The Book of Love Read online

  ‘Dad, call us if they don’t settle,’ she said, kissing his cheek.

  ‘Go, go out and have some fun,’ Fitz told them as he ushered them out of the flat.

  Outside, Erin shivered. ‘It’s bloody Baltic,’ she whispered. Almost running to keep pace with Dom, she looked back and told herself everything would be fine at Hawthorn Avenue without her. ‘So, what do you really think of our son sulking over my haircut?’

  ‘I really think he won’t even notice tomorrow.’

  She heard Dom thump his hands together to warm them. ‘He’s so determined though,’ she continued. ‘I’m not so sure, when he makes his mind up about something, he’s so stubborn and—’

  ‘Erin, he even said so earlier! “Maybe tomorrow I’ll like it.” He’s five years old. Tomorrow he’ll be playing with his toy cars on his toy road and will love you just the way you are.’ He paused before speaking again. ‘There once was a girl with a mane.’

  Erin laughed.

  ‘Who thought her long hair was a pain.’

  She linked arms with him as he struggled to continue.

  ‘So, she had it all cut,’ she interrupted, the air frosting around her words. ‘Her son thought she was nuts. But come morning he’d love her again.’

  Four hours later, after pub food and wine and laughing out loud with their friends, Erin was back in the kitchen staring blankly at Dom as he scratched his head.

  ‘That’s not funny,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not kidding, Erin, I can’t find it.’

  She watched as he rooted through the ‘tat drawer’ in the kitchen, her stomach doing somersaults.

  ‘I know I put it in here.’ Dom emptied the contents onto the kitchen table and sifted through them.

  ‘You have to find it.’ She was careful not to shriek, not to panic.

  ‘It’s not here.’ Dom’s hands steepled over his nose. ‘Let me think.’

  She followed him to the living room to where he searched another drawer, to where Fitz remained sitting on the open sofa bed, the television muted.

  ‘We simply have to get it open,’ she whispered staring through the window to where Dom’s car was parked under the streetlamp just outside the house. The top box, which they’d bought the previous year, when they’d holidayed in Cornwall, had seemed the ideal place to hide the wrapped Christmas presents, space being a problem in the small flat. At the time, they’d both thought it was genius. Until now, midnight on Christmas Eve, and the key to their state-of-the-art impregnably strong, top box was nowhere to be found.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ Erin apologised. ‘You probably just want to get to bed.’ She chewed her lips, wondered if they could tell the children the next morning that they’d counted the sleeps wrong. No – somehow, they had to get into the box.

  Together they changed their clothes and armed themselves with knives and forks and a hammer and a drill with only a minimal battery charge.

  Outside a low-lying fog gathered around them as Erin knelt on the empty side of the roof rack and tugged while Dom tried the drill in the lock.

  When the whirring noise stopped, and the lock still hadn’t budged, she began to cry.

  ‘Don’t,’ Dom said. ‘We’ll get this thing open if it’s the last thing I do.’

  She stood up, balanced herself, rubbed her arms and watched from above as Dom played with the lock with the narrowest of drill pieces.

  Neither was aware of a car pulling up opposite them.

  ‘Anything we can help you folks with?’

  They both turned at the same moment to see two uniformed police officers approaching.

  ‘Well, good to see the neighbourhood watch scheme works,’ Dom looked at Erin.

  ‘We can explain,’ Erin said almost losing her balance. ‘It’s our car, our top box and it’s full of the kids’ Christmas presents.’

  ‘Name, please,’ the taller man said, and Erin had an instant vision of both her and Dom being flung into cells overnight.

  ‘Dominic Carter,’ Dom almost growled, ‘we live in there, 27a Hawthorn Terrace, and you’ll find that this vehicle is in my name.’ He reached inside his pocket, pulled out a wallet and handed them his photocard driving licence. ‘Now I appreciate you’ve got to go over there to your nice warm car and huddle to check what I’ve just told you is right but after that, could you please just help?’

  Erin stared at him, never prouder. ‘What he said,’ she said, smiling.

