The Book of Love Read online

  ‘This isn’t a chat, Dom. I don’t want to hear you speaking, I just want you to listen. That’s my little girl in that fancy new house. They’re my grandchildren. If you hurt her or them again, I will make it my life’s work to make you pay.’

  Dom looked through the window to the living room to where his wife and two children were eating pizza.

  ‘You understand that?’ Fitz added.

  ‘Completely.’

  ‘Good.’

  When the line went dead, he approached the glass and immediately Erin beckoned him in to eat. Shaking his head, he stood and just looked, for a moment, unable to move. Erin walked to the window and placed her palm against it. The heat from her hand against the cold single pane created a cloud around her fingers and he placed his own palm against hers. With his free hand, he counted out the fingers, watched her face as he did so.

  ‘One, you. Two, me. Three, Maisie. Four, Jude and five Rachel.’ He spoke the words aloud and breathed out, the icy air frosting his long breath.

  Erin nodded, blew him a kiss and when he removed his hand, saw the smudged print it had left, he wished it could have stayed there forever. Dom hoisted the crate up from the ground and entered the house.

  An hour later, when the kids were asleep, he and Erin were in the bedroom hanging and folding clothes into the cupboards.

  ‘I’m sorry I have to go to work tomorrow,’ Dom said over a pile of sweaters.

  ‘Can’t be helped. Don’t worry. The kids are in school. I’m off so I’ll sort the kitchen when they’re out of the house and we may even eat home-cooked food tomorrow night!’

  Dom looked at his wife, at the tracksuit she wore, the bleach marks on it from where she had scrubbed the loos today. She would disagree, tell him he was insane, if he told her out loud at that moment how beautiful she looked but she did. She was here, and she was here with him and the children and she was as beautiful to him as the first time he’d ever seen her.

  ‘Do you remember the first night?’

  ‘Which first night?’ she grinned. ‘The night we met, the night we first made love, the night we were first apart from one another?’

  He grimaced.

  ‘This,’ she said. ‘In a few years, this will be our first night in what’s going to be our happy place.’

  ‘I mean the night we first met at Lydia’s party, New Year’s Eve 1995.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Do you remember what I told you?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I told you that I thought I’d love you forever.’

  ‘Yeah, you did.’ She came across to him, pushed him back onto the bed and straddled him before removing her top and bra. ‘Wanna prove it?’

  ‘Happy Valentine’s Day, Mrs Carter,’ he said, reaching up for her and lacing his fingers behind her neck.

  ‘Happy Valentine’s Way, Mr Carter,’ she replied.

  Dom closed his eyes as she kissed him, as certain as he could be that she was right. This would be a happy place for them.

  15th February 2008

  Darling Dom,

  It’s good to be back. It’s good to have the book in the same hall table that was in the flat, sitting under the same mirror in the hall, even if it’s a different home. It feels very odd, being here, knowing the last time I wrote to you in here was October 2005 – that awful time.

  I’m another person now and I think you are too. For me, all I can say is I feel stronger – to the point that I’m not even sure I need this route to talk in the way I used to. I feel we might be okay without it. But let’s see, maybe you still feel the need – let’s watch this space …

  I haven’t read what you wrote in here during the time we were apart. Someday I will, just not now. I think maybe I want to pretend none of it happened but at the same time, I realise it had to and I’m glad it did.

  In years to come if someone asked us where it all went wrong – would we point to the day Maisie died? Or to the time before when maybe we still didn’t know how each of us really worked? Maybe to when you first lied about gambling and felt you couldn’t show me that side of you?

  I kept the card that Fitz gave us with this book and reunited it today! And I’ve pasted it in the back page because I think the sentiment behind it really matters:

  In years to come, this book will be a place where you’ll look back and read about the things you were possibly too young or naïve to understand.

  Should I not have asked you to leave, and forgiven you? Possibly. But if things hadn’t unfolded the way they did, you would never have gotten help. You wouldn’t wear that dog tag; you wouldn’t live your life by Admit, Atone and Hope.

