Page 30 of The Life She Could Have Lived

YES

Anna laid her open book down on her chest and closed her eyes.

The combination of the quietness and the feeling of the sun on her skin was bliss.

It felt like her first holiday in years.

And it was, in a way. She and Edward had taken the boys away at least once a year, but holidays with them weren’t really holidays at all.

They were fun, but they were full-on, with very little time for relaxing.

At the end of the week, she always found herself back at home with a mountain of washing to do and feeling more tired than she had when she’d left.

When Nia had suggested this, a week away, just the two of them, Anna had tried to imagine what Edward might say.

But then she’d mentioned it, and he’d been all in favour.

Each night just before the boys went to bed, she called them for a chat, and they seemed to be getting on fine.

It was only a week, she reminded herself. She wasn’t indispensable.

‘Do you want a drink?’ she asked Nia, sitting up.

Nia was lounging on the next sunbed in a red bikini. ‘Yes please,’ she said. ‘Something… fruity.’

Anna walked to the pool bar in her bare feet.

She loved the feel of the warm tiles on the soles of her feet.

She was wearing a bikini for the first time since before her pregnancies, but she threw on a coverup whenever she went anywhere.

It was a small step forward. She ordered two pineapple-flavoured cocktails and watched while the barman made them.

At home, she would pull out her phone or try to make a mental shopping list or just do something whenever she was waiting to be served.

It was nice to be lazy. To just stand there, warmed by the sun. Taking stock.

The barman turned and put the two drinks down on the bar with a flourish.

‘Can I put them on my tab? It’s room 224.’

‘Of course.’ He leaned forward, a little closer. ‘I’ve seen you around. You and your friend.’

Anna smiled. Was he interested in Nia? He looked like he couldn’t be much older than twenty-five.

‘Nia,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘My friend. Her name is Nia.’

‘And what’s your name?’

Anna’s heart sped up a little. Was it her he was interested in? Was he flirting with her?

‘Anna.’

‘Nice to meet you, Anna.’ He slid a piece of paper across the bar for her to sign. ‘Maybe we could have a drink one night, after I finish?’

Anna laughed. ‘How old are you?’

He shrugged. He was tall and lean, tanned. Was he Spanish? His English was flawless. ‘I’m twenty-seven. How old are you?’

She thought about lying. But what would be the point? She wasn’t going to act on this, was she? ‘I’m forty-one,’ she said. ‘I’m married. I have children.’

He shrugged again. ‘If you change your mind…’

Anna picked up the drinks and walked back to the loungers.

She didn’t tell Nia about what had happened, because she knew that she would make it a joke and Nia would laugh.

There was a part of her that wasn’t ready to treat it that way just yet.

It had been a long time since someone had looked at her that way.

A long time since she had felt wanted. She wondered whether he did this all the time, a different older woman every week.

Whether he laughed with his friends about how grateful they were, how easy.

And then she stopped herself. It didn’t matter.

It had been nice to feel like a woman. To feel desired.

She thought back to Nia’s party the year before, the text Steve had sent her afterwards. It’s always been you . It had been so tempting to act on it, but then she hadn’t, and by the time a week had gone by, it seemed ridiculous to reply. She’d lost herself again in the day-to-day of her life.

‘Do you miss the boys?’ Nia asked, taking the drink Anna was holding out to her.

‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘But it’s not quite as simple as missing them. I feel like they’re a part of me, so it’s strange when we’re not together. But it’s so wonderful to have time to myself, to not have to make anyone dinner or wash anyone’s football kit.’

It was day five of the holiday and Anna felt settled into it. The weather had been mid-twenties and sunshine all week, and her stress was falling away.

‘I don’t miss anything,’ Nia said, taking a long drink. ‘Is that bad? Does that mean there’s something wrong with my life?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Anna said. ‘But at the same time, I bet you’d miss stuff if you were here for longer than a week. A week’s nothing. ’

‘What would I miss? My tiny flat and my boring job?’

Nia laughed to show that she was joking, but Anna felt uneasy.

Was Nia unhappy? And if she was, why didn’t Anna know about it?

Over the years, she’d talked about her lack of a family, about how it wasn’t really a choice she’d made but a set of circumstances that had come to be, but Anna didn’t think it was something that plagued her.

She loved Anna’s boys and spoiled them every birthday and Christmas with extravagant presents Anna and Edward would never have chosen, and Anna had thought she was mostly content in that role, in her life.

‘Your flat is lovely and you really like your job, you can’t fool me.’

‘I do like my job,’ Nia said. ‘But I could do without the drama sometimes. Did I tell you Ellen and the boss have split up?’

‘No!’

‘Last month. It’s horrendous. You can tell he’s just hoping she’ll leave but there’s no way she will.

She’s been there longer than I have. They’re being super polite to each other and then making faces behind each other’s backs when they think no one’s looking.

It’s like I’m invisible to them or something.

