To Have and to Hold

by Helen Chandler

Genres: Marriage & Divorce

Synopsis

From the outside, Ella has the happy marriage, the cute kids and the comfortable home - inside, she craves something more. But giving in to temptation will stir up a whole heap of trouble . . . Imogen 's relationship with Pete was once fun and carefree but since they've become parents, everything is different. Then an accident provides the catalyst for a life-changing decision. Fifteen-year-old Phoebe is miserable at home and at school. And now her dad, who was always her ally, seems completely distracted by something - or someone. Maybe it's time Phoebe took a stand, and took control of her own life. As Ella, Imogen and Phoebe contemplate taking the biggest risk of their lives, marriages, families and friendships hang in the balance. Should they take the leap, or will they risk losing everything?

Release date: May 8, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 353

Sample

Chapter 1

Phoebe lay on her bed, hands clenched into two tight fists, tears streaming down her cheeks as she tried to blot out what had just happened to her and, perhaps even worse, her mother’s reaction to it. She had been standing in the corridor at afternoon break, trying to blend into the background as usual. Not particularly easy when your school uniform is burgundy and you take the largest size in it. She looked like a sofa, or so her mum had kindly informed her when she’d skulked out of the John Lewis changing room during the dreaded uniform-buying session.

Suzi Withers had come up to her and touched her arm gently. That had been a shock, for a start. Suzi was defin­itely one of the in-crowd, not someone who would normally give a girl like Phoebe, who epitomised the out-crowd, the time of day. Yet there she had been with a sickly-sweet smile, faux sincerity dripping from every pore. Phoebe had been instantly defensive. If she’d been a hedgehog she would have curled into a ball ready to spike a potential attacker. Unfortunately evolution hadn’t provided teenage girls with this level of protection; a fact which, had Charles Darwin ever seen St Augustine’s High School on a wet Thursday afternoon following a period of double maths, might well have caused him to question his entire theory.

‘What?’ she’d growled at Suzi, studiously refusing to make eye contact.

‘Oh Phoebe, I just wanted to tell you, because I know I’d hate it if it happened to me and no one did, but your period must have started, and you’ve got a big stain all over the back of your skirt. You should probably go and sort it out.’

Phoebe had felt colour flame up into her face. Although she didn’t think her period was due, she was very irreg­ular – yet another thing that could be blamed on her weight, according to her mother. This was her worst nightmare. Suzi had smiled again, and asked, ‘Are you alright? Sorry, it must be horrible.’

And the thing was, even in the midst of her flaming embarrassment, Phoebe had felt a tiny warm glow that someone had cared enough to tell her, that Suzi was being so unexpectedly nice.

She’d managed to smile back at Suzi, and said awkwardly, ‘Thanks, thanks for telling me. I’d better, you know, go to the bog and sort it out.’

She’d walked away then, as quickly as she could without breaking into a run, which she knew from hellish experience in PE classes caused her boobs to bounce up and down in a way that both hurt and provoked numerous ribald comments.

As she pushed open the door to the putrid-smelling girls’ toilets, which she normally avoided at all costs, there was a sudden wave of mocking laughter, and the eight or nine girls who formed the core of Suzi’s gang were screaming insults at her and sanitary towels and tampons were raining around her ears. It took her a few seconds to process what had happened. She’d been set up. She turned round, pushed past Suzi, who stood in the doorway behind her, her face alight with sadistic triumph, and ran for the school gates, this time uncaring that her breasts were bouncing wildly or that she was going to miss History, which she normally loved. She had just wanted to get home to a place of safety. She had wanted, God help her, her mum.

By the time she arrived home she was out of breath, sweaty, red-faced and tear-stained. Hair had escaped from her usually neat ponytail, but instead of framing her face in pretty tendrils as her mother’s would have done, it was sticking lankly and clammily to her face and neck. Her mum had been in the living room, her perfectly slender body encased in leggings and a Lycra crop top, working out to a Davina McCall exercise DVD. She had not been pleased to see Phoebe.

‘What the hell are you doing here at half two in the afternoon?’

‘Oh Mu-uuumm,’ she’d wailed, and flung herself down on the sofa, waiting for the warm enfolding hug that would blot out the rest of the world and make everything OK. Instead, she had got a rather awkward pat, and her mum had asked slightly wearily, ‘Go on then, tell me, what’s happened now?’

