The Lost Wife

by Anna Mansell

Genres: Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Fans of Sheila O'Flanagan, Amanda Prowse and Jojo Moyes will love The Lost Wife, the compelling story of a woman's deepest secrets, and the friends and family who must learn to live without her.'An incredible, beautiful story of loss, love, forgiveness, moving on, overcoming grief, redemption and above all, hope.' Renita D'SilvaWhen Ellie Moran passes away, she leaves her newborn son and husband Ed behind her. Their marriage was perfect, their lives everything they had hoped for. So why was Ellie keeping secrets from Ed?Knowing he can never ask his wife the truth, Ed is struggling to cope. When the secrets threaten to tear his whole family apart, Ed turns to Rachel, the one person who sees him as more than just Ellie's widower.But then Rachel discovers something Ellie was hiding, something that would break Ed's heart. Can Rachel help Ed to find peace without the wife he lost – and a second chance at happiness?Read what everyone is saying about 'The Lost Wife':'Heartbreaking... I was absorbed... I put down the book thinking "This is it. This was perfect." Emotional doesn't even begin to describe this story... The Lost Wife is an exceptional and poignant tale of love.' Chocolate 'n' Waffles, 5 stars'This stunning book blew me away, I couldn't put it down... I was hooked from the start... This book has everything! It's very emotional, touching and moving!... A magnificent story.' Simona's Corner of Dreams, 5 stars'Oh Anna Mansell, what have you done to me, woman!!... Unbelievably beautiful... You NEED to read The Lost Wife.' The Writing Garnet, 5 stars.-

Release date: July 28, 2017

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 316

Sample

My wife gave me strict instructions in the event of her untimely death: no crying, no drinking, no sympathy sex with an ex. Her final crushed-velvet curtain should fall before a congregation wearing ‘Glitter-red shoes and sky-blue gingham, make that bit obvious on the invites, Ed.’ We didn’t establish the protocol regarding funeral invites as such, because, you know, why would we?

A big fan of The Wizard of Oz, she also wanted the original version of ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead’ played for a cast of perma-tanned small people to dance down a specially installed yellow-bricked aisle. I didn’t consider the logistics, or how impossible promises would be, because she wasn’t going to die. And now my head pounds, disbelieving tears replaced with dry, gut-wrenching sobs of pain and reality, which means I’ve broken promise one: no crying.

Despite crisp winter air stealing my breath, I can still detect the stench of whisky and wine and anything else I’ve found around our house, searching for something to dull the pain. Except no amount of alcohol works, it just makes me feel guilty that I’m drunk in charge of a baby. Promise two: no drinking… broken.

Maybe I should be grateful that I’ve no energy, will or inclination to break promise three. Ex or otherwise.

Four pitch-black-suited men lower her walnut casket six foot underground, and I resist sinking to my knees. I want to go down with her. I want to hide six foot under. I want this all to be over. I want the pale and solemn faces that surround me to leave. They’re another reminder that I did not do what she wanted: no gingham, no red shoes. I feel the punch in my heart again; on each and every level, I've got this wrong.

I’ve blocked out the vicar’s words, until now: ‘Let us commend Ellie Moran to the mercy of God…’ It’s too much.

My head feels a safer place. Sifting through memories that keep her alive, if only for a few more moments. Ignoring the questions I have about how we came to be here. Today is not the day.

The night she tabled her dark-humoured request was our house-warming, not more than nine months ago, a night of love and laughter and friends. After years of graft, we’d finally finished our forever home. We were on our third bottle of Chianti – drink shared among the group – and conversation flowed as easily as the wine. Ellie’s laughter infected us all to the point we could barely string a sentence together as we threw equally dark suggestions into the mix: a wake on a ranch-style farm; wind machines; a crafted prairie-house coffin; and my personal favourite – ashes scattered by Glinda the Good Witch. It’s easy to be flippant when you’re invincible.

‘We now commit her body to the ground…’

Happy memories flood and splinter the ache in my chest, sending it shooting through my body. We were going to die when we were old, we’d always said so. We’d agreed.

‘Earth to earth…’

We’d share a life together, raise a family. We’d enjoy a lengthy retirement ticking items off a bucket list, once-in-a-lifetime trips had she not done them already... patience was never her strong point.

‘Ashes to ashes…’

Maybe that’s why she was in my brother’s car? Because she couldn’t wait until I got there.

