While My Eyes Were Closed: The #1 Bestseller Read online

  While My Eyes Were Closed

  Linda Green

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Praise for Linda Green

  About the Author

  Also by Linda Green

  Dedication

  1 Lisa

  2 Muriel

  3 Lisa

  4 Muriel

  Matthew

  5 Lisa

  6 Muriel

  7 Lisa

  8 Muriel

  Matthew

  9 Lisa

  10 Muriel

  11 Lisa

  12 Muriel

  Matthew

  13 Lisa

  14 Muriel

  15 Lisa

  16 Muriel

  Matthew

  17 Lisa

  18 Muriel

  Matthew

  19 Lisa

  20 Muriel

  Matthew

  21 Lisa

  22 Muriel

  23 Lisa

  24 Muriel

  25 Lisa

  26 Muriel

  Acknowledgements

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Quercus

  This edition first published in 2016 by

  Quercus Publishing Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  Copyright © 2016 Linda Green

  The moral right of Linda Green to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Ebook ISBN 978 1 78429 280 5

  Print ISBN 978 1 78429 281 2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Praise for Linda Green

  ‘A well-written, thoughtful read about when love is put to the greatest test’ Daily Mail

  ‘Smart, witty writing’ Elle

  ‘Utterly riveting’ Closer

  ‘Heart-warming and inspiring – a great read!’ Katie Fforde

  ‘Warm, well-written, thought-provoking’ Dorothy Koomson

  ‘Warm and wonderful’ Milly Johnson

  ‘Inspiring and moving’ Kate Long

  ‘Keeps you guessing right up to the end’ Sun

  ‘Heartwarming and original . . . will leave you full of hope’ Vanessa Greene

  About the Author

  Linda Green wrote her first novella at the age of nine. Unfortunately, the pony-based time travel thriller genre never took off. She did however go on to achieve her childhood ambition of becoming an author and has written six previous novels. Linda is also an award-winning journalist and has written for the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday and the Big Issue. She lives in West Yorkshire with her husband, eleven-year-old son, two rescue guinea pigs and a lot of mess.

  Also by Linda Green

  The Marriage Mender

  The Mummyfesto

  And Then It Happened

  Things I Wish I’d Known

  10 Reasons NOT to Fall in Love

  I Did a Bad Thing

  For Susan Stephenson, for holding my hand on the journey into motherhood and for bringing such love, light and joy to the world

  ‘I watch a bird as it brings food to its chicks. How it looks after them, how it protects them. And then I say to myself, “You’re a better mother than me” ’

  Hatidza Mehmedovic, mother of two sons murdered at Srebrenica

  Your body realises you have lost your child before your brain does. The invisible umbilical cord between you snaps. Everything inside you goes loose and limp. Only then does your brain register what is happening. It kicks into action, trying to prove to your body that it is wrong. You do what it tells you, of course. You scramble in every direction. Pulling and pulling on your end of that cord. Hoping that if you pull hard enough, if you shout and kick and scream, if you can only get to the other end, you might somehow find your child still there.

  When they are not. When it is clear that they have gone. That is when the guilt kicks in. You are their mother. You have a duty to look after them. And you have failed in that duty of care, therefore you are a failed mother. How can you be anything else when it happened on your watch? While your eyes were closed, for goodness’ sake.

  That is when you start to shut down inside. One by one, your vital organs cease to function. It is hard to know how you carry on breathing, how the blood pumps around your body, because you are certainly not doing it willingly.

  You wish that somebody would be kind enough to put you out of your misery. Until you realise that this is the price you must pay – to suffer in the way that your child has. You deserve nothing less for letting them down so badly. And so you live your non-existent life. And every day when you wake up, if you have been lucky enough to get any sleep at all, the first word you say is sorry. They can’t reply, of course. But you say it all the same. In the hope that somehow they will hear and forgive you. Even though you know you will never forgive yourself.