As she had recounted her story, Phoebe, always hypersensitive to such things, had seen pity on her mother’s face, but also impatience.

‘Oh Pheebs, you do make life difficult for yourself.’

That was a classic manoeuvre. Whatever happened, it was always, somehow, Phoebe’s own fault. For not being pretty enough, or thin enough; for being too clever, for being too clumsy; for not being enough like the kind of daughter Liz McCraig had always wanted and couldn’t quite forgive Phoebe for not being.

‘How is this my fault, Mum? You’re meant to be on my side.’

Liz had sighed deeply.

‘I am on your side, that’s why I wish you would make a bit more of an effort to fit in, to make some friends. If you didn’t always have your head stuck in a book, lost a bit of weight . . .’

Phoebe hadn’t stayed to hear any more. A fresh bout of sobbing was only seconds away, and she ran out of the room and up the two flights of stairs to her converted attic bedroom. This was her sanctuary, easily her favourite thing about her life. Her parents had converted the loft of their three-bed south Liverpool Victorian semi two years previously, and Phoebe had begged to have this room for her own. Although it had sloping ceilings and more than its fair share of corners it was a large room, big enough for a squashy sofa as well as her bed, and she had her own tiny en suite shower room. Her father had got a local carpenter to come and build fitted bookcases into the awkward corners, so she had all her books from earliest childhood lining the walls. She had saved her Christmas and birthday money and bought a tiny fridge and a kettle, so she was basically self-sufficient, practically speaking at least. Reaching her room and turning the key in the lock, she felt herself breathing slightly more easily. Then she stood by the door listening tensely for the footsteps on the stairs that would indicate her mum had followed her. After a few minutes there was still nothing. Caught somewhere between relief and disappointment, Phoebe went and put the kettle on. She had recently read a selection of diet tips in one of her mum’s glossy magazines, and one of them had been, ‘When those chocolate cravings strike, try a diet hot chocolate – virtually calorie-free, but you may just find they hit the spot.’

Phoebe had bought a box of Options on the strength of that, and she made one for herself now. The saccharine warmth was comforting, but just a few sips were enough to tell Phoebe that the public humiliation she had experienced that afternoon could only be erased by far more drastic measures. She went to her secret chocolate stash in a shoebox in the bottom of the wardrobe and chose a Twirl and a Double Decker. She yanked off her hideous school uniform and left it pooled on the floor while she pulled on pyjama bottoms and an old T-shirt of her dad’s. Lying on the bed, she ripped the wrappers off and crammed the chocolate into her mouth, waiting for the sweet creaminess to erase her feelings of loneliness and misery. The problem was, as soon as she stopped eating, the negative feelings poured back in, and the tears started all over again.

She went over the mathematics of her situation for the umpteenth time. She was fifteen and a half now, in Year 11 at secondary school. She could legally leave home and school in just over six months’ time. Unfortunately, though, the jobs she had seen advertised that seemed suitable for completely inexperienced sixteen-year-olds, and the rents of bedsit flats she had looked at in the local paper, didn’t appear to be particularly compatible with each other. And although she disgusted her mother by not being slim or stylish or popular, the one thing she was pretty good at was schoolwork. If she could hang on another two years then she could take her A-levels and escape to university. In fact, only yesterday Mr Hynes, her History teacher, had said she should think about applying to Oxford or Cambridge. Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited had given her a strong prejudice in favour of Oxford, and she’d had a happy evening fantasising about the dreaming spires and of a world where liking books and reading wouldn’t mark her out as a freak. That was the prize, but could she possibly stick another two and a half years at home in order to get there?

At times like this, she doubted it. Her dad wasn’t the problem; in fact her dad was great. He understood her passion for books and, as a teacher, he realised how difficult she found it to fit in at her modern comprehensive school. The problem was that he was completely under her mum’s thumb, and her mum was a total bitch.

Phoebe clenched her fists. What really made her furious, with herself more than her mum, was that she still had some kind of emotional dependency on her. Like today, her one thought had been to get home to her mum, even though experience should have amply demonstrated that Liz would probably only make things worse. But it was as though Phoebe’s subconscious had absorbed society’s expectations of what mothers were – warm, caring, sympathetic, loving – and insisted on applying them to her own family, despite all the evidence to the contrary, and every time these expectations were confounded it left her a little more internally bruised.

