lifts slightly. ‘We didn’t have a meeting today, did we?’ I glance around for Evelyn. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m just popping in.’ He looks slightly shifty, and ruffles his hair. ‘I came by two days ago as well, but they said you were taking a few days off.’ ‘I had a tummy bug,’ I lie. ‘How are you today, then?’ His concern touches me. I am usually so good at putting on a smile. ‘I’m . . . coping,’ I tell him. I’m sure he must think I’m a little mad. He looks at me kindly and says, ‘Well, I hope you feel better very quickly.’ He’s dressed more smartly today, in a black T-shirt and a loose, light-grey jacket. He’s had his hair cut, and must have finally found a stylist who knows how to work with crazy curls. ‘How is Evelyn doing?’ I ask. Then
36. THIRTY Evelyn’s is a ground-floor, period apartment in a former terraced house just a short walk from the Metro stop and shops. Its communal entrance serves all three units, with its black-and-white chequerboard floors, gilt mirrors and a vase of white lilies on a small reception table. I sit in her lounge as she runs water in the kitchen for the flowers I brought her. ‘I thought this might be nicer than talking on the phone,’ she said when she let me in. The room is spacious, with high ceilings, decorative coving and sash windows. White carpets, white walls and minimal furniture make a stunning focal point of an ornate, brown-marble fireplace that has a beautiful oil painting of a garden above it. ‘I’ve never had it on,’ Evelyn says, coming back into the room carrying a tray of tea and biscuits, and catching me running a hand over the stonework. ‘I rarely feel the cold! And real fires look lovely, but they’re so messy to clean.’ ‘I want to know the rest of your story, Evelyn,’ I say,
37. THIRTY-ONE Mark London. March 1984 When the letter came, Evelyn was in hospital. She had a cyst on her ovary that they discovered was cancerous. The doctors removed her womb, to be on the safe side. The stay in hospital was protracted because she had lost a lot of blood. While she was there, the magazine forwarded the limited contents of her postbox to her home address, along with flowers and a note saying, As you don’t drop in for messages like you used to, we thought we should send this letter on to your home. Mark received the delivery. He took the flowers into the hospital for her, of course. Evelyn loved flowers, and filled their home with fresh ones weekly. But the letter, well, that was a different matter. He hadn’t opened it. He wouldn’t do that, not even when it was addressed to someone who had once betrayed his trust. But he had seen the postmark. It was easy to guess who it was from. She was recovering from major abdominal surgery. They had begun to put all this behind them.
38. THIRTY-TWO Alice A couple of days later, we arrive at the entrance to Sunrise. Evelyn was right about it being a pleasant place. I’ve only once been in a care home, when my stepfather’s mother was admitted to one, but it hadn’t smelt as nice as this one. A receptionist greets us, and Evelyn enters our names in a guest book. ‘Is Michael in?’ I ask the girl. ‘He just went for lunch. Probably be back in an hour,’ she says. And then, to Evelyn, ‘He’s in the garden. Lawn day.’ She takes the flowers that Evelyn brought, says, ‘Oh gosh, aren’t these lovely?’ and gives her a fond smile. Evelyn leads the way down a narrow hall that exits through a glass conservatory, where three or four elderly men sit around a small, antique table playing a board game. They look up and greet her as she passes, their curiosity quickly turning to me. Evelyn nudges me. ‘Careful. You’ll be setting off heart palpitations all round. And, in here, that’s a frightening prospect.’ We find a seat on a wooden bench overl
39. THIRTY-THREE Monday is a bank holiday. I manage to sleep for a staggering fourteen hours, and I actually dream that I went to see Lisa. I wake up horribly disturbed and more confused than before because in the dream she’s nice and I really like her. In the early afternoon, after I’ve made myself bacon and eggs, I venture out for a run. The beach isn’t as busy as I’d imagined, considering the weather is good. I run the path, but can’t get into my usual groove. When I concentrate on the pounding of my heart, I find myself thinking about Dylan’s heart. In fact, so many things have led me to think about Dylan’s heart. After I left Evelyn’s, I went straight home and googled his condition. I read until my head hurt, digesting all the medical terminology, comparing this clinic’s findings to some other’s. It all sounded as bad as Justin had said. Then I ended up googling dementia and Alzheimer’s, and reading some of the stuff Michael had emailed me, which I’d almost forgotten about. Somehow, I
