The wrong man, p.1
The Wrong Man, page 1
THE WRONG MAN
AMANDA BROOKFIELD
CONTENTS
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Acknowledgments
More from Amanda Brookfield
About the Author
Also by Amanda Brookfield
About Boldwood Books
FOREWORD
‘The Wrong Man’ is a revised version of a novel called ‘Walls of Glass’, which I wrote thirty years ago. It tells the story of a mother of two small children who dares to own up to the unhappiness of what everyone around her assumes is a blissful married life. No one greets her revelations well, least of all her husband…
It is a strange business meeting your younger writing self. It catapults you back, not just to the task of writing that particular book, but also to where you were – physically and mentally – at the time. At the time of writing this story I was a happily married thirty-one-year-old with two little boys, settling back into London after a decade of living abroad. Life was good. I found it an enjoyable challenge to create Jane Lytton, a woman at a similar life-stage to me, but in a contrastingly panic-stricken state of realisation that she has taken the most terrible wrong road.
Destinies turn on pin-heads. The paths we choose are so often ‘Plan B’. There are things waiting for us round corners. Good things, bad things. This is one of the reasons I am drawn to storytelling. Jane Lytton had lost her way, but I could help her find it again.
Back out in the real world, of course, resolving the ‘plot-twists’ of our own lives can be somewhat trickier; a fact reinforced for me when my own marriage imploded eighteen years on from having conjured up the experience for Jane. Re-reading the novel three decades later has therefore been unnerving. Jane Lytton’s circumstances were entirely different from mine, but all the big emotions rang true. To have got so much right! Without a crystal ball! Yikes. Talk about the mysteries of creativity…
Or maybe there are no mysteries. Maybe the answer is simply that the dilemmas I threw across Jane Lytton’s path are ones that we all face in different guises as our lives unfold; dilemmas to do with love, sacrifice, loyalty, loss, to name but a few. Relationships lie at the core of our well-being. Each one of us is feeling his or her way along, on a perpetual quest to find joy and equilibrium. And as with my fictional heroine, we are blind not just to the pitfalls, but also to the happy endings – or beginnings! – that might lie in store.
In many ways Jane Lytton was ahead of her time – finding the courage to speak out in a world which still expected a woman to stay silent and put her own happiness last. I have not changed the original story; but revisiting it has been a wonderful opportunity to craft it into the best version of itself that it could be, including giving it a new, punchier jacket and title. The single life suits many; but the question of whether – how! – to find ‘Mr/Ms Right’ always hovers in the shadows. Invariably, it as much about luck as good judgement. The only certainty is that there are no easy answers, or crystal balls.
Amanda Brookfield May 2023
In Memory of Lucy
1
As Pippa pushed open the rusting black gate, its lopsided hinge emitted a strangled screech that sent tiny vibrations shooting down into the roots of her teeth. After a few moments of standing at the front door, she remembered that Jane and Michael’s bell no longer worked and rapped briskly on the splintery wood. Pippa’s own home, an airy four-bedroomed Edwardian house in Dulwich, was lovingly repainted and cleaned in a methodical way throughout each year, so she could not resist a silent tut-tut or two at the sight of the Lyttons’ obvious neglect of their own property. But at the same time, she loved – and almost admired – them for it. It took courage to neglect things, she sometimes thought, a courage which she lacked completely.
‘Coming,’ shouted Jane from somewhere deep inside the house.
Pippa got out her handbag mirror to check her bun; her hair was so fine that it slipped out of the pins and clasps no matter how many she applied. She smiled quite warmly at her reflection, not out of vanity (she was not beautiful – her nose was too pointy and her mouth too thin), but because she was happy. She always enjoyed taking time out of her carefully constructed bustle of domesticity to visit Jane and the children in all their glorious chaos. And on this occasion she had some rather exciting news to impart, when the moment was right.
The door burst open, giving Pippa a snapshot impression of the familial warmth and brightness within.
‘Heavens,’ exclaimed Jane, pushing her thick, dark fringe from her eyes and hoicking baby Harriet higher on to her hip, ‘is it eleven already? Lovely to see you, Pip – come in. Mind the trains – Tom has spent all morning building the longest train in the world, haven’t you, love?’ She stooped to stroke her son’s messy brush of hair, before leading the way through to the kitchen. ‘You look well, Pippa – you make me feel a total wreck – which I am – roll on the spring term – coffee or tea?’
‘I’d love some tea.’ But more than that, she wanted to hold Harriet, who was pudgy and square and smiley.
‘Could you take the baby, do you think?’ Jane, who knew of the Crofts’ fruitless – and now abandoned – quest to have a child of their own, was never sure whether to push her offspring onto Pippa or keep them at bay. ‘I almost burnt Harriet with the kettle once, trying to juggle cups and things – it was when the health visitor was here – which was lucky, if you see what I mean.’
