The Two Lives of Louis & Louise

by Julie Cohen

Genres: Coming of Age; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

'Hugely original and heartbreakingly real' Rosie Walsh, Sunday Times bestselling author of 'The Man Who Didn't Call' ***** Two people. Two lives. One chance to see the same world differently. Louis and Louise are the same person born in two different lives. One was born female, and one male. They have the same best friends, the same red hair, the same dream of being a writer, the same excellent whistle. They both suffer one catastrophic night, with life-changing consequences. Thirteen years later, they are both coming home . . . A tender, insightful and timely novel about the things that bring us together - and those which separate us, from the author of Richard & Judy recommended book Together ***** A NOVEL PEOPLE CAN'T STOP TALKING ABOUT... 'It's BRILLIANT. I enjoyed it hugely' Marian Keyes 'Not often does a story remind us of what beautifully complex creatures we are. Julie Cohen has given us that rare gift' Christina Dalcher, author of VOX ' Louis and Louise is Julie Cohen at her absolute best. So cleverly done and authentic, and you feel as if you live in the town with the characters and have been in the story with them.' A J Pearce ' Louis & Louise is moving and beautiful, but it will also make you wonder and question, and it will stretch out your thinking so very beautifully' Joanna Cannon 'Elegant, thoughtful and powerful' Daisy Buchanan 'Fierce, intricate and intriguing' Fanny Blake 'A timely read that will stay with you long after you put it down' Libby Page 'What a brave, warm and wise book this is. I loved it' Tamar Cohen 'Beautifully written and thought-provoking' Kate Eberlen 'A cobweb of a book: beautifully intricate and delicate' Veronica Henry 'Wow. What a beautiful, ballsy and brilliant book' Sinead Moriarty 'A beautifully written, heartbreaking and important novel about gender, self, family and, ultimately, love' Claire Frost, reviewer 'A powerful and memorable story of small town secrets, family dynamics and the sense that some things are just meant to be' Sunday Express 'Emotional and seriously powerful' Fabulous 'An engaging, moving novel, at its most arresting in the pivotal scenes when she explores the personal fallout of industrial and class conflict in Louis/Louise's beleaguered hometown' Sunday Times 'A modern take told with heart' Grazia 'The premise here is radical, but worth the effort... this elegantly written novel also examines much that is universal' Daily Mail ***** * Fabulous pick for 2019's Best Books * * Woman & Home Pick of the Month * * Good Housekeeping Book of the Month * * Emerald Street January's Best Books * * Stylist 2019's Hottest Books * * THE POOL Recommended Books 2019 *

Release date: January 24, 2019

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 259

Sample

1

Daddy’s Girl

1978

Louise Dawn Alder was born on the 8th of September 1978 to Peggy and Irving Alder of Casablanca, Maine.

Peggy was two weeks past her due date and it was hot. August had refused to give way to autumn; the leaves hadn’t started to turn yet and the grass was sere and yellow. Peggy lumbered around their house, sweating through her pregnancy smock, drinking glass after glass of lemon iced tea, catching her belly on the corners of furniture and the edges of doorways.

‘I want it over with,’ she moaned on the telephone to her best friend, Mary Phelps, who had given birth to fraternal twins six months earlier.

‘You don’t,’ Mary said. In the background, there was crying, either from Allie or Benny. ‘Keep that baby inside you for as long as you can. At least when they’re not born yet you can sleep.’

But Peggy couldn’t sleep. She was up every hour or so to pee and when she lay in bed, Irving breathing deeply beside her, she was too hot and her tired mind wouldn’t stop racing. Did they have the crib set up correctly? What if she was a terrible mother? Had she packed the right things in her overnight bag? What if there was something wrong with the baby?

‘I don’t even care if it hurts,’ she told Mary.

‘You will care,’ Mary promised her. ‘Ask for all the drugs.’

Peggy knew that one of Mary’s greatest regrets about the whole childbirth experience was that she’d given birth too quickly to Benny to be able to have any drugs, and although Allie wasn’t born for another hour, the doctor had thought Mary had done so well with the first baby that she didn’t need them for the second.