  Moments later, the officer approached again while the smaller man searched in their boot for something. ‘Pretty indestructible, these things.’ He shook his head. ‘Still, Christmas Eve, you gotta try … John, there, is getting the tools we have.’ He jerked his head towards his colleague.

  ‘I’ll bring the drill in and put it back on charge,’ Erin said. ‘Hot drink anyone?’

  ‘Oh, yes please, ma’am,’ the man named John replied. ‘I could murder a sugared black coffee.’

  Within minutes Erin had taken orders, had enough cups lined up on the counter and the kettle boiled. Fitz stood watching her as he plugged the drill battery in, Dom’s dressing gown hanging open over his clothes. ‘Sorry,’ he said, looking down at himself. ‘The heating’s gone off and it’s all I could find quickly.’

  Erin hugged him. ‘Jeez, for just a second I thought we’d be taken away in cuffs.’ She laughed, a slightly hollow, nervous sound. ‘We will get it open, won’t we?’

  ‘We will and if we don’t we’ll go through their toys and root out things they haven’t seen or played with in ages and wrap them in newspaper. They’re five years old.’

  She stirred instant coffee into the boiling water, added milk to one, sugar to two. ‘You remember giving me our leather book wrapped in newspaper?’

  ‘I do. An idea borrowed wrapped in something old,’ he shrugged.

  ‘The best wedding present we got.’ She took two cups and smiled as she passed.

  ‘Good. I’m glad.’

  ‘But by Christ at Christmas, we’re getting that boot open. Santa Claus is coming to town tonight if I have to spend all night dancing on that box.’

  Fitz followed her with the last cup.

  ‘No better girl,’ he said.

  It was three forty-six when, after they’d placed all the gifts in stockings and under the tree, their heads hit their pillows. ‘We have three hours if we’re lucky,’ Erin yawned.

  ‘Our little family will have the most brilliant Christmas,’ Dom replied before the sound of immediate deep breathing. God, how she envied that of her husband – he could sleep standing up if tired enough. Her head pulsed with the day’s events. And she didn’t know it, but because the cheering policemen breaking into the box with the recharged drill was the last conscious thought she had, she went to sleep smiling.

  16. Dominic

  NOW – 9th June 2017

  From The Book of Love:

  ‘I love you because you and me – we made a

  brood of new Carters.’

  Family. Love …

  It’s all that matters. Erin is setting the table and I’m in the back garden, concentrating for just a moment on the background buzz of nearby bees collecting pollen. They’re busy, like bees should be; probably about to head back to their honey empire and the queen they love. We have a lot in common – me and the bees. I shade my eyes and look at the back of our gorgeous home; white render, black-framed windows, some curved, each with four vertical panes of glass. Today, both the glass dome and the chrome balustrade surrounding the flat roof glint and shimmer in the strong summer sun.

  The ring of the doorbell makes me walk the length of the garden quickly. Our children are here and Erin’s already at the door letting them in. Though nineteen, they’re still firmly attached by umbilical cords, Jude’s one is twisted and knotty and as long as forever, and Rachel’s is straight and elastic. She’s Erin’s boomerang. Even when she makes her leave, Rachel always springs back.

  ‘So, you’re all here!’ Erin’s smile is tight as, somehow
, she divides the medium chicken with her special herb and onion stuffing into more portions than she’d intended. Freya, Jude’s girlfriend, sits on his right, his arm stretched protectively along the back of her dining chair. Paul, Rachel’s boyfriend, is on Jude’s left, nodding. I’m tetchy; wondering why he and Freya are here. This was meant to be family only.

  ‘Smells great, Mum.’ Jude wafts the scent of the food towards him with his hand.

  ‘Dig in,’ I say as I pass Erin’s chair. She smiles at me, touches my hand before she sits down.

  ‘Lovely flowers,’ Rachel says. I look at the gorgeous blooms that I had to stop Erin from throwing away when they arrived earlier.

  ‘Lydia,’ Erin looks over at the full vase as she picks at a roast potato.

  ‘You and her alright now?’ Rachel asks, and I smile because she doesn’t miss a thing, our girl. Even though the upset between Lydia and Erin all happens off camera, nothing escapes her.