  And I would never have learned that love, real love, endures.

  I’m so looking forward to being with you again, so looking forward to our family being together again.

  I love you, Dom, because you waited.

  Erin xx

  27. Dominic

  THEN – September 2008

  Dom listened to the distant hum from the motorway, opened his eyes and stopped himself reaching for Erin’s outline. It was cold. The tip of his nose was freezing; he was cold and though he craved the warmth he knew her body would give, holding her would wake her.

  In three hours, she’d get up, get the children ready for school, get herself ready for work. In the kitchen, she’d take something out of the freezer for dinner tonight, let it defrost in the sink. If he was still around when she left on the school run, she’d kiss him goodbye, a slice of slightly burnt toast in one hand, her car keys in the other. He’d yell at the children to make their beds before they go. And after they’d all left, he’d look around their happy place and pinch himself as their voices echoed in the space.

  He breathed deep, held it, then exhaled slowly. This was how she used to feel when anxiety owned her, he thought as dread pulsed in his veins. There had been a mere seven months of pure bliss together. Not long enough, he thought. Not long enough.

  Then again, who knew what might happen when he looked her in the eye and told her. There would be, he’d promised himself, no hiding in the written word. This was one where he’d fix on the edges of her green irises and speak.

  But not yet. He slipped from their bed, put the same clothes on he’d removed only hours earlier and quietly left the house.

  Every morning, very early, Dom’s father tended to his mother in their bedroom and the first thing he did was kiss her before turning the key in her music box. On the rare times that Dominic witnessed it, he never failed to be moved. It was a tune his mother had loved, something she and his father had once learned to waltz to. Gerard would graze Sophie’s Vaselined lips with his own and then brush her hair, just a tender caress with the soft bristles and every time – every time, Dom had to look away.

  ‘You’re here early,’ his father said to him. ‘And you look absolutely awful. She might not know who you are, but you could at least have had a shave, smarten up a bit.’

  ‘Dad—’

  ‘Dominic, don’t tell me you’re forty-eight years old and a grown-up. That much I know. It’s just about respect for your mother.’

  ‘Dad—’

  ‘What is it?’ His father’s irritated impatience, which Dom understood, given what he had to deal with every day while his mother disappeared slowly, vanished the instant he turned around to look at him. It was as if Dom’s face finally revealed that he hadn’t come for a social call.

  ‘Dom?’ Gerard’s voice softened. ‘What’s happened? Is everything alright?’

  ‘No, Dad. No.’

  ‘Erin, the kids?’ His father’s hand moved to his heart as he took the seat next to his and Sophie’s bed.

  ‘No.’ Dom shook his head. ‘They’re fine.’ He ran a hand through the head of hair he would swear had thinned in the last ten days. ‘Dad,’ he began to cry, something he had not done in front of his father since he was nine years old; not even the time he’d had to borrow money to pay a gambling debt, nor the last time he’d turned to
his parents, when Erin had asked him to leave. ‘I’m in trouble, Dad. Serious trouble.’

  As his father stood and approached him, pulled him into an embrace, all Dom could see was his mother’s face, the tiniest bit of drool sliding from the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Son, nothing’s this bad, eh?’

  But it was. It was that bad and he had no idea how he was going tell Erin. Everything had turned to shit. He looked through the window behind his mother. The silver birch twenty feet from the building had already shed most of its leaves, the grass covered in an array of rust and golden leaves; all beautiful but dead, as dead as the life he had yesterday. According to the books he and his accountant had worked on through the night they were going to lose everything. All the savings, stocks, shares he’d worked so hard to build up, the cash she’d squirrelled away over the years, all now in one pot. And the worst thing, the thing he couldn’t face Erin with, the house.