‘I’m worried,’ she whispered, though Irving was at work and there was no one else around to hear her. She wound the phone cord around her fingers, tight. ‘What if it hasn’t been born yet because there’s something wrong?’

‘Is it kicking you?’ She interrupted herself, ‘Oh, Allie, enough, you’re sucking me dry, leave some for your brother.’

‘Yes.’ Though how long since the last kick? It had become so normal, being battered from the inside, that Peggy barely noticed any more unless a small foot hooked behind a rib or something and made her gasp with pain. She put her hand on her swollen belly and felt a thump in return.

‘Just did,’ she said with relief.

‘Well, then, you’re fine. I bet you anything it’s a girl.’

‘I think it’s a boy.’

‘Nuh-uh. Boys do what they’re supposed to. Look at little Benny, good as gold, while his sister’s got colic, diaper rash, can’t stop eating – it’s your brother’s turn, you little piggy.’

Peggy listened to this with more than a little comfort. Alongside all those fears she never expressed during the night there was one that didn’t even make sense: what if, after she had a baby, she wasn’t herself any more? As if giving birth would rid her of her own personality, as if suckling an infant would dry up her thoughts and emotions.

But Mary had always been just like this. Sarcastic, tough, with a well of caring underneath. Having twins had made her even more like herself, not less.

‘I keep thinking that Irving should have got the car serviced early, because months ago he made an appointment at the garage tomorrow, thinking that the baby would be born by then, but it hasn’t been born, and what if it comes while the car is in the garage? How will I get to the hospital?’

‘I’ll drive you,’ said Mary, so promptly she couldn’t have even thought it over.

‘But you’ve got Benny and Allie.’

‘They fit in a car. Besides, Donnie needs to learn how to look after them sometime, he’s their father and he doesn’t do a damn thing. Do you know how many diapers he’s changed in the six months of their life? Exactly none. Meanwhile, I’m elbow deep in baby shit every day. I dream about it, when I finally get the chance to sleep. And when I’m not dreaming about baby shit, I’m dreaming about a martini. Beefeater and vermouth, on ice, with a twist. You remember how we used to make those?’

Over the line, Peggy heard a lighter flick and Mary drag deep on her cigarette. She remembered the martinis the summer before last at Mary’s bridal shower up at Morocco Pond, the two of them making sophisticated drinks and trying to blow smoke rings. Adults, acting self-consciously as adults, in this place where they’d been children.

And now Mary was a mother and Peggy was about to be. Peggy thought about ice-cold gin and lemon oil, lying on the beach in their bikinis, a glass of condensation resting on her flat stomach, cooling the skin, both of them a little breathless thinking about getting married, having their own houses and husbands. It had all seemed impossibly glamorous then.

She wasn’t sure she was ready to be a grown-up, now.

She got up from the kitchen chair with a grunt and walked to the window, tweaking aside the flowered cotton curtains she’d sewn herself soon after they’d bought the house. Or, rather, after Irving’s parents had bought it for them. They had a big backyard which Irving kept mown and weed-free. He’d already pointed out the space where he wanted to put up a swing set.

This would be the first grandchild in the family. Irving’s parents, Vi and David, had always been distant to Peggy when she was dating Irving – they thought their son was too good for her – but as soon as they were married and she and Irving had announced her pregnancy, they were as attentive as anyone could hope for.

Irving was delighted about being a father. He’d flung himself into the idea wholeheartedly, could barely keep his hands off her belly, seemed to find her more attractive than ever before. ‘I love you pregnant,’ he kept on whispering. ‘I want you to be pregnant all the time.’

But Peggy didn’t particularly like being pregnant. For the first three months she’d vomited constantly, and then her skin had erupted into acne, and her boobs hurt, and then she’d gotten so much bigger, and the weather had become so hot. What if she decided she didn’t want any more children after this? Would Irving still love her? Would he even be attracted to her any more, after this one was born?

They’d got married because she was pregnant. They’d planned to marry anyway, of course, but her pregnancy had made it so that Irving couldn’t change his mind. She hadn’t done it deliberately, but … They’d eloped to Portland to get married in the city and had a two-day cold April honeymoon on the coast. Not exactly the huge Catholic wedding that Peggy’s mother had expected, or the huge society wedding that Vi Alder had expected.