40. THIRTY-FOUR I am either going to be brave, and do this, or I must put the entire idea out of my mind for good. But even with the exercise of giving myself these two options, I know which it’s going to be. I park across the street, fifty metres back from the front gate – pretty much where I parked those other times. Twenty minutes, then I’m leaving. Knowing my luck, I’ll raise the suspicions of a zealot of the neighbourhood watch committee – they’ll be saying, There goes that weird woman who was asking the plumber and the man next door about who lives here . . . I pretend to mess about on my phone and look businesslike and purposeful. Behind my sunglasses, I manage to turn my head one way while looking the other, though it’s painful. The thought that Lisa is probably inside that house with Justin’s child is something I can hardly comprehend; Justin’s baby, Justin’s future, right behind that red front door. I stare at the house until my eyes burn. I am still not sure what I expect to see
41. THIRTY-FIVE I’d forgotten about the envelope. Evelyn had said open it when you’re alone and feeling a little brighter, though I’m not sure I can claim to be that. I think I’ve observed a pattern. The worse I feel about my own life, the more I seek escape in Evelyn’s. I sit cross-legged on my bed, the last of the evening sun streaming in through the bare window. I’m the woman in Hopper’s Morning Sun. After a moment or two of enjoying the warmth and the peace, I open the envelope. It’s not a letter. Intriguingly, it’s an old newspaper cutting dated March 18, 1984. It has been folded into quarters. The fold lines are fragile, so I take care when opening it out. My eyes go straight to the headline: Newcastle Man in Coma after Bar Brawl. On the left-hand side of the page is a photograph, maybe two square inches in size: a face I instantly recognise. And then I see the name.
42. THIRTY-SIX ‘Eddy is my father.’ I only have to look at Evelyn for the tears to roll down my face. She nods, and tries to say something, but is at a loss for words. Instead, she steps aside to let me in. I walk into her living room and drop into the nearest chair. Since reading the article, I’ve been suspended in a state of shock – like jumping from an airplane and hovering sixty feet above earth, bracing yourself to land, but puzzled as to why you’re not moving. I still haven’t landed. ‘He’s my dad,’ I say, as though repeating it might make it more real. ‘Yes.’ Evelyn finally speaks. ‘He is.’ It takes me a while to compose myself, to be able to get all this out. ‘I wondered why you went into such detail . . .’ I try to swallow the blockage of emotion in my throat. ‘I thought maybe it was just the writer in you. You more than painted a picture of him, Evelyn. You took me there. You made me know him. I felt I was you. I felt I knew him like I was you.’ I frown. ‘That was all deliberate.’
43. THIRTY-SEVEN I am eating a smoked salmon wrap at the Theatre Royal café when I get a text from Justin. Need to see U. 6 p.m. BB? Bookshop Bar. One of our regulars. I knew it. He’s cleared his head and seen sense. He wants to come back. I stare at the words like I’m trying to crack a code. Trying to decide how I feel about this. What I will say. It takes me ages to work out how to reply. Then I simply type, OK. He’s seated at our regular table by the window. I spot him from across the road. The naturalness of this makes my heart somersault. He’s wearing one of his best suits. He has his head down, and is fiddling with his BlackBerry. How many times have I seen him like this? He was always there first – the ever-punctual Justin. How many times have I knocked on the window, and he has looked up, already smiling, knowing it was me? When it’s safe, I hurry across the road, unable to pull my eyes from him. We can do it. If that’s why he’s here. We can go back and make it work . . . He must s