  It had been more than a black Monday yesterday. Now international global banks had collapsed, it was a black month. A fucking ebony hole which threatened to swallow him and his family. Dom sobbed into his father’s shoulder, hating the fact that he had to turn to him again. He caught a vague scent of stale cologne and closed his eyes to avoid seeing his mother. But there, behind his eyes was Erin’s face instead, and in that instant, just for the briefest of moments, Dominic Carter thought of throwing himself under a train or off a bridge. Because he’d sworn off risk in October 2005, never, ever, touched a card or a craps table since. But as his accountant had innocently pointed out at midnight last night. ‘These stocks and shares – it’s all a gamble isn’t it, all a game of chance.’ And Dom had lost one more time.

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  He would, he thought, take Erin’s white expression to the grave with him. He studied her face, looking for something that might reveal she meant those words.

  ‘I’m sure we both signed whatever it was.’

  He could see her straining to remember if she had. She had; all things financial were always signed by them both, but it didn’t matter – he was the one who should have asked more questions.

  Slowly, her features, as always with Erin, exposed each feeling. At first, disbelief, a slight thought crossing her mind that this might be some sick joke on his part and then almost immediately, the realisation that no, he wouldn’t do that to her. He was more likely to really lose everything they possessed rather than joke about it. And then shock – her fingers spreading over parted lips. Next, disappointment. It creased her features – her eyes as they focused directly on him narrowing and filling at the same time. And finally fear, what would they do? Something he needed to talk to her about because, very soon, the vultures would be coming to pick.

  Erin stood from the kitchen chair she’d been sitting on, tapped his shoulder as she passed him. ‘I have to get the kids up for school, get them off. After that, we’ll figure something out. I’m phoning in sick – I need to understand this, we’ll go to the accountant together when I get back. Okay?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Go get cleaned up. Don’t let them see you like this, Dom.’

  Dom was staring at their dream kitchen.

  ‘Dom. Shower. Now. I can hear them moving around upstairs.’

  Spreadsheets. He hated them with every fibre of his being. And the accountant going over and over the same facts waving the sheets of paper with columns and red figures and agreements that they’d been party to made him hate them even more. He and Erin went to the pub afterwards and as he placed two glasses of Pinot on the table between them, he felt the same icy fear he’d felt years ago when they’d separated.

  ‘We can’t afford them,’ she said, her arms folded. ‘You should have asked for two glasses of tap water.’

  ‘I’ve ordered a plate of chips too. Just one plate, we can share.’ He tried to raise a smile.

  ‘We have to have one row about this, Dom, and I don’t want it to be around the kids. And I don’t want it to be a screaming match. That’s why we’re here. How the hell has this happened?’

  ‘The investment portfolio, it’s, it was in stock and bond markets. Everything’s gone to shit, the markets, the banks, the world, I—’

  Erin turned her lips in on themselves as if she was stopping herself speaking.

  ‘By signing what we did, we agreed with the broker – he could lever the portfolio – it meant bigger returns.’

  ‘Obviously not.’ She found her voice. ‘Did you ever actually speak to him? Surely you knew what this could have meant?’

  ‘The markets have gone up every bloody year for the last God knows how long. He invested in derivatives. Yes, we, I, if you like, I gave him permission, I didn’t fully understand what the risk was. It’s my fault.’

  ‘Dom, I get what goes up also goes down, but this?’

  She had walked out of the accountant’s office before the end of the meeting and he had followed her here.

  ‘How much?’ she asked now as she ran her hands through her hair, leaving them there.

  ‘Everything.’ He looked directly into her eyes because he knew he had to. ‘Plus, the equity in the house.’

  ‘Jesus,’ she said, and gulped some wine.

  Dom thanked the woman who brought the chips that Erin only stared at. ‘What nobody saw was the financial world imploding like it just has. There was obviously always a gamble—’

  ‘No shit. And this from the man who swore he would never gamble again.’

  Dom shook his head vigorously. ‘This is not the same thing at all,’ he tried.

