How to Be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman Read Free Book Online

don’t want her to be upset.’
    I rest my head against the wall, my eyes burning. I know I can’t let myself think about that: it’s somewhere I am not allowed to go.
    Kylan is silent. Then he nods, sinking back down under the covers.
    When I open the door, the room is empty and dim. Without turning the light on, I sit down on the edge of the bed. I don’t come in here often. The walls are bare, and I know that in the wardrobe only a few misshapen hangers are left in the darkness. I lean back, turning over and burying my face into the duvet, breathing through the thickness of the material. Only the sweetness of fabric softener fills my nose. I long for the smell of baby Kylan’s dim beige room: a harmless smell, of something familiar, like biscuits dipped in tea. His hands on the solid white bars of the cot; his feet sinking into the thin mattress; his legs stiff, defiant. His vertical blond hair, and his eyes watching for any movement. An excited smile, and then his face against the cotton of my shoulder as I carry him to the changing table. I know he can’t remember these things, so I will have to, for both of us.
    After he left in the summer, I would find my way here in the middle of the night. I would slide under the duvet and wake up crying, knowing he wasn’t coming back. As he packed his room into boxes, I told him it would be best to leave some things here, that it was all too sudden, but he shrugged me off, excited about moving in with Katya and his new job at the bank. I wanted to tell him it was too soon: he didn’t know her well enough. I thought he was being selfish. He couldn’t see that if he moved to the city I would never see him. He knows I don’t like the city: I haven’t been there in twenty-five years. I wanted to shout at him, grab his arms, and tell him not to leave me.
    But I had told him all that before, when he wanted to go to university in the city. I begged him to stay, to go to college locally. I told him he would break my heart. One night, we sat again at the kitchen table to discuss it, Hector and Kylan on one side, me on the other. My argument was that the local college was good, that he could get his qualifications and work at the farm up the road. Hector thought he should go to the city, live his own life. I have never forgiven him for that.
    I started to cry then, slow deliberate tears. Kylan sat on the other side of the table and watched me for a long time. Hector sighed. I put my head in my hands, heard Kylan’s chair scraping on the kitchen tiles, and felt him put his arms around me.
It’s OK, Mum
, he whispered.
I’ll stay.
    I smile to myself, a warmth moving through my chest. He’s coming home. Tomorrow, Kylan will be here and everything will be all right again. I’ll show him everything he has left behind. And I’ll do it all without my pills. There’s so much to do, I can barely wait to get started. I tell myself he won’t leave me again.
    I go to our bathroom and wash my face. Leaning close to the mirror, I see the lines around my eyes, the traces of grey in my hair. Smiling, I watch the furrows deepen. My skin is paler than most of the women in the valley, those who help out on the farms. My hands are paler too, less marked, though the undersides have hardened from all the cleaning products. My wedding ring is so much a part of my hand now, I don’t see it any more. I never had an engagement ring: I suppose we were never really engaged.
    In my bedroom, I pull on my woollen nightgown and slip beneath the covers. Touching my stomach, I push it out, imagining I am pregnant again. That feeling, of your body no longer being yours but the property of someone else, someone more important. I remember the sickness too. Before I knew I was pregnant, I thought there was something really wrong with me.
    One day, on my way to the market, I had to pull the car over and vomit onto the grassy verge. I drove myself straight to the doctor’s surgery on the other side of the