‘Mary,’ she began, hesitantly, not even really sure what she was about to ask, only that Mary was the only person she could talk to, the only one who didn’t pretend that motherhood was all a perfect walk in the park. ‘Do you ever wish—’

She felt something warm gush down her leg, as if she’d wet herself. When Peggy looked down, there was liquid on the linoleum floor.

‘Wish what?’ asked Mary on the other end.

‘I think my waters just broke.’

A small near-silence of cigarette crackle and indrawn breath, as Peggy clutched the phone in both hands, staring down at the growing puddle. For the moment, she had completely forgotten what she was supposed to do, how she was supposed to put down the phone and call Irving at the paper mill so he could come get her and drive her to the hospital.

‘I was wrong,’ said Mary, at last. ‘It’s not a girl, it’s a boy. Only a male would interrupt a conversation right when it was getting interesting.’



By hour nineteen of labour, Peggy didn’t care about whether she was going to be a good mother or not. The obstetrician had refused to give her an epidural because he said it would stop her contractions, and the gas and air only made her feel sick.

She was flat on her back on a table, feet in stirrups, clenching her hands and her teeth, hair soaked with sweat, riding the worst contraction yet. For the first few hours she’d experienced a strange elation despite the pain of the contractions and the boredom of waiting for something to actually happen. She walked the corridors of the maternity ward, hearing the cries of other babies and of other mothers. Irving was allowed to walk with her, holding her hand.

As the contractions got worse, she was removed to a private room and Irving was banished to the waiting room to drink coffee and pace. By then, things had started to really hurt and she was glad he was gone. He’d been hovering, trying to make sure she was all right, and it was exhausting trying to pretend for his sake that she wasn’t tired and frightened and in pain. At this point she wanted it to be over with, and then she wanted to curl up in a bed under cool sheets and sleep and sleep and sleep, until someone woke her up and presented her with a clean, beautiful baby wrapped in a pure-white blanket.

Now, though, Peggy wasn’t thinking about getting it over with. The future had ceased to exist. She, Peggy Grenier Alder, once Miss Western Maine, had ceased to exist. She was nothing but a body that was splitting apart in a world of pain and stink and pushing. The words of the obstetrician and nurse were no more than buzzing sounds in her ears. She could be in a medieval hut, with her ankles tied to a torture rack, instead of a high-tech hospital with her feet in metal stirrups.

‘It’s coming, there’s the head!’ said the nurse in an excited voice, and Peggy thought Thank Christ, and then she thought nothing because she was in a white and red space, eyes closed, pushing.

‘Nearly finished now,’ said the obstetrician, who had only turned up for the exciting part. ‘Here’s your baby. One more push, that’s a good girl.’

‘I can’t,’ groaned Peggy, but she gripped the nurse’s hand and she pushed anyway, and felt a slipping-away, something being taken from her, and her eyes flew open.

‘It’s a girl,’ said the obstetrician.

‘Could’ve told you that,’ said the nurse. ‘Made you wait for two weeks like a princess, didn’t she?’

‘Always late for everything,’ said the obstetrician, ‘just like my wife.’

The baby started to cry.

‘You’ll have to watch out for this one,’ said the nurse, taking the baby as Peggy watched with hungry eyes. ‘She’s going to run rings around you.’

‘She’ll wrap her daddy round her little finger,’ said the doctor, who’d already diverted his attention to delivering the placenta.

Peggy held out her hands for her daughter and the baby was placed into her arms; and despite all the fear and pain and sweat, this was a moment that she would remember for the rest of her life. This tiny curled red creature, with slits for eyes and claws for hands, a comma of humanity. Her daughter.

In that moment she had never loved anything or anyone so much. This was a piece of her, another girl like her, who one day would open her arms, tired and sweaty, to welcome her own child.

She barely noticed as the obstetrician left and the nurse tidied up. She was too busy gazing at this little thing. Ten fingernails, each paper-thin. Eyes complete with eyelashes. They’d decided to call the baby Dawn, if it was a girl, because it was the start of their new life. But at that moment Peggy wasn’t thinking of a name at all. She was thinking: I made this. This little person.