44. THIRTY-EIGHT There are cards with cuddly bears, butterflies, balloons and gothic fairies. Cards with cakes, cupcakes and my age in gold or silver foil. Cards for a Special Daughter. Gradually, the themes become more grown up with the passing of time. Always, he’s written the same thing. For April, my daughter, who I think of every day. With all my love. Out of each one falls a ten-pound note. I sit cross-legged on Evelyn’s floor. We are going through her ‘treasure trove’ of a storage box, as I call it. ‘I found them among his things when we were moving him into Sunrise. I saw that they were all addressed to your home in Stockport, and they’d all been returned.’ There are cards right up until I turned nineteen, then we moved. Or at least, my mother and Alan moved as I was off to Uni by then. ‘I still can’t get my head around how any person could hate someone so much that they wouldn’t even let him send a birthday card to his only daughter,’ I say to Evelyn. My eyes are blinded with tear
45. THIRTY-NINE ‘I want to go somewhere loud and crazy and fun!’ I say to Sally as we trot down the Quayside’s cobbled path from the restaurant, looking for a bar to have a nightcap. ‘Okay.’ She hiccups from dinner. She’s a little drunk. It’s amazing how keen she is to go out at night now suddenly. Or perhaps she’s just being a good friend. We go into the one bar that has people spilling out on to the road. ‘Just to finish what we were saying,’ Sally says, as we order a drink. ‘Maybe your mother sent you your father, given you lost her and you lost Alan. You know . . . if the dead can affect the lives of the living. Maybe she sent him because she knew you’d lost Justin and you needed a silver lining.’ ‘Maybe,’ I say, rather than brush it off. I suppose it costs nothing to think positively about the situation, but far more to think negatively. Evelyn would no doubt approve. ‘Anyway, on another topic . . . I meant to tell you, there’s a nurse. A male nurse. At the care home . . .’ I’m only s
46. FORTY ‘How is that orange tasting, Eddy?’ Michael hands him the last segment. ‘It’s very juicy,’ Eddy says, enthusiastically. ‘But – ooh! – it tingles in my jaw.’ He touches near his ear. Evelyn and I smile. We’ve come into the conservatory to enjoy the sun and the view of the garden. It’s the first time I’ve realised that we have the same aquiline nose. I have his skin, too; we both tan easily. I am lean through my hips, with long legs, like my dad. This is why he looked familiar. On seeing him, I was seeing myself. ‘Good morning, Julian,’ Evelyn says to an elderly man who walks slowly past us, dragging an oxygen tank. ‘He always likes his game of golf,’ Eddy says, following Julian with his gaze. Michael has just removed the towel he’d tucked down Eddy’s shirt before he started eating. ‘Eddy thinks Julian’s oxygen tank is for his golf clubs,’ Michael tells me, under his breath. I smile into the palm of my hand. ‘I usually read him stories from the newspaper,’ Evelyn says to me. ‘World
47. FORTY-ONE There are three more of these visits in short succession. Usually he sleeps. He’s not as communicative as before, though; I feel we have regressed. One day, Michael wheels in an old-fashioned stereo and the home’s donation of old records. We select some songs from Eddy and Evelyn’s era, and play them for him. He loves the music! He rests his head back, and his facial expressions seem to ebb and flow along with the tune. Then, when Michael downloads The Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’ on to his iPod – the song Eddy had hammed it up to, to Evelyn, at the wedding where they met – it’s fascinating. Eddy raises his head. He leans in close to the iPod docking station. You can almost see him listening, intently, as though each lyric were a brain-teaser, slowly peeling away layers of a mystery that he’s set on getting to the heart of. ‘He remembers how you met!’ I whisper to Evelyn. ‘Either that, or he’s never seen an iPod before.’ She smiles. I wonder if we are giving up hope. But then somet
48. FORTY-TWO Today, I’ve brought them to the beach. It’s mild and sunny. I have packed sandwiches, beer and a chocolate cake from my favourite German baker. Next week, I’m driving them to Holy Island, to see Evelyn’s old house. ‘Remember the treasure trove?’ Evelyn says, saucily now that Eddy has nodded off. She reaches into a large leather bag, pulls something out and flips open a page of what’s clearly a school scrapbook. Among the postage-stamp-sized portraits of the Class of 1955, she singles out one with the tap of her finger. ‘You!’ I cry. The young Evelyn is wearing a modest, navy-blue dress with a crocheted cream collar. ‘Well, look at you! Your long wavy hair. You look like a young Veronica Lake.’ Evelyn dips her chin, in that cutely coy way she saves for compliments. ‘I was twelve years old when I had my first permanent wave. They doused your head in chemicals, stuck pin curls in you and then baked you to about two hundred degrees until you were nearly cremated.’ I chuckle. ‘I f