  So, it’s Lydia’s flowers and Rachel’s all-seeing and all-knowing nature I’m thinking of when Jude clatters his cutlery down dramatically. ‘I’m glad you’re all here,’ he says. ‘Freya and I have something we want to say.’

  Erin immediately finds my eyes and instantly I read her mind. ‘Don’t let her be pregnant,’ her eyes plead. ‘We were lucky. It won’t work for them.’

  ‘I know you really meant for it just to be Rachel and me tonight but, the thing is Freya is family too.’

  I can’t help my face. It does an exaggerated, ‘oh, no she isn’t’ pantomime frown.

  ‘The thing is we got married last week,’ he blurts it out as if he’s speaking directly to the vegetable selection in the centre of the table.

  My throat closes a little. Erin is completely muted, her face frozen in disbelief but she manages a weak ‘How …?’ My head repeats conversations she and I have had about our children’s weddings one day – how we hoped they would be a very different affair to our own.

  ‘The how was easy; we just did it.’

  ‘Gretna Green,’ Rachel fills in the gaps and I glare at her.

  ‘What the absolute fuck?’ I stare at my only son, who can’t look me in the eye.

  ‘I wasn’t there,’ Rachel adds quickly. ‘I knew nothing until we all shared a cab on the way here. Honestly. He just called me and told me to bring Paul along too.’

  Paul is shifting in the narrow dining chair. He probably thinks he’s wandered onto a set of The Simpsons.

  ‘Wh-yyyy?’ Erin stretches the one-syllable word mercilessly.

  ‘Because we love each other, and we didn’t see any point in waiting. Nor did we want any fuss.’ Jude’s tucking his long hair behind his ear and I notice he’s not wearing a wedding band.

  ‘Perhaps I should say something else at this point,’ Freya says.

  ‘Are you pregnant?’ Erin spits.

  ‘No!’ Jude answers for her. ‘Nowadays we use contraception! And before you go off on one, Mum, you were only a few years older than me when you got married.’

  ‘Five years older and your father and I got married with our loved ones around us. No fuss either but … friends and family.’

  I swallow hard, unable to speak, knowing she’s totally gutted.

  Paul is the only one eating. It’s as if he decided not to waste the food – we’re all going to do whatever it is we’re doing anyway. I’d rather he left, that he had the good sense to opt out of this particular Carter moment.

  ‘We work long hours,’ Freya says about the fact she’s already a teacher. ‘The little time we have together, we want it to count. I told Jude I didn’t need a big wedding that we could wait or not – he’s the one who chose Gretna.’

  Go on, throw him under the bus, why don’t you. He’s only your new husband.

  ‘It would have been nice to be consulted,’ I tell Freya, wishing I’d marked her cards earlier, like when I met her a year ago.

  She looks to each face for reassurance, this girl who’s older than our son by a few years. ‘Jude assured me that no one would mind us cutting out all the frills.’

  ‘Jude was wrong,’ I say, though my words seem to fall on deaf ears.

  My eyes seek Erin’s as hers are desperately seeking Jude’s who won’t look at his mother. Instead, Jude is tapping his new wife’s hand, reassuring her that it’s fine. Her new family are just chewing the cud.

  Erin’s chair makes a scraping noise on the floor as she stands. ‘I’m not feeling great,’ she says.

  ‘No, Mum!’ Jude leaps up, thumps the table and we all jump. ‘This is one of the reasons we did it. I can’t take your control freakery!’

  I catch Rachel wince from the corner of my eye just as Paul slaps his neck with his hand. The back door is open on our little family scene and now the summertime mosquitos have sent their death squads in.

  Jude is finally looking at his mother. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says before plonking himself back on the dining chair. ‘That came out wrong.’

  ‘Leave it,’ Erin sighs and sits again. ‘It’s done.’

  There are probably a hundred things that could be said but instead there’s a swollen silence that lasts until Rachel raises her glass. ‘Congratulations, Jude and Freya,’ she says. ‘I hope you’ll be really happy together.’