But then the nurse said, ‘I’ll go and get Daddy,’ and Peggy snapped to attention.

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I can’t let him see me like this, I’m a wreck.’

‘Believe me, he’s only going to have eyes for Daddy’s girl.’

‘Can you give me my make-up bag from my overnight case? And my hairbrush?’

The nurse (frizzy hair in a bun, no make-up, broken veins on her cheeks that Peggy hadn’t been able to notice before, but did now) rolled her eyes. She rummaged through the bag, extracted Peggy’s flowered make-up case and a pink hairbrush, and held them out to Peggy, who had her hands full with the baby. The nurse, who’d clearly seen it all before, took the baby and put her into the bassinet by the side of the bed while Peggy opened her compact mirror and saw what a sight she looked. You’ll never get a man looking like that, her mother’s voice said in her ear.

Fortunately, nearly a year of waking before Irving did every morning and doing her make-up in a dimly lit bathroom meant that she was skilled in making the best of what she had. There wasn’t much that could be done to her hair, but she brushed out the tangles and smoothed it back away from her face, then quickly applied powder and blush to her face and a few careful swipes of mascara. Pink lipstick, and she was a blushing new mommy, like in the pages of Good Housekeeping magazine. Or close enough, maybe, to pass.

‘OK,’ she said. She pulled the sheet up over her lower half. Her stomach was barely any smaller than it had been yesterday, but maybe Irving wouldn’t notice that part.

She took the baby back. She’d held Mary’s twins before but her own baby felt different. When Irving came into the room, she smiled up at him. A modern Madonna and child.

He didn’t even look at her. His eyes were fixed immediately on the baby. He crossed the room quickly and stood gazing down at the child.

Suddenly, Peggy saw the baby as an outsider would. Wrinkles at the wrists, nose a stub, sparse hair slicked to its head, a curled-up pink little thing. It was ugly, her daughter was ugly, and Peggy was ugly, this girl-child had sucked all the prettiness out of her, had sucked out everything, and in that moment Peggy was sure that Irving was going to walk out of the room in disgust and never come back.

‘She’s beautiful,’ Irving said.

And just like that, with a marvellous cool rush of relief, Peggy saw he was right. The baby was beautiful. All babies looked like that: squished and red. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

‘She looks like you,’ said Irving.

‘Do you think so?’ asked Peggy doubtfully. ‘I don’t think she really looks like me. She looks more like you.’

‘Maybe a little.’

Irving reached down to take the baby and Peggy handed her over, feeling as if she was bestowing some great gift. As soon as the baby was in her father’s arms, she squirmed, squinted, and wrinkled her soft forehead, and Peggy saw who she looked like.

‘The painting,’ she said. And it was true: in that moment, their daughter, who was less than an hour old, looked exactly like the portrait of Louis Alder, Irving’s illustrious great-great-grandfather – founder of the Casablanca Paper Company – which hung at the top of the stairs in Irving’s parents’ house.

Irving burst into laughter, which made the baby widen her eyes. ‘Louis! Yes, she looks like Louis Alder. Poor thing.’ He held his daughter up to his face, nose touching. ‘My little Lou.’

The baby made a little squeaking sound.

‘She knows her daddy,’ said Peggy.

‘Daddy’s girl,’ he said, tucking the baby into the crook of his arm and rocking her. He looked as if he’d been born to this – unlike Peggy, who’d felt happy but also decidedly awkward with her baby in her arms.

‘We could name her Lou,’ Peggy said.

‘Lou’s not a girl’s name.’

‘Louise is.’

‘We were going to call her Dawn if she was a girl.’

‘Louise Dawn.’

Irving glanced up at Peggy from the baby and his face was full of wonder. ‘It would make Dad happy, I suppose.’

Peggy heard what he wasn’t saying, maybe what had never even occurred to him to say. She heard My parents have never liked you and they’re going to be upset that you gave birth to a girl who can’t carry on the Alder name. She heard Vi Alder saying, after they came back from their elopement, practically through gritted teeth, Welcome to the family. She heard her own mother saying, You should get this one to marry you, because you’ll never get a chance like Irving Alder again. He may not be rich now, but he will be.