‘Dust to dust…’

If I hadn’t been stealing an hour’s sleep, despite her being the one up all night with Oli, she’d have asked me to take her out. We’d be together. She’d be alive. I wouldn’t be left with little else than a note on the kitchen table: Gone for fresh air, won’t be long. X

‘In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.’

We’d waved off our party guests, finally alone in our newly renovated forever home. Ellie had pendulum-waved an empty bottle in my direction. ‘Open another,’ she’d said, with a wink meant just for me.

‘Perhaps I should dress as the Tin Man,’ I’d joked, popping the cork from another red.

She’d flirted with the idea. We’d laughed. Later that night, we’d conceived Oli.

‘Amen.’

Mourners gather round. Faces I know, a few that I don’t. Simon, my brother, stands with Mum and Dad on either side. His eyes focused on the middle distance, he’s here but he’s not present. Lisa, his wife, stands behind them. Does she wonder why they were together that day? Has he explained? To her? To anyone? He hasn’t to me, he hasn’t even tried.

I rest my lips upon the softness of Oli’s newborn skull. When he arrived, less than two weeks ago, he and Ellie shared the same smell. If I take a breath, it’s almost like she’s still here. Beside me. Holding my hand as we say goodbye. So, I don’t take that breath. I can’t.

Why did I strap him to my chest when I can barely breathe as it is? All 8lb 6oz of perfection, snuffling like a truffle pig in his sling. Perhaps I shouldn’t use him as a tiny human shield.

I said I didn’t blame Simon. That’s what I told Mum and Dad. I said I knew it was an accident, that the investigation will prove that.

But even accidents can be avoided. Can’t they?

The vicar nods at me. With Bible in one hand, he offers his other out, palm up, inviting me forward. One step is enough to bring her resting place into view. I drop two crimson roses, their velvet petals deep and plush, down on to the brass plate with her name. One from me and one from our boy. My breath catches and my eyes sting. A stifled cry behind me makes me pause, and another moment of clarity presents: muddy wet layers of newly dug soil surround her, a smell we once loved. Gritty. Earthy. Evocative. On rain-soaked mornings we’d step outside and take a deep breath, our senses full. Because then the smell signalled life, new beginnings, the future. Now? It’s dirt and damp. It smells of the end. The End. A smell that will forever remind me that Ellie hated burials. Yet here I am, in the grounds of a church in Nottingham, laying my wife to rest. If anything happens to her Versace dress she’ll be furious. It’s her favourite. Was her favourite.

ELEANOR JANE MORAN-FITZGERALD (Ellie)

16th December 1976 – 14th January 2012

Wife. Mother. Daughter. Friend.

R.I.P

Making the walk from hangover to the local shop is hellish. Mo can’t structure a sentence, the smell of stale ale repeats with my every breath, and it’s freezing out here. Like properly, properly, freezing.

We can’t do this any more. We’re too old for it. We should probably have stayed at home… last night, if not this morning. I reckon I could’ve cobbled a breakfast together from whatever we have in the cupboards, then I wouldn’t have to be dressed, in the cold light of day, smelling faintly of lady sweat as a result of overenthusiastic vogueing down our local nightclub. I swallow back a burp and Mo shoots me a disgusted look.

Icy fog hangs over the church steeple. Car after car weaves the tree-lined road with blatant disregard for double yellows. There’s a hearse parked at the front of the queue, right outside the church gates. ‘Lots of people,’ I say, nodding at the giant congregation huddled by an open grave. ‘Is that a good sign or not?’

‘What?’ Mo grunts. ‘Are they mourning the loss, or dancing on your grave, d’you mean?’

‘She speaks,’ I announce, sarcastically. 'And no, Mo, that’s not what I meant.’ I push my hair away from my face before ruffling it back to cover up cold ears again. We walk on in almost silence, except for Mo loudly sucking bubble gum into her mouth to distract me from the memories the odd passing funeral can invite. I look down to the flagstone pavement; it’ll be sixteen years, later this year. Sixteen quick-long years since I buried Mum. I was twelve. No age is good, but twelve is really shit. You’ve generally got enough on with the gangly legs and emerging hormone-fuelled attitude. Losing a parent and then years of bundled angst are not a magic combination. Nor are the years of anger I felt towards an illness that, at the time, swallowed our lives just as much as it did hers.

‘Do you know, I never knew that my dead granddad had a twin brother until Mum’s funeral.’

