Alice looked down at her strange wrinkled hands. “What’s gone wrong between us?” she asked quietly.

There was no answer. Alice looked up and saw that Elisabeth had closed her eyes and put her head back against the couch. She looked exhausted and sad.

Finally she spoke without opening her eyes. “We really should go to bed.”

Chapter 19

It was five-thirty p.m., Sunday afternoon. In half an hour Nick would be home with the children.

Alice had a sick, excited feeling in her stomach as if she were going on a first date.

She’d been wearing a pretty floral dress and makeup, her hair all fluffy and motherly, when she decided that she was trying too hard. Presumably she didn’t normally dress up like a 1950s mother at a fancy-dress party. So she’d run back upstairs and scrubbed off the makeup, and pulled the dress over her head in mad panic. She’d found jeans and a white T-shirt, and flattened her hair. No jewelry except for Nick’s bracelet and her wedding ring, which she’d found at the back of a drawer, together with Granny Love’s engagement ring. It had been yet another fresh shock to find these symbols of her marriage carelessly tossed in with her underwear. She remembered when Nick had placed the wedding ring on her finger for the first time. Most grooms were clumsy at this point, grinning goofily, soft chuckles from the guests, but Nick had smoothly, tenderly slid it onto her finger in one go, his eyes locked on hers; she’d been proud. He was so dexterous.

With this ring I thee wed . . .

. . . until I thee divorce.

She wondered why she hadn’t given the awful engagement ring back. Wasn’t the ring normally torn from the finger and thrown at the man’s face in a fit of rage at some point during a divorce?

She looked at herself in the bedroom mirror. This was much better, casual, unaffected—although her face looked pale and very old; she resisted an intense longing to go through that amazing dab, dab, slap, slap routine again that transformed her face. Surely she didn’t normally wear makeup on a Sunday night at home.

Earlier in the day, after Elisabeth and Ben had gone home, it had suddenly occurred to Alice that it was presumably her responsibility to feed those three children. She had called her mother and asked her what she should cook for dinner, saying she wanted to cook their favorite thing. Barb had spent a full twenty minutes discussing each child’s dietary idiosyncrasies throughout their lives. “Remember when Madison went through that vegetarian stage? And of course it would have to be at the same time that Tom was just refusing to eat any vegetable. Then Olivia couldn’t decide whether she should only eat vegetables, like Madison, or refuse to eat vegetables, like Tom! Oh, you were tearing your hair out every tea time!” At last, after much changing of her mind, she’d finally settled on homemade hamburgers. “I think you found a healthy recipe in your Heart Foundation recipe book. You were saying just the other week that you were sick to death of it but the children can’t get enough of it. I’m sure you remember that, don’t you, darling? Because it was only last week.”

Alice had found the recipe book and it had opened straight at the right food-splattered page. All the ingredients were in her amazingly well-stocked freezer and pantry. It seemed like there was enough there to feed hundreds of children. As she made the mince for the hamburgers, she realized she wasn’t looking at the recipe book anymore. She seemed to know that now she grated in two carrots, one zucchini, now she added two eggs. Once it was ready, she had put the mince back in the fridge, defrosted rolls ready to be toasted, and made a green salad. Would the children eat a green salad? Who knew? She and Nick could eat it. He would stay for dinner, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t just drop the children off and leave? But she had an awful feeling that was exactly what divorced parents did. She’d just have to ask him to please stay. Beg him, if necessary. She couldn’t be left alone with the children. It wasn’t safe. She didn’t know the procedures. For example, did they bath themselves? Did she read them stories? Sing them songs? When was bedtime? And how was it enforced?

She went back downstairs in her jeans and looked around her gleaming, beautiful house. Two cleaners had turned up at the door at midday, laden with mops and buckets, asking how the party had gone as they plugged in vacuum cleaners. They’d scrubbed and polished while Alice had wandered vaguely about, feeling embarrassed and not sure what she was meant to be doing. Should she help? Get out of the way? Supervise? Hide the valuables? She had her purse ready to give them however much they asked for, but there had been no request for money. They told her they’d see her on Thursday at the usual time and disappeared, waving cheerily. She’d closed the door behind them, breathed in the smell of furniture polish, and thought, “I am a woman with a swimming pool, air-conditioning, and cleaners.”

Now she looked about the kitchen and her eyes fell on a rack of wine. She should have a bottle open and breathing for Nick. She selected a bottle, went to get a corkscrew, and realized that the bottle didn’t have a cork. Instead she unscrewed a normal bottle top. How funny. The smell of the wine hit her nostrils and she found she was pouring herself a glass. She buried her nose in it. Part of her mind thought, “What are you doing, you tosser?” Another part thought, “Mmmm. Blackberries.”

The wine slid smoothly down her throat and she wondered if she’d turned into an alcoholic. It wasn’t even six o’clock. She’d never been much of a wine drinker. Yet drinking this wine felt right and familiar, even as it felt strange and wrong. Maybe that’s why Nick had left her and wanted custody of the children. She’d become a drunk. Nobody knew, except for Nick and her children. It was a terrible secret. Well, but couldn’t she just get help? Join AA and follow those twelve steps? Never touch a drop again? She took another sip and tapped her fingers on the countertop. Soon she would see him and then the mystery of all this would finally be solved. It wasn’t logical, but she had a strong feeling that the moment she saw Nick’s face her entire memory would land back in her head, fully intact.

Dominick had turned up again this afternoon. He had takeaway hot chocolates in a tray and tiny polenta cakes (she had a feeling they were her favorites and acted accordingly grateful). She’d been surprised by the pleasure she’d felt when she saw him standing at the door. Maybe it was because of his somewhat nervy demeanor. It made her feel like she was adored. Nick adored her, but she adored him back, so it was equal. Talking to Dominick made her feel as if every word she said was somehow amazing.