The Book of Love Read online

  Instinctively, he moves my hand and touches it. ‘I’ll always be married to her. The hands that clasp the heart mean friendship. The heart, love, and the crown, loyalty. They all still stand.’

  My smile is wide as I think of Dom tattooed evermore with ‘Erin forever’ on his finger but I focus on Dad. ‘What does Penny think of that?’

  ‘I’ve never asked her,’ his reply is simple. ‘So,’ he looks straight at me. ‘Shall I cook, or shall I head off?’

  He means well but the thought of some kale and lentil stew invading the house isn’t what I need today, so I encourage him to leave – back to meet the agent, back to empty the family home into piles to keep and piles for charity.

  Away from Dom and me.

  36. Dominic

  THEN – January 2013

  He couldn’t sleep. Hair loss aside, it was the thing he hated most about getting older – that need to lie awake in the middle of the night when everyone in their thirties lay fast asleep. And Erin. Whatever decade Erin was in, she always managed to sleep through his moving quietly from the room.

  Yawning widely, he made his way onto the landing, automatically checking that Jude was in. From his bedroom door, Dom’s eyes scanned in the dark for the outline of his son’s shape. He saw one foot stick out the end of the bed and walked over, through what he regularly told his son was his ‘own personal landfill site’, and pulled the duvet to cover it. And on the floor, next to where one of Jude’s arms hung over the side, next to a GCSE Biology textbook, he saw his and Erin’s Book of Love, lying open.

  Dom picked it up, closed over the door and skim-read the open page, something he’d written to Maisie when he and Erin were apart. He went downstairs, fought the urge to stomp back up them and tear his nosy son from his teenage-scented cocoon. Instead, he poured a glass of red wine from an open bottle and sat in the living room, waiting to watch the sunrise through the double doors. By the time the naked silver birches looked like pen-and-ink sketches on an orange sky, he wasn’t sure if it mattered. Maybe his son had learnt something about his parents. And he and Erin had left the book in that same place over the years, somehow certain it had remained private. Quietly, he climbed the stairs and stood outside his son’s bedroom. Tell-tale heavy breathing let him open the door one more time and place the book back where he’d found it.

  In the kitchen again, he made a pot of coffee. Erin would be up soon. He cut himself a slab of marzipan-covered fruitcake, not the ideal breakfast, but the hour felt more like late lunch by the time he heard movement upstairs. He opened the cupboard under the stairs, removed several empty boxes and placed them beside the tree in the living room. The cream carpet was laden with needles from the ‘non-shedding’ tree. Next to the fireplace the poinsettias were about to lose the last of their scarlet leaves. Outside, the day had dawned – a light dusting of icing sugar frost had settled on the front lawn and though he would have left Christmas in the house for another month at least, it was Sunday the sixth of January, Epiphany, the twelfth night and he knew Erin would wake saying it would all have to come down and be packed away by the end of the day.

  In fact, she woke complaining of a rare headache and he told her to stay in bed, brought her a cup of tea. ‘Take these,’ he instructed, handing her two Paracetamol. ‘Hangover, or are you coming down with something?’

  ‘Hangover,’ she muttered. ‘I heard you mooching about. Have you been up all night?’

  Dom dropped his dressing gown, lifted the duvet and got in beside her. ‘Most of it.’

  ‘Christ! You’re freezing.’

  ‘Heat’s just come on.’ He pulled her towards him, snuggled into her. ‘I need warming up.’

  Though he willed it not to, he felt his cock grow as they spooned.

  ‘Dom …’

  He laughed. ‘I can’t help it.’

  ‘I really do have a headache!’

  ‘Stop talking. Pretend it’s not there.’

  ‘I have a cock lying in the crack of my ass.’

  ‘You’re imagining things. Go to sleep.’

  ‘I’m trying. You should get some sleep. It’s Sunday.’

  ‘Yep …’ He kissed her left ear.

  ‘Dom …’

  ‘Sssh, I’m waiting for your headache to clear.’

  She groaned out loud, pulled away from him.

  ‘Spoilsport,’ he murmured but felt his eyelids lower.