‘What?’ Mo spins around. ‘I did not know this!’

‘Yeah. Sat down on the pew, Mum’s coffin before us all, and this bloke who – as far as I was concerned at the time – was the grandfather we’d buried two years before, sat beside me to pay his respects. Mum’s entire service was overshadowed by me wondering if anyone else could see this ghost of a man beside me.’ Mo fails to stifle a giggle. ‘It’s alright, you’re allowed to laugh. To be fair, it was probably the distraction I needed at the time. Funerals can be grim.’

‘Grim. Sure. That’s the word for it. You know, your family are the gift that keep on giving!’

‘Hmm…’ I say, pointedly, because I think she’s maybe forgotten that currently, if my family were a gift, they’d be the equivalent of a £5 book token that my eleven-year-old self wants to swap for a shopping spree in Topshop.

Mo pushes open the door to our local Tesco Express. ‘Mission hangover cure begins!’ she declares. ‘Bread, hot dogs, ketchup, crisps, chocolate, full fat Coke by the litre! What do we need?’

‘A time machine back to the hour before that final bottle of Prosecco in the club?’

‘Prosecco? It was a freebie from the DJ! I dread to think of its actual origins, because it definitely wasn’t made from Italian grapes.’ She swallows with a grimace. ‘Eurgh, drinking that was a bad move.’

‘You’re probably right. Okay, we need all of the beige carbs in our basket,’ I say, but Mo’s not behind me. I retrace my steps to find her staring out of the window, face awash with vacant expression.

'What?’ I ask, catching sight of my reflection in all of its morning-after-the-night-before glory.

Her eyes scan up and down the road, beyond a passing tram. ‘I was just wondering if I could stomach sushi, then thought I saw someone I knew. Black-suited and booted, like they were on their way to that funeral.’ She strains to see past the promotional posters in the window.

‘Can you do sushi?’ I ask, suspiciously. I mean, who does raw fish on an empty stomach?

‘Nah, don’t think so. I’d do pretty much anything for a finger buffet though.’ She winks, last night’s mascara clumping her lashes together.

‘So, what? You’re trying to get an invite to a wake now? Classy.’

‘You know me, Rach! I love a cheesy pineapple hedgehog.’

‘I’m more of an open cob kind of girl myself. But not at a stranger’s funeral, so come on, let’s get what we need and split.’ Mo nods her head in agreement, sauntering off to pick up things off the shelves, dropping them into the basket: Alka-Seltzer, Coco Pops, two bags of Doritos, followed by a third because it’s ‘buy two, get one free’ and Mo can’t resist a bargain. ‘You pay, I’ll meet you over at The Pitcher for hair of the dog.’

‘Nope. Can’t,’ I answer, taking my card out and swallowing another disgusting burp.

‘Okay, DVD then. Shotgun Pretty Woman.’

‘Hey! My birthday, my choice!’ I protest.

‘You know full well that shotgun trumps birthdays. You snooze, you lose,’ shouts Mo, picking up the pace and leaving me behind as she stomps down the back streets to our city-centre flat. I look back over to the church, send my love to Mum up in the sky, and skip on to catch Mo up. Pretty Woman it is. But I’m totally following it up with A Chorus Line. That’ll teach her…

Mum’s polished black court shoes click around the kitchen. She’s not a natural homemaker, never has been, so she keeps picking things up and looking at them before putting them back down, or moving them somewhere else with the statement, ‘I don’t know where they belong.’ As if cupboards couldn’t be opened.

She goes to reach for the steriliser then stops. Then sighs. I can’t hear her sigh again. I don’t want it. I want her to leave so I can go up to our room. Wrap myself in our cream cotton sheets; sheets left unchanged because Ellie slept in them. I want the fading smell of her perfume to wash over me as I sink into our bed. I won’t sleep. I haven’t since Simon called, not properly. Distress, fear and hurt poured down the phone line as he told me what had happened, the horror yanking me from gritty-eyed, new-parent slumber. Since then, I’ve laid in bed, my mind wandering away from reality. It’s not sleep so much as wakeful dreaming about our life together, until a noise plucks me back and the pain hits me all over again.

‘Keep the cat away from Oli,’ Mum says eventually, as Floyd twists through her legs, reaching his tail high for her attention. ‘Cats can smother a newborn.’ She looks down on him, accusingly, not a fan of public displays of affection from people, never mind things with four legs. Floyd chases after her as she clicks away, before rubbing his head on her shin, then darting out of the cat flap.

