‘Is there anything I can do? I can help with Jemima maybe?’
Gemma’s head shot up and her eyes glared. ‘There’s no need. My mother is staying with us.’
‘Ok, well, let me know if I can help in any way.’
There was a terse silence, broken only by long-suffering sighs from Gemma. Maddie couldn’t help thinking she was perversely enjoying playing the role of the widowed beauty.
‘So have the police said anything?’
Gemma glared at her again. ‘Why would the police be interested? It was an accident. He ate cake with nuts in it and had a fatal allergic reaction. I was at yoga—’ her voice cracked and a small sob escaped her lip-glossed mouth ‘—so I didn’t get to him in time to save him. I called the ambulance straight away and when they arrived apparently he had a faint pulse, but by the time he got to the hospital, it was too late. I found him at the top of the stairs. They think he was trying to get to the bathroom for his injection.’
‘Where was little Jemima?’ Maddie had to know. It was slowly eating her up inside, thinking that Greg had died in front of Jemima.
‘He had put her safely in her highchair, but she was screaming by the time I got home. I’m sure she knew something was wrong.’
‘Poor lamb, how awful for her – and you, of course.’ But that made Maddie feel better. The grip on her throat loosened a little. ‘Well, if you would like me to help with any of the… er… arrangements, please let me know. I knew him quite well,’ she said with a small, sad smile.
‘I think I knew him well too, Maddie.’
‘Oh, yes, no, I wasn’t insinuating… I just want to help, that’s all.’
Gemma dabbed at her perfectly made-up eyes. ‘Well, I don’t know when the body will be released yet.’
‘But if it was an accident, then they should be able to release the body soon? If the police don’t need it?’
‘I don’t know how these things work. I have never been widowed before.’ Her voice had risen an octave. Her mother’s face appeared in the doorway and it was painfully clear to Maddie that she had been in the hallway listening the whole time.
‘Everything ok in here? You’re not getting too upset, are you, Gem-Gem?’
Gemma got to her feet. ‘No, not at all, Maddie was just leaving.’
Maddie stood up and went to give Gemma another hug, then awkwardly thought better of it and instead said, ‘Call me if you need anything. Anything at all.’
Maddie walked from the room, past the narrowed gaze of Gemma’s mother, but stopped when she heard a gurgle from the lounge. This time, instead of doing what she was told, she followed the noise and found Jemima sitting in a playpen, blowing bubbles from her mouth as she played with some building blocks.
‘Hi there, baby girl!’ Maddie said with delight and felt her heart squeeze in a good way this time. ‘How are you doing?’
Jemima smiled and held her chubby arms out for Maddie to pick her up. Maddie complied immediately, ignoring the feeling of poison-dipped daggers being tossed into her back by Gemma’s mother. Jemima nuzzled into Maddie’s shoulder and rubbed at her eyes.
‘You tired, Princess?’ Maddie rocked backwards and forwards, crooning in her ear. She breathed in her sweet vanilla scent, feeling her warmth flooding through her.
‘It’s time for her nap.’ Gemma’s frigid voice poured cold water on the moment.
Maddie breathed in one more time. ‘Of course, sorry.’ She turned and handed a cooing Jemima to her grandmother, who whisked her out of sight.
Maddie walked from the room towards the front door. She turned, not sure what else to say, then left with a simple, ‘Bye, Gemma.’
The heavy, wooden front door closed with a decisive thud behind her and she stood for a moment, letting the light drizzle fall onto her face. She found she could breathe a little easier now, knowing that Jemima was ok and that the police were not involved as yet.
She needed to keep it that way though. Because all hell could well break loose when Greg’s will was finally read.
THREE DAYS AGO
‘Maddie, there’s something I need to talk to you about.’
They were lying in her bed, the sheets crumpled between them, the air thick and musty. Maddie was about to drift off, but was pulled wide awake by his words.
Was he about to say what she thought he was?
‘Oh?’ She sat up a little. He reached out and smoothed a stray lock of hair from her face. She could feel it catch in the corner of her mouth as he moved it aside and she licked her lips.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot lately. About us.’
Maddie’s heart rate was already heightened, but it crept up another notch as he spoke.
‘I mean, obviously this—’ he indicated the two of them with his free hand (his other hand was pinned beneath her and she wondered briefly if he had pins and needles and needed to move it yet) ‘—wasn’t planned at all.’ He added quickly, ‘And it was wonderful. I don’t regret it at all.’
‘Me neither. At all.’ She smiled sheepishly.
‘Good. Of course, you know we can’t say anything to anyone… I mean Jemima… I can’t lose her.’
‘No, no, I know that.’
He was quiet for a moment.
‘But it can’t happen again, Greg. We’re… We’ve had our time. I think I need to be my own person now. I’ve started working again – for the guy upstairs, Luke. He’s really nice and funny and… anyway, I’m doing his books for him and I think it could become a really good little business for me. He has some other contacts and stuff.’
‘Oh, right,’ he said and she noticed the flatness of his voice. What exactly had he expected? ‘I’m glad,’ he said quietly.
After another moment, he said, ‘Do you ever wish we could go back to the beginning?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘To the beginning of us. Maybe do it differently?’
She wasn’t sure what to reply.
He rushed on. ‘There is so much I regret, particularly the way I treated you. It was all just so… overwhelmingly sad and I handled it like an immature kid instead of a man. I wasn’t really there for you during all the miscarriages and then with Gemma…’ The sigh that followed his words was weighted with remorse.
‘For what it’s worth, I don’t think there is a right or wrong way of dealing with it all.’ Her voice was considered and gentle. ‘You just have to go with what you have to do to survive – and that was Gemma for you. It was cutting myself off, isolating myself for me. But I don’t blame you for any of it.’
Now that she had articulated the words and they were out there, between them, like speckles of dust, she realised she honestly believed that. Two minutes ago, she was thinking he was going to suggest they get back together and now she was absolutely certain that that was not what she wanted. She wanted a clean slate, to forge her own path, to create a life of her own outside of the bubble of grief in which she’d been imprisoned for so long. The thought left her almost breathless with relief.
‘And in answer to your question, no, I don’t ever think of going back because I don’t know if I would have done anything differently. I think no one would’ve been able to convince me to stop trying to get pregnant. There was no point at which I would’ve even considered it. Until Archie, of course.’