Page 36 of The Life She Could Have Lived
Edward was standing at the bar when she arrived, one cocktail in his hand and another on the bar.
‘For me?’ she asked.
‘For you.’
She smiled and picked up the delicate glass. ‘What is it?’
‘Something with vodka and pomegranate juice. Same as mine.’
Anna took a sip and put it back. ‘So what are we seeing?’
‘Blood Brothers,’ Edward said.
It was her favourite show. Edward knew that, but he’d never agreed to see it with her before. Musicals weren’t really his thing. Edward didn’t know that she’d last seen it with Steve, almost a year ago. It was the closest they’d come to having a date. He’d come over to the house and said that a friend had given him tickets and Theresa didn’t like theatre, and he remembered her saying she likedBlood Brothers, and did she want to go with him? Theresa had offered to have the kids. Anna had thought that Theresa probably wouldn’t have offered to babysit while Annawent out with her husband if she knew the contents of Anna’s brain when it came to Steve. She’d also thought that she had no recollection of telling Steve she likedBlood Brothers. But they’d covered a lot of ground in conversation while the kids played on the floor over the years. And so they’d gone. They’d drunk slightly warm white wine in the interval and then sung the songs on the way back to the Tube. And Anna had tried not to think about kissing him, or about reaching out for his warm hand.
In the theatre, Edward went to find the toilets and Anna tried to decide whether she should order interval drinks. In the end, she bought a big bag of Minstrels instead. They had good seats, in the stalls, and when they were sitting down waiting for the show to start, Edward took her hand in his, lifted it to his mouth and kissed it.
Anna leaned closer to him and whispered. She couldn’t help herself. ‘What is all this?’ He’d clearly gone to some effort. Booking the tickets, finding a babysitter.
Edward looked a little hurt. ‘I just wanted to treat you. I know how hard you work, you know, with the boys and your job. I know you bear the brunt of it.’
Anna was surprised. They had settled into their own routine, as all parents did. There were things she did, things he did. She often felt that she did more, but she hadn’t realised Edward was aware of it. When he’d come back, she’d thought it was a chance for them to reset, to start again from scratch. But they hadn’t, of course. They’d fallen into the same patterns, the same routines. She leaned in to speak again, but just then the curtains swept open and the show started. She didn’t think about what Edward had said again until they were walking out at the end.
‘What did you think?’ she asked.
‘It was okay.’
Anna smiled. He was incapable of lying convincingly.
‘Did you hate it?’
‘No, I didn’t hate it. It’s just… you know it’s not really my thing. But I did enjoy seeing how much you loved it.’
Anna felt a flip inside when he said that. A couple of times, he’d taken her to football and she’d been cold and not really understood or cared what was happening on the pitch, but she’d loved seeing his enthusiasm for it, seeing the way he came alive.
‘So, about what you said just before, about me bearing the brunt?’
They were outside then, carried along by the crowd and pushed out into the warm evening.
‘Yes?’ Edward said.
She pulled him round a corner, away from the crowds, so they could talk. ‘I never felt like you noticed. It’s so hard, you know, trying to fit in work and the boys…’
‘That’s why I think you should give it up,’ Edward said.
‘Give what up?’
‘Work. It’s too much. You’re going to burn yourself out.’
Anna didn’t say anything. She had hoped he was going to offer to take on more of the domestic drudgery. But they were back to this, his preference for her to stay at home and be a wife and mum and nothing else. Internally, she examined why she was so reluctant. There were parts of her that loved being a mum, and sometimes she wished she didn’t have to go to work, wished she wasn’t always rushing. When she dropped the boys at nursery, sometimes they cried and asked her not to go. Those mornings she could see a different life, one in which there was time for second pieces of toast and slow games of snap.
And in September, Thomas would go to school and everything would change again. She’d already signed up for the school’s breakfast club and after-school care with a heavy heart, thinking of how long the days would be for him, and she keptmeaning to talk to her boss about cutting down by another day. Wouldn’t this be the answer to so many of those problems? She could spend her days at home with Sam, and they could take Thomas to school and pick him up. She could be one of those mums at the gate, who she imagined chatted and swapped stories and always had time to go to the park.
But it came down to this: she didn’t want that. She wanted to work, to feel she had a purpose beyond being a mum. She wanted her boys to grow up in a house where both their parents worked, so that they might expect that when they settled down themselves. She wanted to feel a part of something, a useful cog in the machine. She wanted to have something for after they were grown up and gone, something more than an empty house and regrets.
Edward had taken her hand and they were walking towards the Tube, quiet.
‘It’s not what I want,’ Anna said eventually.