  When he woke, he moved to her empty side of the bed, able to tell immediately how long it had been since she left. Less than an hour, he reckoned. Feeling dog-tired still, he yawned, inhaled the floral scent of her from her pillow. His phone pinged a text and an image flashed on the screen. Light snow in the front garden where Rachel was on a sleepover with friends.

  ‘Afternoon, sleepyhead.’ Erin walked into the room and pulled the curtains open.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Quarter to one.’

  ‘You’re fucking kidding me.’ He sat upright as if he had somewhere to be.

  She laughed. ‘I am, it’s ten thirty. Jude’s made pancakes, you want some?’

  ‘Jude’s made pancakes?’ He eyed her suspiciously.

  ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘Get up quick before we realise we’re dreaming.’

  Dom stood, wrapped himself in his dressing gown and followed his wife downstairs. Lingering behind her, he quietly opened the drawer in the console table where their pages once again sat comfortably in their home.

  ‘Pancakes!’ he called out as he entered the kitchen and his son came into view. ‘What made you decide to make pancakes?’

  Jude looked across at him, shrugged. ‘Haven’t had them in ages.’

  ‘Coffee,’ Erin handed him a steaming mug and took a seat beside him.

  Dom picked up a newspaper from the pile that had been delivered, searched his pocket for glasses and coming up empty crossed the room to a drawer where he kept a spare pair. His son was now taller than him. He nudged him. ‘How do you even know how to make pancakes?’

  ‘I watched you often enough, and the internet. Duh.’

  ‘Savoury or sweet?’ Dom asked.

  ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Nothing beats lemon and sugar.’

  ‘Sweet it is, then.’

  ‘These bastard things get everywhere,’ Dom complained, pulling pine needles from his sweater. He looked across to Erin, who was staring at the digital screen on the camera he’d given her for Christmas. ‘What can you possibly be taking a photo of?’ He looked around at the twenty-fifth of December all packed away, walked across to her and looked at the small screen over her shoulder. ‘A box,’ he confirmed.

  ‘I can never decide whether it’s happy or sad.’

  ‘The box?’

  ‘No. Is this a happy moment because everything’s stored and in the same place and its sort of hopeful or is it sad because everything’s stored and in the same place and Christmas is over?’

  ‘You need to get out more,’ he told her. ‘And by the way, speaking of keeping things in the same place, Mister-Pancake-Jude has been reading our book.’

  She lowered the camera. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘The little snoop.’

  ‘Hell, they’ve both probably read it over the years.’

  ‘I bloody hope not.’ Erin had crossed the room and was already opening the drawer in the hall. She came back clutching it. ‘This is ours. We should never have assumed it was safe.’

  ‘Hey,’ he held her, ‘we’ll move it.’

  ‘Yes, we bloody will, though we don’t use it so much anymore. I’ve just checked and we haven’t written in it for ages. Must mean we can finally talk to one another.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘How do you know he read it?’ she asked his chest.

  ‘I checked in on him when I got up last night. It was lying open on the floor. The “me to Maisie” entry,’ he told her, knowing she would want to know.

  ‘He made pancakes before he we
nt out.’

  Dom nodded.

  ‘Something poked the memory.’

  ‘Probably. Or maybe he just woke up wanting pancakes.’

  ‘Will you come to midday mass with me?’ She looked at her watch suddenly.

  Dom made a face. ‘Really?’

  She had already left the room, taken her coat from a pile on the end of the stairs. ‘I feel the need to be quiet and to think.’

  The last time Dom had been in church, he didn’t remember it being a place of solace, just somewhere he had no clue why people were standing or sitting, and somewhere he never felt comfortable.

  ‘I’ve got to put all this stuff back under the stairs,’ he said.

  And when she looked at him, slight disappointment in the edges of her eyes, he knew, knew where he’d be for the next hour.

  ‘This being quiet and thinking thing – how does that work when I know you’ll sing hymns at the top of your bloody awful voice.’

  ‘In between I think.’

  ‘I’ll spend the hour thinking how much longer … You know how I feel about God and the God squad – I’m a complete fraud even breathing the same air,’ he said, getting his coat.