Oli suckles the last of a clumsily prepared bottle, my hands tired, shaking. I shift to rest him on my shoulder, muscles aching as I rub his back the way Ellie would each time she fed him. She’d celebrate his burps as if we’d bred a genius.

Mum reaches across the table for a muslin cloth to tuck under his chin. ‘Put this here,’ she instructs and it irritates me that I forgot. Mum sighs again, looking around. Her hands rest on the counter top. ‘Can I at least tidy a little before I go, Edward?’

She wants to for her sake, not mine. She wants to occupy herself before she finally takes her leave. She could just go.

‘I could just clear this side, maybe wipe it down for you?’ Her hands reach out to a pile of Ellie’s post.

‘Leave it,’ I hiss, making Oli jump on my shoulder. Her hand retracts as if her fingers burn. ‘Sorry. But, don’t touch it, please,’ I say. Mum goes towards a candy-striped box, one of Ellie’s famed memory boxes, left out on the side. ‘Don’t touch anything.’

Redundant, she stands in the middle of the room, uncomfortable, uncertain.

Just leave, I want to say.

‘I appreciate your help with all of this, and the funeral…’ The words stick in my throat and I turn my back, hiding my face as I lie Oli down to sleep in the Moses basket we excitedly chose the night she finished work for her maternity leave. ‘I just need to be on my own.’

‘Your family are here to help, Edward,’ she says, quietly. Her voice has the clip of elocution that makes everything sound harder than perhaps she intends.

‘I know.’ I don’t turn to face her.

‘And your brother,’ she adds. I give a shallow nod this time. ‘He is devastated, Edward. I really think you two should talk.’

‘We will,’ I say, mainly to appease her, but she prickles at my response, no doubt picking up on the fact that I’m not committing to when.

‘I know he is not always easy to talk to at the moment, Edward. I know you’ve tried… before… But, this is different now. You’re brothers. You need each other. You must work through this.’ She pauses, giving me time to agree with her. To put a timescale on when I’ll make contact with him. ‘Edward?’

I’m not sure what she wants me to say. I’ve already told her I can’t yet. I’ve explained that I need time. I’ve asked her to try to understand, however difficult that may be.

Oli lets out a murmur and I pick him back up again. ‘Sometimes you need to let them cry,’ she advises.

‘Sometimes you need to listen to your children,’ I answer.

She pauses for a moment, then, taking my point, reaches for her coat and bag with a formal nod. ‘You don’t have to do this alone,’ she says, hooking her belongings into the crook of her arm. ‘There are ways to get through this.’

Words, I’m certain, that could only ever come from a person who hasn’t dealt with grief on this scale, ever in her life. It’s not her fault, I realise that, but neither is any of this mine. Simon, on the other hand…

Since dramatically falling into our feather-filled sofa – an old house-warming gift from Mo’s mum and dad – I basically haven’t moved. We’ve done Pretty Woman, A Chorus Line and argued over Bridesmaids vs Dirty Dancing. As if that’s even a competition! (Dirty Dancing EVERY time!) The cliché of single girls and chick flicks makes me itch a bit, but what else are hangovers good for?

Mo has crawled off the sofa in search of her onesie, leaving me to glance around the blank canvas that is our flat. Surrounded by empty crisp bags and chocolate wrappers, it’s clear that we live like students… minus the shared-house grime and road cones. Okay, it’s possible I’m sweepingly generalising about student accommodation, but certainly our place looks like that freshers’ flat I ended up in after a particularly misjudged night out. Turns out the fresher in question wasn’t as ‘talented’ in the bedroom department as his friends had suggested, or maybe I just fell asleep because I was really, really tired.

I shudder at that particular morning-after memory, picking up the birthday card that arrived from Dad in the post this morning instead.

Dad. I haven’t spoken to him all day, which is unheard of. I’ve been a bit distant for a few days, in fact, which is out of character since we lost Mum. It’s just that… well, I don’t really know where to begin. I don’t know how to tell him what I’m feeling, partly because I don’t know exactly what I’m feeling. Or why. Except that it started when he told me he was putting our family home on the market, which – and I accept this is somewhat dramatic – made me feel as though I’d have no home to go to if he did. I moved out years ago; it shouldn’t matter. And yet, somehow, it does matter. Which makes me feel confused and guilty in equal measure.