And when he goes into his office, she starts talking about things I really don’t want to hear, like how he does yoga DVDs in his pants.

Can you imagine? I had to stop her the other day because I just knew she was going to talk about his sex face and there’s only so much I can take.

Anyway, now she has a new man, apparently, and she’s made her screensaver a massive picture of his face to make a point.

It’s really off-putting when you have to go to her desk for anything.

She’s always minimising everything on the screen so you have to look at it, almost daring you not to say anything. ’

‘What does he look like? The new guy?’

‘He looks like the boss, that’s the thing. At first I thought it was him, thought she’d gone absolutely mad. But then I saw he had this awful teardrop tattoo by his eye…’

‘Isn’t that supposed to mean you’ve killed someone?’

Nia’s eyebrows shot up and Anna knew her eyes, behind her sunglasses, would be wide. ‘Does it? Why don’t I know that?’

‘I don’t know. Not enough true crime documentaries.’

‘Fuck me. I wonder whether she knows that! Okay, now I sort of can’t wait to get back. Thanks, Anna. Anyway, how’s work going for you?’

Anna had been working part-time at the boys’ school library for a few months.

It made a lot of sense, in that the work was term-time only and the hours matched school hours.

It was a job share, between her and a pleasant woman in her fifties called Sandra, who was always happy to swap days if required, like for this holiday.

And she loved helping the kids find books they would enjoy.

But a lot of what she did was mindless and she still looked longingly at job sites for publishing roles at least once a week.

‘It’s fine, just dull.’ She drained her drink.

‘Another?’ Nia asked.

‘Not for me. I’m going to read for a while.’

Nia shrugged. ‘Just me then.’

Anna picked her book up again. It was one her old company had published, and it was being billed as the big romance hit of the summer, but she couldn’t quite get into it.

It was clear that the two main characters were going to end up together and Anna just didn’t like the man very much.

If she’d worked on it, she’d have called it Pride and Prejudice meets Before Sunrise .

A shadow came over her book and Anna saw that Nia was back.

‘You didn’t tell me the barman was hot,’ she said, sitting back down and putting her drink on the floor next to her. ‘Not a J though, before you ask.’

‘Did he try it on with you?’ Anna asked, ready to tell her story.

‘He did. And we’re going to go for a drink tonight when he finishes.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Anna asked. ‘He’s so young.’

Nia sighed. ‘God, so what? I’m not planning to marry him. But it’s a long time since I slept with a twenty-seven-year-old and I wouldn’t mind reminding myself what that’s like.’

Anna was quiet. It wasn’t up to her what Nia did.

But over the years, their job had been to protect one another, to give advice.

Shouldn’t she let Nia know that this guy was sleazy, that he hit on every woman who went to order drinks?

Or didn’t it matter? She decided to say nothing.

And she allowed herself to feel quietly hurt that his interest in her had been nothing to do with her, after all.

That night, Anna phoned home before bedtime, like always.

The Wi-Fi in their hotel room wasn’t strong enough for a video connection and it was strange to hear her boys’ voices without being able to see their faces.

After telling her a bit about their days, they disappeared to watch TV and it was just her and Edward.

‘I think Nia’s about to start a fling with the barman,’ she said.

Edward laughed. ‘Of course she is. That’s so Nia.’

He trusted her completely, she thought. There wasn’t a flicker of worry in his voice. It wouldn’t cross his mind that she might sleep with the barman, or anyone else.

‘We miss you,’ he said, after a pause.

Anna felt tears prick her eyes. He hadn’t said that before. Had she? She’d said it to the boys, but not to him. But she did miss him, she realised. She missed him more than she’d expected to.

‘I miss you, too.’

There was a silence, and she wondered whether they’d been cut off.

But then she heard Edward’s voice again.

‘Sam made me show him where you are on the globe, and then he said it looked so close that maybe you could come home to give him a kiss at bedtime. So that kickstarted a discussion about how big the world is and how far away countries are from each other.’

‘Are they okay, the boys? School and everything?’

‘Did Sam tell you he lost a tooth?’

Anna felt a pang. The first time he’d lost a tooth, she’d sat on her bed after he’d gone to sleep, holding it in her hand and silently weeping.

It was a rite of passage she struggled with, parts of her children’s bodies falling out and being replaced.

She wished she was there to hold him, take in the clean scent of his warm neck, to be the one to sneak into his room in the middle of the night to replace his tooth with a coin.

‘You won’t forget to do the tooth fairy thing, will you?’

‘I won’t. We’re fine, Anna. But we’re ready for you to come home.’

Anna nodded, although she knew he couldn’t see her. She was ready to go home too, she thought. It had taken five days of doing exactly what she wanted to realise that she quite liked what she already had.

‘I’ll see you soon,’ she said.

‘See you soon. Oh, and Anna?’

‘Yes?’

‘Happy anniversary.’