  ‘You don’t have to come, and you’ll be glad to know I couldn’t drag either of the kids to church nowadays, so they take after you. They didn’t even come on Christmas Day.’

  ‘I’ll come.’

  ‘You know like you say lane swimming gives you space and time to sort out your thoughts?’ She shrugged. ‘Church can do that for me. Not always. Sometimes it feels like nothing more than an inherited habit, but sometimes … Anyway, I feel the need.’

  Dom closed the front door behind them, pulled a beanie hat from his pocket and put it on. ‘Why now, Jude’s pancakes, packing up Christmas, his reading our private words, what’s up, what prompted the need?’

  ‘Nothing’s up. It’s Sunday and sometimes it’s more the need to say thanks, to be grateful.’ She looped a hand through his arm as they walked.

  ‘You are a strange woman, Mrs Carter.’

  ‘Nothing strange about me, weirdo with the hat.’

  For the rest of the way, they walked in silence, the wintry ground crackling beneath their footsteps. Standing to let people pass through the huge oak door, Erin leaned in to him, kissed his cheek and whispered, ‘I’ll sing quietly. Promise.’

  6th January 2013

  Darling Erin (Read Jude),

  There once was a boy who was nosy,

  Who lived in a landfill so cosy,

  But one day he read something private that said,

  Not all things all the time are all rosy.

  His parents they hoped he would see,

  For them it was just meant to be,

  Their Book of Love were a means to an end,

  They’d write, they’d talk – they’d heal.

  Love you mightily,

  Dom xx (Read Dad)

  37. Erin

  NOW – 19th June 2017

  From The Book of Love:

  ‘You killed my trust but earned it back. And in

  between I had to learn to forgive you.’

  I drive. I stop at red lights. I sing along to the radio badly. I go at green lights.

  There’s a free parking space near the café and I reverse park into it – slowly, carefully, just like a learner. From my vantage point, I can see she’s not sitting on the window row of stools. From there she’d have been able to see me arrive, so she’s probably back in the tiny office behind the coffee bar. It used to be my office – there’s one chair, a desk that’s no wider than a washing machine with a filing cabinet underneath and a cork board above, covered in Post-its and photos. At least, it used to be covered, it’s possibly not now.

  The dashboard tells me I’m three minutes late but when I try to move, I can’t. My legs won’t work. The command to move them leaves my brain but that’s it. My hands, white-knuckled, stay gripping the steering wheel. The engine, stays running. I talk to her in my head, tell her I’m here but I can’t move and then I see her blonde head appear at the window. She looks left and right and then at her wrist and takes a seat on one of the chrome stools. Her head is down. She’s texting. She’s on Twitter or Facebook updating the Bean Pod’s accounts.

  Dom designed this first coffee-bean-pod-café and it became the template for the three others. I remember it as if it were yesterday, the five of us, Lydia, Nigel, Hannah, Dom and me all huddled in the kitchen in Hawthorn Avenue, Dom scribbling on A4 sheets of paper constantly saying, ‘What about this?’ while we ate homemade nachos and drank cheap red wine. Lydia eventually shouted back, ‘That’s it! That’s exactly what I had in mind!’ And the Bean Pod empire was born. And I loved, loved being a part of it.

  My nose is running, and I search in the glove compartment for a packet of tissues, find one, plus a wrinkled old Toblerone that I’d obviously once had Dom-shaped plans for. I bang it shut. I’m now four minutes late. Lydia raises the phone to her ear and I half expect mine to ring but it doesn’t. She chats to someone else and I still can’t move.

  Eventually, I wait to see her give up, have a chat with myself, telling myself if she passes the car, I’ll wave. Surely, I can move my hand in the air and move it left to right. Except she doesn’t leave, and Hannah arrives. Of course, Hannah will have known about the meeting. And of course, it was Hannah she called. Those two have become thick as thieves. Something unexpected, something like jealousy, pierces my heart and my hands do move. They flick the indicator, turn the wheel, and I head for home.

  In the living room, I pull up a chair beside my favourite curved window in the house. It has a window seat that was the twins’ best hiding place as small children. At that moment, Dom passes by outside and immediately, I feel my shoulders loosen.