‘We should get fairy lights,’ I shout to Mo, like that’s all that’s required to sort the flat (and my mood) out. She’s reverted to grunting and I can hear her doing so as she wades her way through a pile of clothes that will definitely be on her bedroom floor… one clean pile, one dirty… and a very fine line between the two. Apparently she knows which is which, but for someone so organised and professional at work, her level of scruff-dom never ceases to amaze me. I persevere. ‘You know I love a fairy light, Mo! And they’d totally brighten up this room.’ Ideas start to flow as I imagine draping lights and throws around the place, focusing on making a (not so) new home here, given that the other one is on its way out. ‘In fact, why stop at lights?’ I clap, excitedly. ‘We should decorate!’

Mo is still huffing and puffing in her room. It’s unclear if that’s because of my ideas or the state of her floordrobe. I pick through Mum’s old magazines on the wonky coffee table, ones that Dad gives me from her obsessive collection every now and then. From the first ever Elle magazine from 1985 to some random collectors’ ones about Egypt, she had thousands. There’s an old 1970s interiors one somewhere in this pile. ‘How long have we lived here? Eight years? Maybe it’s time we put our mark on it?’ I say, lowering my voice from a shout as Mo walks back into the room. She’s unsteadily vertical, nursing a Doritos baby in her belly.

‘I blame you, Rach. I told you that third bag was a bad idea, I’ve no self-control,’ she groans.

‘Did you?’ I ask, eyebrows raised, because what she actually said as she threw them in my direction was: ‘Fuck it, open that last bag, would you?’ Mainly because we were watching Dirty Dancing and she knew I was about to cry at Patrick Swayze singing ‘She’s Like the Wind.’ That song gets me every time.

I flick through the magazine. ‘What’s that new craze everyone’s on about? Hygge? How do you pronounce it? Hig? Hug?’

‘Hue-guh.’

‘That’s the cat! Maybe we should decorate like that. Like the Danes?’

‘Rachel,’ she groans – at her discomfort I think, rather than me, ‘hygge is a lifestyle, not a colour swatch for your wall.’ She’s always been smarter than me with this stuff. ‘It’s about embracing peace and tranquillity. Nature. Good food. Good friends. We’re there already, aren’t we?’ She kicks one of the empty crisp packets out of view with a look that suggests she’s blaming it for the aforementioned discomfort… as opposed to herself for single-handedly eating the contents, which, frankly, I admire. ‘I think that’s what your dad wants you know, Rach. Peace and tranquillity. That’s why he wants to move to one of those wooden lodge type places.’

‘Have you seen it, Mo? He showed me a picture. It’s not a lodge, it’s a bloody caravan!’

‘Caravan. Lodge. Whatever. If he’s happy, does it matter?’

I know she’s right, I really do, but I can’t help my first response. Maybe I need to work on how long I let my inner child stamp her feet for.

‘Of course’ – she sidles into the sofa beside me – ‘you’d know how important it all was if you spoke to him about it.’

‘Who says I haven’t spoken to him?’ I say, mock aghast.

‘Rach, if you’re not talking to me, you’re usually on the phone to him, or exchanging text messages. Since he told you about the house you’ve all but cut off ties.’

‘It’s only been a few days!’ I mumble.

‘Yeah? And how many times have you gone that long without talking before?’

I put down the magazine in exchange for the local paper which somehow offers more distraction from her line of questioning. ‘I still think we should decorate,’ I mutter into its pages.

Mo takes a tea light out of our stash in the coffee-table drawer and lights it. ‘There, hygge. Nailed it. So, I’ll ask you again, have you spoken to your dad?’

‘Local black spot takes new mother’s life,’ I say, reading out the headline. Mo fixes me with a stare, so I scowl in her direction, flicking the pages with pantomime force until I find the full story a few pages in. ‘Paramedics got the baby and driver out, but they couldn’t save the mother.’ I carry on reading as Mo folds her arms. She’s probably giving me one of the stares she has when she disapproves of my behaviour. I pity her future children. ‘The driver was the woman’s brother-in-law.’

‘Nice try, Rach. Yes, that story is awful but, more to the point, when did you talk to your dad now Richard’s not there?’ Mo gives my brother his Sunday name, ignoring the pained look on my face. ‘Your dad’s on his own for the first time since...’

‘Jean next door is about,’ I sa. . .