There was a soft knock on the door.

‘What?’ Phoebe croaked.

‘It’s Dad, can I come in?’

Phoebe got up and went to unlock the door. Callum McCraig took in her tear-stained face and swollen eyes and wrapped her in a huge hug before he said anything. Phoebe buried her face deep in her dad’s shoulder, wishing she never had to come out again. Eventually he released her, and she went and flopped back on the bed in her nest of chocolate bar wrappings. Callum sat down on the denim-covered sofa and surveyed his daughter with a mixture of love, sympathy and frustration. The frustration was mainly directed at himself as he felt so pathetically unable to find a way to help her.

‘What happened, love?’

Phoebe sighed. Suddenly she felt very tired and heavy, and couldn’t face going through it all again. She shrugged.

‘Same old, same old, really. Some of the girls in my year played a horrible joke on me, I got upset, came home, and Mum said it was all my fault, basically.’

Callum felt a surge of fury against his wife, but controlled it and said gently, ‘Mum didn’t mean that, I’m sure. She just wants to help you.’

Phoebe felt the tide of hysterical anger rise in her again.

‘She doesn’t want to help me for me though, Dad, she just wants to help me turn into the perfect daughter she always wanted, someone she can dress like a doll and go to the gym with, and be proud instead of ashamed of. You know, this week she asked me if I’d like to go to Zumba with her? I mean, like there’s any chance I’m going to do Zumba!’

Here Callum felt on firmer ground.

‘Your mum loves you, and she’s just trying to think of things you can do together. And honestly, Pheebs, you should do some exercise, it’s healthy for anyone.’

Phoebe was shaking her head adamantly.

‘No, it’s not like that. She wants to do things with me on her terms, she doesn’t care what I actually like. I don’t mind doing some exercise – I’d like to go on a country walk, like we used to when I was little, out in Wales or somewhere, but she’s not interested in that.’

Callum lapsed into resigned silence. Phoebe was too intelligent and clear-sighted for her own good, and he knew that her analysis was pretty much spot on.

‘Well, why don’t we go up to the Lake District on Saturday, if the weather’s OK? We can have a hike, a pub lunch maybe. I could do with a chance to blow the cobwebs away. What do you think?’

Phoebe smiled at her dad. His attempts to cheer her up were pathetically transparent, but still effective. At least he cared enough to try.

‘That sounds great, Dad. I’d love to.’

‘OK, well, I’ll have a chat with your mum about it.’

And then he was gone, his six-foot-three bulk leaving no trace other than a slight dent in the sofa cushions, and a lingering whiff of the Hugo Boss aftershave she had saved up to buy him for his birthday.

 

Callum ran down the stairs two at a time and burst into the kitchen, where his wife was chopping vegetables, thin latex gloves protecting her hands and nails.

She turned and smiled at him, displaying the perfectly even white teeth that had cost her several thousand pounds to achieve. By most standards Liz McCraig was a stunningly beautiful woman. Pencil thin, but with high, round breasts (another few thousand pounds), perfectly straight ash-blonde hair that fell to her shoulders in a shiny curtain, large blue eyes with long dark lashes and a sensuously full mouth. The problem for her was that the modelling world applied a different set of standards, and Liz was forty-two years old. This fact meant that, despite her perfect figure, good looks and previously lucrative career in modelling, she was now finding it difficult to get work.

‘How’s the drama queen?’ she asked him now.

‘She’s really upset, Liz. It’s not easy for her, you know. She’s sensitive, and clever and—’

‘And fat. She’s overweight, Callum, seriously overweight, and that’s why she gets bullied at school. And I know you think I’m a hard-hearted bitch, you both think that, but I only want to help Phoebe, and it isn’t healthy for her being the size she is. Look at all the stuff about childhood obesity, and lower life expectancy, and type 2 diabetes.’

‘I know, I know. But Pheebs hasn’t got any health problems, and it’s a vicious circle, isn’t it? She eats to make herself feel better, but then fits in less well because she’s overweight.’

Liz nodded.