  Jude nods at her, looks across in my direction, his eyes finally filling. He’s such a brave coward, my son. ‘Yes, congratulations.’ My toast is stiff, insincere.

  ‘Where will you live?’ Erin asks, quietly.

  ‘Nothing changes, Mum. We’re staying in the flat we have – it’s close to the school and the rent’s cheap.’

  ‘Everything changes when you get married, Jude.’ Erin looks across at me as she tears up. ‘Otherwise, why do it?’

  I wish I could reach across the length of the table and grab her hand. Instead, I decide that since our children are so bloody self-sufficient, now is probably really the ideal time for Erin and me to fuck off into the sunset together.

  She’s on the deck outside and, having sprayed herself in insect repellent, she’s nursing another glass of wine. She’s sitting, just moving slightly, in the swing chair, a circular sixties-looking thing held on a metal chain to a single hook.

  Everyone has gone. The kitchen looks like a bomb site and I take one of the garden chairs next to my wife.

  ‘Let’s you and me just take off, Erin.’

  ‘They’ll never last,’ she looks up as she speaks.

  ‘Maybe not but look at how many people said that about us.’

  ‘It’ll just never last,’ she sighs.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘I heard you. You know we can’t. We need to be close to home.’ Her head tosses back on the chair. ‘Jesus Christ. One of them married too young, the other living with someone old enough to be her father.’

  ‘I blame the parents.’

  She sticks her tongue out at me.

  ‘Too soon?’ I smile.

  ‘Far too bloody soon,’ she fights the urge to laugh, leans back, sways on the chair and stares at the sky.

  While I, in the meantime, feel dizzy watching her. And completely useless. And nothing I say will work because I can’t undo our stupid prick of a know-it-all son eloping at nineteen.

  17. Erin

  THEN – August 2004

  13th August 2004

  Darling Erin,

  You were saying the other day how it’s been ages since you wrote in The Book of Love. How you didn’t really feel the need, maybe because you feel less anxious and feel safer than you used to actually talking to me. I was rarely here anyway – usually more in response to you than volunteering myself in here.

  Yet here I am.

  You don’t know this but there’s not a day in our beautiful life together where I don’t live in fear. Ironic, I know, when you’re the one on the pills.

  My biggest worry? Losing you.

  I can hear your instant response to that. One of your disbelieving giggles. How could I ever think that you might no
t want to be with me. You love me, right?

  It’s because you love me, I’m afraid. I’m afraid when you realise what a lying shit I really am, you’ll be able to stop, because I’ll no longer be worthy of that love.

  You’re away overnight tonight, looking at premises in Portsmouth with Lydia for a potential new Bean Pod café next year. You’re loving the job. You’re brilliant at it. And because we can both save from salary, we’re going to be able to move to a house next year.

  If I speak, that won’t happen. If I speak, I know your feelings will change. I know you better than you know yourself. You love me, sure, but if you heard the truth, you’d find the ‘off’ button for that love and move forward without me. You would. You’re stronger than you think.

  But I have to take that risk, hope I’m wrong, hope that love will win out and hope that forgiveness will prevail.

  Because there are things I need to tell you. Things I can’t write down.

  I need to look into your beautiful face and tell you I’ve lied. I need to tell you when and why. I need to explain the underlying tension between Dad and me.

  Or maybe I need to shut the fuck up, keep my indulgent guilt to myself and keep living the life we’ve made together.

  I love you so very much, Erin. Mightily, in fact.

  Dom xx

  It was the third Friday of the month. Quiz night followed by chicken basket supper at the Coach and Horses, a ritual for the last few years. Their team, ‘The Fabulous Five’, friends for more than ten years, was missing Hannah. The remaining four had moved outside, moaning about having come second last, moaning about the crap food, wondering why they insisted on their habitual return, for their habitual thrashing when Erin raised the subject.

  ‘Hang on.’ Lydia frowned. ‘Let me get this right. You write to one another? In a book …?’

  Erin nodded at her sister-in-law, her boss. ‘It’s a large leather notebook. Dad gave it to us as a wedding present and he,’ she pointed her finger at Dom, ‘he wrote something in it and then tore it out. That’s against the rules.’