Jane moved deftly round her cramped but cosy kitchen, the soles of her black plimsolls squeaking on the cracked linoleum floor. Being so petite, she had a tendency to make Pippa, who was by no means tall, feel clumsy and large. She wore a green hairband that morning, a thin strip of dark velvet that did little to control the glossy jumble of her hair, but which drew attention to the brilliant emerald of her eyes, so deeply set into the pale, elfin face. Pippa had always thought Jane very striking to look at, not in a way that made her envious, but so that she couldn’t help wanting to stare. To manage to look scruffy but attractive was an achievement far beyond Pippa’s own aspirations, as was Jane Lytton’s way of appearing higgledy-piggledy but happy. Pippa knew herself to be incapable of reconciling such opposites. For her, happiness was impossible without orderliness, just as attractiveness was out of the question without a good deal of thought and attention to detail.
The little L-shaped kitchen always reminded Pippa of a fully equipped caravan – everything was reachable and functioning so long as it stayed in its correct place; one thing left out or put away badly threw the whole system into chaos. Tom’s paintings, together with innumerable creations made out of tin-foil, cardboard and string, filled every inch of space between the bulging cupboards and shelves, giving the effect of some crazy wallpaper of modern art. Along the window sill which overlooked the back garden, several trailing plants fought for space amongst pots of herbs, cookery books and a large bowl overflowing with safety-pins, paper-clips and rubber-bands.
‘Any news of the extension?’ she enquired brightly. Ever since the Lyttons had moved to Cobham, a couple of years before, they had been talking of building on at the back.
Jane sighed. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Pip. It’s so much money. Michael says we’d be better off moving again, but it’s a bad time to sell because the economy is so rubbish – we just go round in circles when we talk about it. I’ve rather given up, to be honest.’ She sat down at the small pine table opposite Pippa and stirred milk into their mugs of tea. Thinking about the extension only made her cross. The move out of London had been her idea to begin with, but Michael had got very enthusiastic in the end. They both fell in love – as she remembered it – with the cottagey feel of number 23, Meadowbrook Road and had enjoyed making plans to improve and enlarge it. But when their requests for planning permission ran into trouble, Michael started to go sour on the whole project. His recollection of their house-moving episode was now based on the belief that Jane had pressurised him into making a decision before he was ready. Perhaps she had. Perhaps he was right. Jane wasn’t sure any more. She wasn’t sure about a lot of things.
‘Well, Tim said that Michael is keen on going ahead, even though you’ve still only got permission to add on one room.’
‘Really?’ Jane wondered if other wives found out quite so much of their husbands’ thoughts from other people. She laughed quickly, before issuing an automatic excuse for her ignorance. ‘Michael’s been working very hard recently – it makes him absent-minded – I keep telling him he’ll leave his head at the of fice one day and not just his briefcase.’
‘At least that bank of his has eased up on the travelling side of things. When Tim’s gone it’s for weeks at a time. His trips are longer than the holidays he’s selling.’ Pippa sighed. ‘I do get lonely, you know,’ she added in a bleating baby voice to Harriet, who looked puzzled and put Pippa’s amber necklace in her mouth by way of a response.
‘She’s teething, as you can see,’ said Jane, offering her daughter a rusk. She hoped Pippa was not going to start on about the wearing demands of Travelmania – the tourist business that Tim had started after leaving the city, which boasted exotic trips at affordable prices. Pippa was unremittingly sweet, but prattled on a bit sometimes, in the way that some people did if they had no burning commitments in the hours ahead. During the early years of their acquaintance, when Jane had not progressed much beyond filing tasks for Moretons publishers, Pippa had an enviably pressurised job as PA to the managing director of a prestigious London advertising agency. But after a couple of years of failing to conceive a child, Pippa’s doctor had warned that stress at work might be taking its toll on her hormones and recommended that she take a break. Though her resignation from the agency was billed very much as a temporary measure, taken for prudence’s sake alone, it somehow became permanent and – like the desire for babies that had prompted it – impossible to discuss. The instant success of Tim’s business seemed to erase the last traces of a possibility that Pippa might return to work. She even started hinting, with wry little smiles, that Tim would disallow such a thing – as if it had become one of those male-pride issues that she had decided to indulge rather than resist.
While Pippa talked about Tim’s long absences, Jane tried but failed to keep her mind from drifting upstairs to the five or six loads of washing that lay strewn across the landing and bedroom floors, together with the thought of Tom’s wet mattress, which needed scrubbing and drying before the smell of pee was completely absorbed into its soft foam interior. As her musings moved on to an alarmingly broad shopping list of food, clothes and shoes, she began to wonder vaguely why Pippa had been so insistent on inviting herself over and how long she was planning on staying. Since their relationship had arisen from the longstanding friendship between their husbands rather than any instinctive liking for each other, what intimacy they managed never felt entirely natural.
Having quietly wished Pippa was gone Jane immediately felt guilty and invited her to stay for lunch.
‘Oh, I’d love to, if I won’t be in your way.’