‘Yes, I know that. But you’re an enabler, Callum. I give her a hard time because that’s what she needs to give her the motivation to lose weight. All your sympathy doesn’t get her anywhere, does it?’

Callum said softly, ‘It might make her less unhappy.’

Liz rolled her eyes.

‘You just don’t get it, do you? I’m sick of being painted as the baddie when I’m the one being the responsible parent. Whatever I try – helping her with diets, making healthy food, suggesting she comes to exercise classes with me – it’s all thrown back in my face, and you just pat her on the head and say “Oh dear, poor Phoebe” and she adores you for it.’

She turned and continued slicing onions and mushrooms with such vigour that Callum felt sure she was picturing some part of his anatomy on the chopping board. He sighed deeply. He just couldn’t face another argument, and he searched for something conciliatory to say, before hitting on the perfect thing.

‘I think you’re right, about the healthy lifestyle. So I thought we could all go to the Lake District for the day on Saturday, have a long walk, spend some time together. I had thought of a pub lunch, but we could always take a salad or something if you want to be really healthy.’

Liz groaned inwardly. She liked gyms and studio classes. Clean, neat, organised, with lively music, warm showers and saunas, stylish sportswear, friends to gossip with afterwards. She did not like hiking. In her experience it was cold, wet, uncomfortable, there was no one to see what you were wearing, and the only people to talk to would be Callum and Phoebe, who would go off in their little club of two, talking about books or Phoebe’s schoolwork, and leave her completely out of it.

‘Hmm, I’m quite busy this weekend,’ she prevaricated, but then when she saw the smile beginning to fade from Callum’s lips she hesitated. After all, he had been offering her an olive branch of sorts, and she didn’t want to alienate him completely.

Liz was under no illusions that she loved her husband, hadn’t for years, but equally she had no intention of ending up as a divorce statistic. Her own mother had left her father to ‘find herself’, and Liz had experienced the consequences of that voyage of self-discovery first hand. A series of grotty rented flats. No spare money for new clothes or treats. Seeing how patronising people could be to a single, middle-aged woman. No, Liz had escaped from that world with her first modelling job and subsequent marriage to Callum, and she had no intention of ever returning to it. Every so often, after a particularly bad row, Callum would talk about moving out, but she knew he never would. She had always told him that, if he ever left, she would ensure she got custody of Phoebe and would limit his access to her as far as humanly possible. That would hardly be an ideal scenario for her – single motherhood didn’t appeal in the least – but she knew how much Callum adored Phoebe, and she was certain he would never take the gamble.

There was no point having an argument for the sake of it, and she back-pedalled.

‘It’s a good idea, though, we’ll go one weekend soon, I promise.’

And with that, the fragile equilibrium of their marriage was once again restored, at least temporarily.

Chapter 10

Imogen felt, and knew that she looked, like a limp rag. Even though she had been exhausted the night before, she had only managed a couple of hours’ broken sleep on the camp bed next to Indigo in the hospital. It had been too hot, and every couple of hours the nurse had come to do observations on Indigo. These usually woke her up and left her overtired, sore and almost inconsolable, and it would take Imogen all her efforts to soothe her back to sleep again. This morning she had been told that Indigo was fine, just needed to be kept quiet for a few days, and that they could go home.

At that point she’d realised she had no way of getting home. The hospital they’d been taken to, the Royal Free in Hampstead, was a long way from Walthamstow and she had no transport. She supposed she could phone a minicab, but the thought of endless negotiations on the availability of car seats was nearly as unthinkable as risking Indigo’s safety again with an uncarseated journey across London. She would have to swallow her pride, phone Pete and ask him to pick them up. She dialled – it cut straight to voicemail. She phoned their landline – it rang out. After repeating this for a few minutes and getting no further, Indigo was starting to get fractious and Imogen felt at her wits’ end. Then she remembered that Ella had said she could phone Greg if she needed anything. She tried Ella’s number, but that was also cutting to voicemail, unsurprising as her friend was probably enjoying her first lie-in for three years. Desperate now, she phoned Ella’s landline and Greg answered after a few rings.

Imogen nearly dissolved in tears when she heard his familiar voice, but managed to hold it together sufficiently to explain the situation to him. Greg was his normal relaxed and laid-back self.

