Page 10 of My Husband's Wife
‘No, my husband-to-be has just gone to change the baby. It’s typical, as soon as you walk out the door they fill a nappy.’
‘They tend to do that. It’s been a few years for me but I remember it well. It’s like they know,’ I reply with a sympathetic smile. ‘I’ll make a drink. I have espresso, latte, hot chocolate, tea, soft drinks…’ I grab a cup in readiness.
‘Your assistant already made us drinks.’
I glance at the table and see two cups with steam curling out of them. ‘Ah, that’s great. How old is your little one?’
‘She’s three months old.’
‘How lovely.’
Just as I’m about to start talking babies there is a tap at the door. ‘That’ll be Theo.’ Then he enters, holding the baby.
He goes to hold his free hand out to shake mine. ‘Lovely to meet you,’ he says.
I stare like I’ve never stared before. The cup I’m holding hits the floor and the handle crashes into the side of the cabinet and flies under my desk. The air has been sucked out of my lungs and I can’t stop gasping. I look down, thinking that I’m having some unexplainable moment but I’m not. I saw right – the man in front of me is Hugo, my dead husband.
Eight
I can barely move. It’s as if my shoes have been filled with concrete and the effect is spreading up my ankles and past my knees. All I can do is stare. Where is the shock in his face? I can barely contain mine but the man standing in front of me seems emotionless.
‘Eva, are you okay? Are you ill?’ Madison hurries over and leads me to my seat.
‘I, err…’ I don’t know what to say. If I blurt out that the man she’s about to marry is my dead husband, Hugo, she’ll think I’m insane. Does she know? Is all this some sort of set-up? I take a breath and remind myself that I’m new here. Hugo wouldn’t have thought for one minute that I could be his wedding planner, so this can’t be a set-up. I stare at Hugo again, looking for the slightest hint of recognition, but he isn’t giving anything away from behind those fake round glasses he’s wearing. All he does is bob from foot to foot, trying to comfort their baby who is starting to whimper. A lump sticks in my throat. He’s not only alive, but also he has a baby and he’s about to marry someone else. Were Caiden and I so easy to discard? How did he do it?
‘Can I get you some water?’
I should be looking after Madison and all her wedding needs and desires; she shouldn’t be looking after me. ‘No, no. I just felt a little dizzy, that’s all. I skipped lunch.’ Now I feel guilty for saying that. I don’t find lying easy. I despise lies but I can’t exactly tell them what I’m thinking – I mean seeing. My head feels as though it’s stuffed with cotton wool. From the way he’s parted his hair to the black jagged mole on his neck, all I see in the man in front of me is Hugo. His nose is the same as our son’s nose. My hands keep jittering away and there’s nothing I can do to control that.
The baby starts crying. ‘Should we come back another time, when you’re feeling better?’ The tone of Theo’s voice matches Hugo’s. Hugo never had an accent and Theo doesn’t either. I barely come across an accentless person. That man is my husband. He didn’t die.
I frown, not even trying to mask my confusion. There was a DNA test on Hugo’s body. DNA doesn’t lie. It can’t be him. That’s what science and logic say, but he’s here. How?
‘Eva, I think Theo might be right. We should do this another time.’ Madison bends over and picks up a part of my broken cup, placing it gently on the desk.
I don’t want to jeopardise this job. Since buying the house, we’ve ploughed every penny into it. If I’m fired, we’ll lose our home too. Hallie will be waiting for me to tell her how the meeting went and I don’t want to let her or my employer down. Maybe this is all a bizarre coincidence. I’ve been ill in the past. That’s it. It’s just an episode of something I have no control over and I need to get a grip. ‘I’m feeling better. So sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me.’ I grab a fudge sweet from my drawer and quickly eat it. ‘I just need some sugar and I’ll be right as rain.’ After chewing on it, I struggle to swallow but I do. ‘Right, where were we?’
The baby’s cries turn into red-faced bawls. ‘I think I’ll just take her for a walk, try to get her off to sleep.’ Theo pulls a pram from the other side of my room, places the wriggling baby into it and quickly leaves.
‘Sorry, I guess it’s just us now,’ Madison says.
I need to know more because right now, I don’t trust my own mind. ‘So, how long have you been together?’
She scrunches her brow and returns my smile. ‘We met three years ago. Theo does computer repairs and a friend of mine recommended him. I thought I’d lost all my spreadsheets but Theo managed to rescue them. When I dropped it off at his house, I almost wanted to turn back. This little house in the middle of nowhere was overgrown and then a bearded man opened up and looked like some sort of hermit who hadn’t seen daylight for weeks.’ She let out a laugh. ‘I’m not selling him well, am I?’
Hugo had never been unkempt. Although he had graduated in computer science before falling into a job selling agricultural machinery for a living. His fitted suits and tidy hair were such an entrenched part of his identity. He’d always insisted on being cleanshaven even though the general trend for men his age was to have some facial hair. He hated anything fussy, whether it was an awkward watch strap, a stray hair or a jagged fingernail. ‘It sounds like a charming meeting,’ I force myself to say. I lean in a little, prompting her to continue.
‘It wasn’t an instant spark. I had to take that dratted laptop back three more times, then he admitted he’d done something to it because he wanted me to come back. That sounds odd, doesn’t it? All I can say is, he didn’t come across as creepy or controlling. It was his only way of ever seeing me again. It wasn’t as if he’d ever bump into me at the pub with him not leaving the cottage. We talked, we dated – by dated, he cooked for me at his place. Over a few months, I fell in love with him. Life has been hard because of his agoraphobia but he’s a lot better now since he started therapy. He came here today; he comes to the salon I own and we’re getting married. He’s come a long way from working in his house and only having food delivered, to planning a wedding. Fingers crossed; we’ve been discussing a honeymoon.’
‘Wow, that’s an amazing story.’ I’m guessing he didn’t want his past identity exposed which is why he never left the house. The word DNA flashes through my mind again. Theo can’t be Hugo. I’m seriously losing it and I need to do my job. ‘How many guests are you looking at inviting?’
‘On my side, friends and family – about fifty. As for Theo’s side, I’d say about ten. He has no family. There will be sixty guests at the most.’
‘No family?’ I think of Hugo’s mum and sister, who live in Birmingham.
‘I know, it’s all so sad. He lost his family in a house fire. Ours won’t be the biggest of weddings and, because of that, I was talking to Theo and I think we might go for the silver package. I think we’d like a more generous menu and drinks package. Oh, and can we have a garden ceremony? Theo doesn’t like to be confined when there’s a crowd. But it still needs to be intimate and contained, not too overwhelming for him, if you get what I mean.’
I realise there is a tinge of blood underneath my fingernail. I move my hands from my head and drop a strand of hair on the floor. Pulling hair out in front of a client isn’t a good look and when I’m anxious, I don’t know I’m doing it. I point out of my window, hoping she’ll look at the lovely view instead of my ruffled mane. ‘Of course, when we go over the bridge, there is a stunning pergola. I can also arrange for your flowers to be woven through an arch and yes, I totally get what you mean. We have all kinds of moveable trellises to create that intimate setting.’