  Erin banged a fist on the table before realising where she was and sitting back. ‘It’s exactly the same thing,’ she seethed. ‘We took something and played with it when we couldn’t afford to lose it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s with money or stocks and shares or your marriage.’ She leaned forward and almost hissed. ‘Do not fuck with it if you care about it. And never let someone else decide what to do with it.’

  Dom could feel a tendon pulsing in his neck. He looked at the table next to them. Two women were sat opposite one another using sign language. He had no idea what they were saying but was glad that they smiled and seemed completely unaware of what he and Erin were.

  ‘They can’t hear me,’ Erin said. ‘I’ve been watching them, and them not hearing allowed me to tell you how I really feel.’

  ‘You’d have said exactly what you just did, how you just did, even if they could hear you.’ Dominic tore the edges off a damp beer mat.

  ‘You’re right. I just feel a little better that they can’t.’

  He heard her take a deep sigh before speaking again.

  ‘What do we do? What’s next?’ she said.

  ‘There is something,’ he put up a placating hand, tried to grab one of hers which she snatched out of reach. ‘I’ve spoken to Dad.’

  ‘No.’ Erin spat the word. ‘Your father has helped enough in the past and he has a lot on his mind.’

  ‘It was his idea. Erin, either we and our family are fucked,’ he let his words sink in before finishing, ‘or we let Dad help.’

  ‘No. He has enough stress and someday he’s going to have to pay for your mother’s care.’

  ‘Dad has money, real money, and unlike us, kept it in cash the last few years. He’s escaped this mess and wants to help. If we don’t take his help, we lose everything, declare bankruptcy.’ Dom let the words sit between them before speaking again. ‘Clients would get wind of it, work would be affected. We’d never be able to borrow again.’

  Erin sucked air. ‘What does he suggest?’ She had lowered her eyes to the floor and was hugging herself.

  ‘He’d buy our house, market value, a proper investment – the equity we get pays the last of the debts. We then rent it from him. That way we get to stay there. The kids get to stay in their school. Dad is nearly eighty, Mum is …’ Dom caught a catch in his throat. ‘He’ll amend his will that Lydia gets the family home and we inherit Valentine’s when
both he and Mum are gone …’

  Erin picked up a chip, smelled it and threw it back on the plate. ‘Your dad – can he really afford Valentine’s?’

  ‘He says he can.’

  ‘What about your mother, when she has to go into a nursing home?’

  Dom shook his head. ‘He says he’s never going to allow that to happen, that he’ll continue to care for her at home with help like he’s already doing.’

  Erin breathed out slowly through her hands.

  Dom sat on his, desperate to reach out and touch her. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She gave an ironic laugh. ‘I saw a movie once, a beautiful love story where it claimed that love meant never having to say sorry.’

  Instinct made him reach out again and she didn’t pull away as he stood and pulled her into his arms.

  ‘But that’s rubbish.’ Erin began to cry, her mascara staining his shirt. ‘I’m sorry that I was naïve enough to trust you to deal with money stuff. And I need to hear you’re sorry and to forgive you – because, without that, it’ll be 2005 all over again.’

  As he held her tight, Dom realised that though the ladies next to him couldn’t hear a word, they were obviously pretty adept at lip-reading. One of them looked over and offered a sympathetic smile. The other shook her head tightly and stirred her tea.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he stroked his wife’s hair, then lowered his mouth to it, kissed her head and whispered. ‘We will not lose our home. I promise.’

  29th September 2008

  Dear Dom,

  Of course I don’t want to lose Valentine’s but even though we’ve both worked so hard, here we are. We were stupid (I’m being nice here) and the world conspired against us and now we have diddly squat again.

  I want to keep our beautiful home if possible but more importantly, I want to keep us.

  It does feel as if our life together is two steps forward and ten back but this time, we’re together.

  I choose to believe in us. I choose to believe in you and though this might take a long time to repay, to sort out, we’ll do it. Somehow. And I’m just so enormously grateful to your father that I can’t find the words. But I will.