‘Alright, Immy, no problem. I’m going to drop Aidan and Hattie at my mum’s, and then I’ll drive over and pick you up. It’s OK, you and Indigo will be home in no time.’

Imogen sank down in relief in the waiting area by the main entrance to the hospital. Her resistance to junk food seemed to have been entirely worn down and she went to the vending machine to buy a carton of Ribena for Indigo and a chocolate bar for them both to share. An unexpected sugar infusion transformed Indigo’s mood and the hour until Greg arrived passed surprisingly easily.

Imogen, who had cried more in the past twenty-four hours than in the whole previous year, felt tears of relief starting again when she saw Greg stride in through the big double doors. He looked familiar, and safe and dependable – everything that Pete wasn’t. And everything, a little voice whispered, that Alex seemed to be. She shook herself mentally and went over to hug Greg. He held her tight for a moment.

‘God, Immy, you poor thing! And poor Indigo. What a bloody nightmare. Come on, let’s get you both home.’

He took Indigo’s hand and linked his arm through Imogen’s and they headed off to the car park.

‘I’m so grateful, Greg, and to your mum for having your kids as well. Thank you so much.’

He grinned.

‘Don’t be silly, what are friends for? You’d do the same for us. Can I ask though, where is Pete?’

His tone was neutral, but Imogen was aware that Greg had no particular fondness for Pete. It was mutual – Pete found Greg boring, square, overly conscientious, whereas Greg was singularly unimpressed by Pete’s laissez-faire approach to life and parenthood.

Imogen hesitated. Her instinctive reaction, still, was to make an excuse, to protect Pete, but then, when she thought of what he had put her through, how he had put Indigo at risk and then abandoned them, a surge of anger came over her again.

‘Pete has . . .’ she glanced down at Indigo and then mouthed ‘. . . fucked off, and left me to cope on my own. I had one text message from him yesterday, and now his phone’s switched off.’

Greg shook his head and whistled soundlessly.

‘Bloody hell, Immy, I bet you’re mad. Ella would have my bollocks for kebabs if I tried anything like that with her.’

Imogen smiled, wryly. Ella was always threatening to have Greg’s bollocks for kebabs for far more minor infringements than that – half an hour late back from work, forgetting to pick up milk on the way home, losing his dry-cleaning ticket. Yes, such marital pinpricks could be very irritating, but lately Imogen had started to worry that Ella was sweating the small stuff to the extent that she was in danger of overlooking Greg’s essential kindness and decency.

As if reading her mind, Greg grinned.

‘Of course, Ella half-kills me if I leave the top off the toothpaste, so we are working to slightly different standards here.’

Greg put on a nursery-rhymes CD in the car and Indigo dozed contentedly in Aidan’s carseat while Imogen and Greg chatted companionably. When they arrived back at Imogen’s, she asked Greg in for a cup of tea. He gently carried the still sleeping Indigo in from the car up to her room and laid her carefully on the bed while Imogen draped a blanket lightly over her.

Imogen could feel her anxiety levels rising again. Indigo hardly ever napped during the day now, and certainly not this deeply.

‘Do you think she’s OK?’ she asked Greg.

He patted her shoulder reassuringly.

‘Of course she is. They wouldn’t have let her home unless they were a hundred per cent confident she was OK. She’s just knackered, Immy – she probably had a broken night, and she’s been through a lot. Just let her have a nap, and come down and make us something hot and caffeinated.’

His warmth and positivity was reassuring and Imogen felt her spirits lift a little. Downstairs in the kitchen it seemed that nothing had changed; the dishes she had hastily washed the previous morning were still piled on the draining board, although closer examination showed that they had been joined by a dirty bowl and spoon. As Imogen took the milk from the fridge she found herself sniffing it as she would if she had been away from home for a few days; the last day had been so emotionally seismic it was hard to believe it was only twenty-four hours since she had last stood here.

As she made the tea, she heard Greg call from the living room, a little awkwardly,

‘Erm, Imogen, there’s a note for you on the mantelpiece in here.’

She went through, carrying the steaming mugs, and set them carefully down before taking the folded sheet of paper that Greg handed her. She sat down, curling her legs under her, and, in the absence of anything to g. . .