Harriet was wriggling impatiently, clearly bored with her allotted lap and looking for new distractions. Soggy rusk stuck in blobs to her face and bib. A few gooey fingerprints were visible on Pippa’s fluffy jumper. She tried to wipe them with a tissue when Jane wasn’t looking, but Jane had already seen and was ready with a damp cloth and apologies on behalf of her daughter.
‘Silly of me to wear it, I know.’
‘It was certainly a little optimistic to visit this house in such a lovely thing.’ Jane touched the soft grey wool with the back of her hand, suddenly conscious of the grubbiness of her own sweatshirt and faded jeans.
‘Tim gave it to me. It’s got llama in it or something. He brought it back from Peru – for my birthday,’ she added shyly.
Jane clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh Pippa, I forgot, you should have told me. Oh no, I feel awful.’
Pippa was blushing, regretting a little that she had dared to mention it.
‘It’s only a wretched birthday. Thirty-eight is not exactly a reason to celebrate – especially not in my case.’
‘But of course it matters. I mind terribly about my birthdays. I love presents and being taken out to dinner and all that sort of thing—’ Jane stopped quickly, remembering that her birthday that year had been quite horrible. It was a Saturday. Tom, wanting to mark the occasion, had promised to deliver breakfast in bed to both his parents. Michael had to be forced not to go down and intervene while the smell of burnt toast curled its way up the stairs. The toast was quite black, heaving with butter, but otherwise okay. The boiled eggs had been put into water in a saucepan but never boiled. Jane, who was relieved that Tom had heeded six years of warnings about never touching the knobs on the stove, even given the desire to cook an egg, bravely cut the top off her runny offering and dipped a wedge of the charcoaled bread into the grey-yellow slime. Tom stood in solemn silence, watching from the end of the bed.
‘Tom,’ said Michael, ‘you haven’t cooked the eggs. This isn’t cooked, see?’ He picked up his egg and held it out. ‘It’s still cold. When you cook something, it goes hot. But these are all liquid inside, so Mummy and I can’t eat them.’
But Mummy, charged with a fierce reflex of protective love, was spooning large dollops of the phlegmy offering into her mouth and rolling her eyes with pleasure.
‘Jesus, Jane – how could you?’ said Michael with a laugh. ‘You’ll be sick.’ He turned back to his son, still smiling. ‘Well tried, Tom – just ask for help next time, okay?’
But it was not okay, as Jane had known it would not be. Tom’s day was ruined. Her day was ruined. Just one mouthful would have been enough, just one mouthful for love’s sake. But he wasn’t like that, her husband. Michael liked things one way or another, black or white, like his tables of figures at work. If something wasn’t cooked that was meant to be cooked, you didn’t eat it – whatever the circumstances. Such an attitude no doubt worked wonders in meeting rooms, when heady negotiations for debt rescheduling and long-term loans hung in the balance, but it did not do so well at home. Michael, who felt it was wrong to be chastised for honesty, said that Jane, as usual, was being over-protective of their first-born, refused to melt and admit he had been wrong. Jane, out of some kind of inverted revenge, refused to go out to dinner. Michael ate bread and cheese watching telly while she pretended to read upstairs.
‘There’s nothing more depressing than a bad birthday,’ Jane told Pippa firmly, shaking off the memory. ‘I bet Tim’s got something lovely lined up for tonight.’
‘He usually gets tickets for a show or something, but he never lets on till the last minute. One of those funny rituals we long-married couples go through… though, actually…’ Pippa got up to look out of the window, her fingers fiddling absently with the yellow beads of her necklace, ‘Tim has been a little moody recently. I know he’s a bit of a one for sulks – not like Michael at all – but this time I really feel something is up.’ She eyed Jane, who was stacking the dish-washer very busily behind her. ‘He hasn’t said anything to Michael, I suppose?’
‘Not that I know of.’ Jane pulled a bottle of white wine out of the fridge door. ‘Let’s celebrate just a little. It’s only supermarket stuff, but quite nice. I’ve got lots of tail ends of smelly cheeses to go with it. A birthday lunch of sorts.’
‘You’re very kind, Jane. I don’t know where I’d be without you.’
Such comments always threw Jane off balance, since she never felt able to respond in kind. Pippa was a friend, but not one that she relied on totally. Not like Julia, say, whom Jane had known since school and whose presence in her life – usually down the end of a phone line – was intermittent but vital. Like Pippa, Julia had no children, but didn’t mind at all. She was not married either, or even close to it. Having recently opened her own antiques shop in North London, she was totally involved with that.
With Pippa, there had always been a subtle imbalance in the relationship, brought on by Pippa’s at times embarrassing admiration for Jane’s marriage to her husband’s best friend. The fact that the Lyttons had managed to have children quite effortlessly only heightened Pippa’s perception of their marital bliss, at the same time fostering a tic of awkwardness between the two women which no amount of goodwill could entirely smooth away.