  ‘I’m in here,’ I call out.

  ‘Hiya,’ he pokes his head around the door.

  ‘Where were you?’ I don’t mean it to sound accusing but I hear it – my tone is all wrong.

  ‘I went to see Dad again.’

  ‘Oh,’ I pat the chair next to me. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Seems the same. From what I can tell he’s totally fed up and trying to pretend he’s not.’

  Dom’s devastated by his father’s health decline this year. Old age and recurrent kidney infections now have him bed bound and assisted with his basic needs.

  ‘And Lydia?’ he asks. ‘How was it?’ He comes inside and sits down. ‘You two okay?’

  I shake my head, unable to lie, certain he’d see through it if I tried.

  Dom runs a thumb and forefinger around the edges of his mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ is all I can muster.

  He’s just about to risk his considered reply when we both see Lydia through the window storming up the garden path.

  ‘What the hell?’ I stare at him as she pounds on the front door with her fists.

  ‘Erin!’ She is screaming at the top of her voice. ‘You let me in!’

  ‘Shit,’ he whispers.

  My mind whirrs, running through what must have happened. She called Hannah and since I didn’t turn up to the entente cordiale, Hannah spilled the beans. Hannah must have told Lydia everything I shared with her when she and I met in town last week – everything I confided in her about Dom and me. And now Lydia’s here yelling through the letterbox.

  ‘You let me in Erin, or I swear I’ll break one of your precious deco windows.’

  I pull my knees up to my face and hug them, try to block her out. She finally runs out of steam and sits down on the step with her back up against the front door. ‘Let me in. I need to talk to you. Or him … please?’

  I look up and Dom’s moved into the hall and my heart breaks for him, for myself and even for her.

  38. Dominic

  THEN – July 2014

  ‘A pot-luck supper does mean we have to bring something,’ he told Erin on the phone.

  ‘I forgot, but it’s all sorted now.’

  Lydia was insistin
g on giving Dom a forty-fifth birthday dinner party and he didn’t want to go. The next day was the annual swimathon and barbecue at Valentine’s in aid of SIDS and tonight he would have much preferred a pizza at home with the kids. And leaving the two of them alone was something he dreaded. They were having a few friends over to celebrate the end of their exams and Dom was not happy – despite Erin’s reassurance that they could and should be trusted.

  By the time he got home, she was ready – dressed in a lemon-coloured summer dress with navy espadrilles, her hair loose around her shoulders. ‘You can’t be late for your own party,’ she sighed.

  ‘What are we taking?’ he asked as he peeled his work clothes off and headed into the shower.

  ‘Under control’ she yelled in. ‘Hurry up, Dom! Jude! Someone at the door?’

  He was ready in less than five minutes. She smiled. ‘You look nice,’ she said, kissing him lightly, leaving a faint trace of frosted pink gloss. ‘Do your thing, will you?’ she said, and he grinned as he licked his lips. ‘Kids? Here now!’ he yelled.

  Jude was at the door to their bedroom in seconds. ‘Yup?’ His sixteen-year-old frame filled the doorway. He swept a long foppish fringe from his eyes and looked intently at them. Dom would swear he was already looking guilty about something and they hadn’t even left the house yet. ‘Behave,’ he told him. ‘No smoking. No drinking. No—’

  ‘Dad, I got it. Okay.’

  Rachel appeared, lurking behind him in his shadow. ‘What?’ she asked. ‘And must you yell at us as “Kids”? We’re sixteen and we were christened, I believe.’ She held a hand out to Dominic and then Erin. ‘I’m Rachel Marianne Carter and this is my brother, Jude Dominic Carter.’

  Despite himself, Dom, smiled. ‘Jude, Rachel. No smoking. No drinking. No more than eight people here in total, that’s a maximum of six guests. No loud music, no—’

  ‘Right. Dad. Okay,’ Jude sighed, looked at his father with the disdain that teenagers reserved for their parents alone.

  ‘You right?’ he asked Erin, who was watching proceedings from the edge of their bed.

  ‘Yes.’