The Wife Before Me(4)
He was tall and boisterous, she now remembers. A loud laugh and a deep voice lulling her to sleep with bedtime stories; but his youthfulness had never featured in those memories. In time, as she had grown accustomed to the silence he left behind, she had resented the grief that shadowed Isabelle’s eyes and lined her face prematurely. On Sunday afternoons while deep in her rebellious phase, Elena would grit her teeth against her mother’s silent reproach as she prepared to leave for the cemetery. Why didn’t mourning have a cut-off point, a stage that made further suffering impossible, she would wonder, headphones clasped to her ears, My Chemical Romance vocalising her angst. Now, they are together again, Isabelle and Joseph Langdon; just a layer of mud and stone separates their coffins – but this thought does nothing to dull her sorrow.
Rosemary Williams rings to remind her that they have an appointment at KHM Investments, and she forces herself to shower and shampoo her hair. Isabelle’s last will and testament, handled by Rosemary as a favour to her friend, is a straightforward document and far removed from the intricate contracts she handles on a daily basis. But she shows no sign that this reading is of any less importance when she greets Elena at reception. They travel upwards in the elevator to the eighth floor and enter her glass-walled office.
‘Are you eating?’ she asks when Elena is seated in front of her.
‘Most of the time,’ Elena assures her. ‘I’m so busy sorting through Isabelle’s clothes and things…’ She clears her throat and wills herself not to cry.
‘This is a tough time, Elena, and it will get tougher before it gets better,’ Rosemary warns her. ‘Have you someone special in Australia—’
‘No.’ Elena shakes her head, vehemently. ‘But, honestly, I’ll be okay.’
‘You’re so like Isabelle. Stoic.’
Rosemary opens a folder and draws out documents that she lays on her desk. ‘It’s no harm to cry when you feel like it. I know you’re still in shock. I’m so sorry I had to break such sad news to you over the phone.’
‘Don’t apologise, Rosemary. What else could you do?’
A cruel hoax, Elena had believed when she answered her phone in the early hours of that morning and tried to understand what Rosemary was telling her. But it was no hoax, just the shattering discovery that her mother had been rushed to hospital after suffering a bad reaction to her chemotherapy.
‘What chemotherapy?’ Elena had demanded. ‘She never said anything to me about starting chemo.’
‘Didn’t you know she’d been receiving treatment?’ Rosemary had been unable to hide her surprise. ‘She said you knew. I assumed that’s why you planned to come home?’
‘Her test was clear, that’s what she told me.’ Elena reached across the bed to the empty space where Zac should have been lying. ‘How seriously ill is she?’
Rosemary hesitated and in that brief pause Elena realised that her mother had been deceiving her for months. Small things that had puzzled her began to make sense. Isabelle’s forced heartiness when Elena asked how her smear test had gone. Her decision to take time off work that, she claimed, was due to burnout. Her excuses for not Skyping Elena, some vague problem with her broadband that never seemed to get sorted. Her evasive answers whenever Elena asked when she was coming to see her in Australia, dithering for weeks over which airline to use and the cost of the ticket. Her tears when Elena said she would fly home instead. Tears of relief, obviously, but Elena had been too preoccupied with her own problems to figure it out. And that final phone conversation when it was Elena, not Isabelle, who wept as she poured out her heartache and promised to rebook her flight as soon as it was possible to fly.
‘I couldn’t understand why you cancelled your flight,’ said Rosemary. ‘I wanted to contact you and explain how serious her illness was but Isabelle insisted I keep it a secret. It’s important that you come home now. Hurry, Elena. She needs you by her side.’
She had booked her flight in the morning and was packing to leave for the airport when Rosemary rang her back. As soon as she spoke, Elena knew she would be too late to say goodbye to her mother.
How could she not have guessed that something was wrong? Not read between the lines of Isabelle’s cheerful emails or linked into the mother-and-daughter bond that made words between them unnecessary? Now, when it is too late to make amends, Elena is dazed to discover how much money she has inherited.
Brookside, Isabelle’s bungalow, which is mortgage-free, belongs to her, along with all her mother’s savings and the investments she made through KHM. Elena, at the age of twenty-five, has become a wealthy woman. She can return to Brisbane and buy a house on the beach. She can give up her boring job as a junior account executive and establish her own company. A bodyboarding and surfing centre, boat tours on the Barrier Reef, a boutique specialising in exclusive beachwear. Her scattered thoughts fill her with exhaustion rather than elation.
She stares down at the Liffey as the river flows between the renovated docklands. Dublin keeps changing. She has been away for only three years, yet she feels like a stranger in the city.
The documents are signed and she is about to leave Rosemary’s office when the door opens.
‘I’m sorry, Rosemary. I didn’t realise you were busy.’ Elena identifies him instantly by his voice. That glance across the grave… even in the midst of her distress, she has been unable to forget it. When she turns round Nicholas Madison is hesitating in the doorway. ‘It’s not important,’ he says. ‘I can come back―’ He stops when he recognises her.