Page 18 of The Life She Could Have Lived

YES

Anna woke and turned on her side and Edward was propped up on his elbow, watching her.

‘Happy anniversary,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘What time is it? Are the boys still asleep?’

Most nights, one or other of their children ended up in their bed in the middle of the night.

Thomas came in of his own accord and they didn’t always realise until they woke up and found him there.

Sam was in a cot, so he called for them, and if they had the willpower for it, they would try to get him back to sleep in his own room.

But if they didn’t, they would carry him in his sleeping bag into theirs and lay him down between them.

‘It’s six-fifteen,’ Edward said. ‘Both asleep. I have to get up soon. But I wanted to make it up to you, for not always being great at the anniversary thing.’

Anna rubbed her eyes. She wasn’t awake enough for this kind of conversation.

But her instinct was to say that they hadn’t been together the year before, and she couldn’t really remember the year before that.

But before she could speak, the door creaked open and Thomas stood there, his panda toy in his arms.

‘Do you want to come in?’ Anna asked him.

He nodded and did a sort of half-run into the room, launching himself onto the bed. Anna pulled him to her, breathed in his sleepy smell.

‘Any dreams?’ she asked him.

He nodded again. ‘About a big, green monster eating Sam,’ he said.

Anna and Edward exchanged a look.

‘You know that’s not going to happen, don’t you?’ Edward asked.

Thomas shrugged his small shoulders, and Anna pulled him closer still.

‘I’d better get in the shower,’ Edward said. ‘But I wanted to say, I’ve booked us theatre tickets for tonight.’

‘What about the boys?’ she asked, surprised.

It wasn’t like him to spring something on her.

But then, he’d been making an effort since she’d asked him to come home just before Christmas.

He’d been trying to show her that she’d made the right decision.

And she had, she thought. She’d made the right decision for their family.

And for her. That kiss with Steve had been a one off.

She’d stopped it before it had gone any further, unable to get past the fact that he was married.

One afternoon when the leaves were turning red and gold, they’d almost kissed again.

And despite her body screaming yes, Anna had pushed him away and told him that he owed it to Theresa to really decide whether what they had was worth saving.

That night, she’d called Edward and asked him to come home.

She was scared of the way she felt about Steve, in truth.

She was terrified of him turning her down, deciding it was over, so she pre-empted him.

And once Edward was back, it felt like he hadn’t been away, and she choked back her feelings when she saw Steve, and they didn’t talk about what could have been.

‘Keira from nursery is babysitting. It’s all sorted.’ Edward came around to her side of the bed on his way to the bathroom and leaned down to kiss her.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

She heard the shower start up, heard Edward step into it.

Thomas wriggled his body until it was touching hers at the shoulder, hip and knee.

He clung to her in a way that Sam never did.

Just then, Sam shouted out and Anna peeled Thomas off herself to go to him.

Sam was standing up in his cot, his dark hair in disarray, his eyes huge.

He looked at her and raised his arms and she lifted him, carried him through to her bedroom.

She had ten minutes before she needed to get up, and while she knew there was no hope of going back to sleep, being horizontal was enough.

The boys lay beside her, Thomas close and Sam rolling around on Edward’s side, and when Edward came through, wrapped in a towel, he got back in for a couple of minutes and Anna felt so content she thought for a minute she was going to cry.

This was it, wasn’t it? This was why everybody did it. Why they put up with the sheer hard work of it and all the juggling of childcare, work and endless washing. They did it for moments like this. Four in a bed, everyone happy. A family.

Too soon, her alarm cut into her thoughts and she stood up, knowing that if she snoozed it, she would never win her morning battle. It was time to get everyone ready and breakfasted and out of the door. Each morning, it took every ounce of patience she had.

It wasn’t until she was leaving the house with the boys, Sam strapped into the pushchair and Thomas on the buggy board, that she thought to ask Edward about the arrangements for later.

‘Where shall I meet you?’ she asked. ‘What time?’