‘Louise Dawn,’ Peggy said. ‘Definitely.’

2

Mummy’s Boy

1978

‘Hey Irv, that baby born yet?’

Irving paused on his way across the lunch room. Donnie Phelps, Mike Beaulieu, Ed Venskis and Brian Theriault were all sitting at the same table, sandwich wrappers and cans of Coke strewn on the surface. For a moment he was back at Casablanca High School, a skinny teenage bookworm confronted by a table full of jocks. Donnie, Mike and Brian had all been in the same class as him; Ed was two years older. There was a time when he would have scuttled by them, head down, hoping that they wouldn’t notice him.

Now, of course, things were different. He stopped and smiled. ‘Not yet,’ he said to Donnie. ‘Peggy is just about going crazy.’

‘When was it supposed to be born?’ asked Ed. Like the other three, he wore a plaid flannel shirt over a T-shirt, even though it had to be eighty degrees outside. The four of them all wore baseball hats: Mike and Donnie had Red Sox hats, Brian wore a Casablanca Paper Company hat with the CPC green pine tree logo on front, and Ed had a novelty hat that said ASK ME IF I GIVE A SHIT.

Offensive logos were against company rules, technically, but no one seemed to follow that rule. Irving looked at Ed’s chin instead of his hat and said, ‘Two weeks ago. She’s really feeling the heat.’

‘You’ve gotta be climbing the walls waiting, eh,’ said Brian. ‘Nat was a week late having BJ and I almost moved out, she was so grouchy. Had to sleep on the couch.’

‘You still sleep on the couch,’ said Mike, elbowing him. ‘Nat don’t like your snoring.’

‘Your wife don’t mind it.’

Irving stood awkwardly by, half a smile on his face. He wasn’t these men’s boss; he wasn’t anyone’s boss, not yet anyway, although some people treated him as if he were, and in any case, they worked on the machines and he was in Engineering. But he wasn’t their colleague, either. Donnie’s wife, Mary, was Peggy’s best friend so he saw Donnie outside of work pretty regularly: barbecues, days at Morocco Pond, and once, when they moved into their house, an ill-conceived dinner party where Peggy burned the pot roast and Mary drank too much wine. On all of those occasions, the girls chattered like they always had since age five, and Irving stood awkwardly next to Donnie, each holding a can of Budweiser, and tried to think of something to say. Once they’d exhausted the topic of the Red Sox or the Patriots or the Celtics or the Bruins, they didn’t have much else to cover. They’d never talked at school, so they didn’t have any reminiscences to fall back on. They didn’t even know the same people at work. Usually, Donnie would put on the TV.

How much easier it would be if they didn’t have to pretend to like each other for the girls’ sake. If Irving could say, ‘I know our wives like each other but you once stood by while your friend Duane Roy beat the shit out of me for wearing glasses, and I haven’t forgotten that, even if you have.’

But that wouldn’t wash with Peggy. Peggy wanted everyone to get along and be friends. So, for Peggy’s sake, he read the sports pages before the get-togethers so he’d have something to talk about.

At least Donnie had never actively picked on Irving at school. He’d never cared. If Donnie had felt anything, it was annoyance that he had to wait to go to football practice so that his friend could teach a nerd a lesson.

But now they would have something in common. They’d both be dads. Their kids would play with each other as they grew up. Irving liked Donnie’s twins, Allison and Benedict, and although he couldn’t think of anything to say to their father, he could spend hours happily chattering nonsense to the babies.

Donnie seemed mostly to ignore his kids, though, so maybe they wouldn’t be swapping stories of first words and teething.

The plastic box with the lunch he’d packed this morning was greasy in his fingers. Donnie and co. didn’t seem to bring their lunch in plastic boxes; from the detritus on the table it was all paper bags and Saran wrap. Irving’s father had always come home at noon for a proper cooked lunch and still did. ‘I don’t understand why Peggy doesn’t cook for you,’ Irving’s mother said all the time, and Irving always said, ‘Oh, I don’t mind a sandwich. I usually work through lunch anyway.’