49. FORTY-THREE In the party room, a dozen or so elderly people, who have no idea that today is any different from yesterday, sit in chairs in a circle. Three nurses run plates of goodies to them from the buffet. ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ has just switched to Wings’ ‘Listen To What The Man Said’, and one of the nurses is unsuccessfully trying to coax a sing-along, with only one patient – Ronnie – joining in. Today is Evelyn and Eddy’s joint birthday celebration. She’d failed, until a few days ago, to tell me that their birthdays fall only one day apart. Michael is sitting beside me and Eddy near the bay window. Suddenly, Martin walks over to us, as though on a mission. ‘Wings was the group formed by Paul McCartney after the Beatles split up. But soon after that a terrible thing happened to Paul. He was shot by a mad man. Someone took his life and ended his talent.’ ‘You certainly know your music, Martin!’ Michael winks at me. It clearly doesn’t matter to him that, in Martin’s mind, the wrong Bea
50. FORTY-FOUR Evelyn is one of the most enigmatic people I know. Every time I see her, she has a surprise for me. ‘I found it!’ She gives a joyful little skip. ‘I’ve looked everywhere. I knew it had to be in one of these amazingly bountiful boxes somewhere.’ In the centre of Evelyn’s lounge are about eight storage containers with their contents – everything from a corset to ancient-looking magazines – strewn all over the place. ‘My gosh, it looks like you’re having a jumble sale!’ I laugh. She hands me a book. It’s a glossy paperback with a simple, intriguing cover of a dark-red Venetian blind pulled part way down a window. At the bottom, in embossed gold, are the words: After You Left, A Novel, by Joanna Smart. ‘Who’s Joanna Smart?’ I ask, but immediately realise. ‘Oh gosh! You are!’ ‘I was published in 1987 by one of Britain’s most venerated publishing houses.’ ‘This is fabulous!’ I turn the book over and scan the blurb. They meet at a wedding. They know each other for only one day. But
51. FORTY-FIVE Before She Left Evelyn Northumberland. 1963 They had just entered the church. Evelyn’s eyes were still adjusting from the bright sunshine to the dim, dust-mote-filled interior. She had noticed him immediately. Noticed him in the way that a young, single woman is always subconsciously sifting through the gravel hoping to come across a diamond. It was second nature to look without necessarily expecting to find. So, on finding, her faculties had taken a short holiday. She was aware of her friend Elizabeth prodding her. A young usher, who appeared overly keen on doing a good job, was waiting to escort them to their seats. It was a small gathering, at this point weighted to the bride’s side. The robust scent of lilies still couldn’t overpower the musty smell of church that always turned Evelyn a little morbid. She could see hats, some with more feathers than a peacock, others like colourful flying saucers. But who cared about hats? She was pleasantly thrown by something else she
52. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I was inspired to write After You Left after reading an extremely touching and fascinating article in the New York Times about how looking at art can have a positive effect on the brains of those suffering from Alzheimer’s. Many museums actually offer private tours to groups of dementia patients, and the results have been so encouraging. People who are normally disorientated and uncommunicative have responded vividly to paintings and have been able to engage and express themselves in ways that surprise their loved ones, even if it’s just for a short time. Given that it seems we all know or have loved someone with the disease, I thought this story might not just entertain readers, but perhaps bring a sense of hope and comfort. One of the paintings mentioned in the article was Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World. I had never heard of the painting, but I looked it up. From that moment on, I was intrigued. I wanted to know all about Christina, and found myself researching Wyet
53. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Carol Mason was born and grew up in the north-east of England. As a teenager she was crowned Britain’s National Smile Princess and since became a model, diplomat-in-training, hotel receptionist and advertising copywriter. She currently lives in British Columbia, Canada, with her Canadian husband.