‘No need to come home. Keira’s bringing them back here after nursery closes. I’ve given her a spare key. Just meet me at seven at that cocktail bar in Covent Garden, the one with the tree inside.’

‘Okay, see you,’ Anna said, kissing his cheek.

And on the walk to nursery and the Tube to work, she smiled. It was a long time since she’d had a night out to look forward to, something that was just for her.

Edward was standing at the bar when she arrived, one cocktail in his hand and another on the bar.

‘For me?’ she asked.

‘For you.’

She smiled and picked up the delicate glass. ‘What is it?’

‘Something with vodka and pomegranate juice. Same as mine.’

Anna took a sip and put it back. ‘So what are we seeing?’

‘ Blood Brothers ,’ Edward said.

It was her favourite show. Edward knew that, but he’d never agreed to see it with her before.

Musicals weren’t really his thing. Edward didn’t know that she’d last seen it with Steve, almost a year ago.

It was the closest they’d come to having a date.

He’d come over to the house and said that a friend had given him tickets and Theresa didn’t like theatre, and he remembered her saying she liked Blood Brothers , and did she want to go with him?

Theresa had offered to have the kids. Anna had thought that Theresa probably wouldn’t have offered to babysit while Anna went out with her husband if she knew the contents of Anna’s brain when it came to Steve.

She’d also thought that she had no recollection of telling Steve she liked Blood Brothers .

But they’d covered a lot of ground in conversation while the kids played on the floor over the years.

And so they’d gone. They’d drunk slightly warm white wine in the interval and then sung the songs on the way back to the Tube.

And Anna had tried not to think about kissing him, or about reaching out for his warm hand.

In the theatre, Edward went to find the toilets and Anna tried to decide whether she should order interval drinks.

In the end, she bought a big bag of Minstrels instead.

They had good seats, in the stalls, and when they were sitting down waiting for the show to start, Edward took her hand in his, lifted it to his mouth and kissed it.

Anna leaned closer to him and whispered. She couldn’t help herself. ‘What is all this?’ He’d clearly gone to some effort. Booking the tickets, finding a babysitter.

Edward looked a little hurt. ‘I just wanted to treat you. I know how hard you work, you know, with the boys and your job. I know you bear the brunt of it.’

Anna was surprised. They had settled into their own routine, as all parents did.

There were things she did, things he did.

She often felt that she did more, but she hadn’t realised Edward was aware of it.

When he’d come back, she’d thought it was a chance for them to reset, to start again from scratch.

But they hadn’t, of course. They’d fallen into the same patterns, the same routines.

She leaned in to speak again, but just then the curtains swept open and the show started.

She didn’t think about what Edward had said again until they were walking out at the end.

‘What did you think?’ she asked.

‘It was okay.’

Anna smiled. He was incapable of lying convincingly .

‘Did you hate it?’

‘No, I didn’t hate it. It’s just… you know it’s not really my thing. But I did enjoy seeing how much you loved it.’

Anna felt a flip inside when he said that. A couple of times, he’d taken her to football and she’d been cold and not really understood or cared what was happening on the pitch, but she’d loved seeing his enthusiasm for it, seeing the way he came alive.

‘So, about what you said just before, about me bearing the brunt?’

They were outside then, carried along by the crowd and pushed out into the warm evening.

‘Yes?’ Edward said.

She pulled him round a corner, away from the crowds, so they could talk. ‘I never felt like you noticed. It’s so hard, you know, trying to fit in work and the boys…’

‘That’s why I think you should give it up,’ Edward said.

‘Give what up?’

‘Work. It’s too much. You’re going to burn yourself out.’

Anna didn’t say anything. She had hoped he was going to offer to take on more of the domestic drudgery.

But they were back to this, his preference for her to stay at home and be a wife and mum and nothing else.

Internally, she examined why she was so reluctant.

There were parts of her that loved being a mum, and sometimes she wished she didn’t have to go to work, wished she wasn’t always rushing.