He wished he’d worked through lunch today, too. It was much less awkward eating lunch in between calculations, typing with one hand while he held a sandwich in the other. Standing in front of these guys, he might as well be holding the Howdy Doody lunch pail that he’d carried in fifth grade.

‘Anyway,’ he said, because it seemed rude to walk away, ‘the baby will come sooner or later, no matter what.’

‘Sit down,’ said Donnie, jerking his head to a spare seat. ‘You’re making me nervous, standing there.’

Irving sat.

‘You know the best way to get those babies out,’ said Brian. ‘Do what got ’em in there in the first place.’

‘Worked with Mary,’ said Donnie. He took a bite of ham sandwich on white bread and spoke as he chewed. ‘Might be why they came out three weeks early.’

Irving felt himself blushing. ‘Well, I …’

‘With Peggy it’s no hardship, huh?’ Mike said. ‘I remember when she was a beauty queen. You got lucky there, man. Never would’ve saw that coming.’

He flushed harder, with anger this time, but they were all smiling and it was all done in the spirit of camaraderie, right? They weren’t in high school any more, and he wasn’t the skinny little nerd with the Howdy Doody lunchbox any more, either. He had a degree in electrical engineering, a wife, and a kid on the way. These guys were just shooting the breeze. They were co-workers, husbands and fathers, and they’d known each other all their lives. If he couldn’t take a little teasing …

‘Anyway,’ Irving said, ‘I’ve waited my whole life to become a dad, I guess I can wait a little longer.’

They all laughed and he almost flinched.

They’re not laughing at you, he told himself. Why would they?

But they were. He knew it as surely as he’d known it ten years ago. He’d grown up, he’d been away to college – MIT, no less – he’d married a beautiful girl and now was about to be a parent. He’d changed, but nothing ever changed in Casablanca.

He unwrapped his sandwich: peanut butter and jelly. He’d made it himself; Peggy was far too pregnant to get out of bed to make his breakfast or pack his lunch – and besides, he didn’t mind peanut butter and jelly, he wasn’t choosy about food. Just as well, as Peggy wasn’t the world’s best cook. Not a patch on his mother … but he hadn’t married Peggy for her cooking.

He thought about her in their bed this morning, wearing only a pair of white pregnancy underwear and one of his white undershirts, stretched tight over her belly. Irving still found the height and width difference between him and his wife fascinating: he could not get used to how small and delicate she was, even when pregnant, how graceful her wrists and ankles were, her long slim neck. He often took her hand in his to marvel at the size difference. He was not a big man, never had been, but next to her he felt large and protective.

This morning, she’d been turned away from him and if he hadn’t known she was pregnant, two weeks overdue, he wouldn’t have been able to tell. He’d snuggled up to her, knees folded into her knees, arm around her waist, pushing the T-shirt up so his hand could rest on her naked belly. Sometimes when he did this he could feel the baby kicking but not this morning; this morning he felt only the slightly damp warmth of her skin. He buried his face in her hair, felt her breathing, smelled the sweat on her neck and he wanted to trail his hand up the curve of her belly to find her soft, pregnancy-swollen breast, but Peggy had made it clear to him over the past couple of weeks that she felt too much like a whale to feel sexy.

She’d said it with a strange look, as if she thought he was odd to find her so attractive when she was pregnant. Irving thought it probably was odd. He had no idea if other men felt this way about their pregnant wives.

He wished he could ask someone, but who could he ask? He glanced at the men sitting at the table with him, and then looked back down at his sandwich.

Irving had never heard a man ask another man for advice about sex, or whether something was normal. Men joked about sex, like Donnie just did, they joked about it all the time, but he never joined in. He didn’t want to talk about his private life over sandwich wrappers, as if it were no more important than baseball.

He got the distinct feeling that women talked about it all the time. Peggy and Mary often stopped talking abruptly when he entered the room.

‘Mr Alder!’

It was Melanie from the office, at the door to the lunchroom. Irving looked up for his father, who never came in here. The lu. . .