When she dropped the boys at nursery, sometimes they cried and asked her not to go.

Those mornings she could see a different life, one in which there was time for second pieces of toast and slow games of snap.

And in September, Thomas would go to school and everything would change again.

She’d already signed up for the school’s breakfast club and after-school care with a heavy heart, thinking of how long the days would be for him, and she kept meaning to talk to her boss about cutting down by another day.

Wouldn’t this be the answer to so many of those problems?

She could spend her days at home with Sam, and they could take Thomas to school and pick him up.

She could be one of those mums at the gate, who she imagined chatted and swapped stories and always had time to go to the park.

But it came down to this: she didn’t want that.

She wanted to work, to feel she had a purpose beyond being a mum.

She wanted her boys to grow up in a house where both their parents worked, so that they might expect that when they settled down themselves.

She wanted to feel a part of something, a useful cog in the machine.

She wanted to have something for after they were grown up and gone, something more than an empty house and regrets.

Edward had taken her hand and they were walking towards the Tube, quiet.

‘It’s not what I want,’ Anna said eventually.

‘What, us?’ Edward stopped and turned to face her, panic written on his face.

‘No, of course not. Being at home, I mean. It’s not for me.’

Edward sighed. Anna wondered whether he ever thought he’d married the wrong woman. Whether he ever went back over the other women he’d known, the ones he might have chosen, and speculated about whether they would have made better at-home wives. Better mothers.

‘I was hoping—’ he said, but then he broke off.

‘What?’ Anna genuinely had no idea what he was going to say.

‘I was hoping we might try for another.’

Another child. Anna had never seriously considered it.

Two was plenty, she’d always thought that.

And the way she felt, like she was barely making it work, barely giving her existing children what they needed.

It was laughable. But Edward wasn’t laughing.

He clearly didn’t feel the way she did, constantly pulled in so many different directions, always feeling like she wasn’t doing anything well enough.

‘I don’t want to,’ she said.

She didn’t sugarcoat it, didn’t see that she should have to. It was her body, her family, and she didn’t want to.

Edward nodded tightly. He’d been careful not to upset her, since coming back. She wondered whether he felt like he was walking a tightrope even bringing this up.

‘It’s not so long since you came back,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to rush into anything. And besides, I just don’t feel like I could manage, with three…’

She didn’t say that having another child would mean such different things for the two of them.

For him, an extra little person to play with in the garden and to tickle in the bath.

An extra person to love him and ask for stories and to put on his shoulders when they went to the park.

But for her, it was endless washing and tidying and cleaning up.

Another couple of years of sleep so broken she didn’t think she could survive it.

She tried to picture herself with a daughter.

Anna had never told Edward that she had a name picked out for a girl.

Eva. In both pregnancies, she’d held her breath at the twenty-week scan, wondering whether it might be Eva this time.

But no. It wasn’t enough, that hope. It wasn’t enough to make her change her mind.

They spent most of the Tube journey in silence, and while they were walking back to the house, Anna tried to think of ways to fix it. Edward let them in and went through to the kitchen. Anna went to the living room to find the babysitter.

‘They’ve been absolutely fine,’ Keira said.

‘Great,’ Anna said.

‘Did you have a nice night? Happy anniversary, by the way. ’

Anna tried to smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A lovely night, thank you. I’ll just go and get some cash for you.’

‘No need, your husband took my bank details. He said he’d transfer the money. I’ll see you at nursery.’

As soon as Keira was gone, Anna searched for a CD and put it on. Edward came into the room when he heard the song she was playing. ‘ Something Changed’ .

‘Dance with me?’ she asked.

He shook his head a little, then smiled and held out his arms. He would get over it, Anna knew.

This desire for another child. And then they would have everything.

Their two boys, healthy and full of love.

Each other. Yes, she’d made the right decision.

She had. Edward spun her away from him and she ducked under his arm, laughing.

‘Come here,’ Edward said, his voice full of want. And she went to him, kissed him, pushed him back on the sofa.