  1

  Lisa

  ‘You haven’t seen me climb up to the big slide yet, have you, Mummy?’ says Ella, who is lying on top of our bed in her grubby Frozen pyjamas.

  I am not the sort of mum who beats herself up about missing ‘firsts’. I missed Chloe’s first steps (though Mum, bless her, described them to me afterwards with a commentary befitting the moon-landings), but I wasn’t particularly bothered about this because trying to earn enough money to get our own place was more important to me than being able to tick off a list of milestones in some crappy baby book that your mother-in-law gave you. (I didn’t have a mother-in-law at the time, on account of Chloe’s father not having hung around long enough after I told him I was pregnant for me to even meet his mother, let alone marry her son, but if I had done, I reckon she would have given me one of those books.)

  But today, for some reason, Ella’s words sting a little. Perhaps it’s the fact that since she first conquered the route up the rope climbing frame on Monday with Mum watching, Dad, Alex and even Otis have all seen her repeat the feat. Or maybe it’s the fact that today is her last weekday of freedom. Ella starts school on Monday. And although she is excited about it now, I am well aware that when she realises she also has to go to school on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, not just the first week but every week from now on, she will be furious at being denied the chance of spending her afternoons in the park, as she has this week.

  ‘No, how about I come and see you do it today then?’ I say. Ella beams at me, her dimples showing and two rows of tiny teeth bared in one of those smiles which children stop doing when they become self-conscious.

  ‘I thought you had clients this afternoon,’ says Alex, rubbing his eyes as he comes round.

  ‘My three o’clock’s cancelled, and Suzie’s already offered to do my last one if I want to get away early. It’ll give Mum a break too. She’ll be shattered after the party.’

  ‘What party?’ asks Alex, who has never been able to get his head around our children’s packe
d social calendar.

  ‘Charlie’s party,’ says Ella before I can answer, jumping up and down on the bed. ‘He’s going to be four but he’s still not as old as me.’

  We both smile. Charlie Wilson lives next door to us. He and Ella are almost a year apart but will be starting school together next week. And she is so not ever going to let him forget who is older.

  ‘Where is it?’ asks Alex.

  ‘Jumping Beans,’ I reply.

  ‘Oh, shame you’ve got to work then. You’d have enjoyed that.’ Alex turns to me with a wry smile, being well aware of my aversion to soft play centres in general and the one with the crappiest party food in town in particular.

  ‘Yeah, never mind eh,’ I reply. ‘I’m sure there’ll be plenty of others once she gets to school.’

  Pretty much every other weekend, from what I can remember with Otis, who will thankfully soon be entering the more chilled-out going-bowling-with-a-few-mates party phase.

  ‘Are you going to come and see me get my football medal then?’ asks Otis, who has been lying quietly on the other side of Alex (we have got the four-to-a-bed thing off to a fine art).

  ‘Yeah, as long as you behave and don’t do a Luis Suarez on the last day.’ I smile. Otis grins back. Having been blessed with his father’s temperament, we all know this is highly unlikely.

  ‘Are you coming too, Daddy?’ he asks, climbing over onto Alex.

  ‘No. Sorry, mate,’ says Alex, ruffling Otis’s hair, which has grown longer than it probably should have over the holidays. ‘I’ll drop you off at footie camp, but then I’ve got to go to a meeting in Manchester. You can show me your medal when I get home though, can’t you?’

  Otis nods. ‘And Grandad,’ he says. ‘I’ll take it to show Grandad too.’ My dad has a bet on Otis playing for Leeds United and England by the time he’s twenty-five. Otis is good but I’m not sure he’s that good. Not that it matters. The important thing is that he prefers to spend his time running around outside kicking a football, instead of hunched in front of an Xbox or a tablet. How long that will last I don’t know, but I’m going to make the most of it while it does.

  ‘Right,’ I say, stretching out under the duvet. ‘We’d better get up and get sorted then. Last one down to breakfast has to clear up afterwards.’

  Ella and Otis scramble up in a blur of limbs and hair and disappear from our room. Alex rolls over to me. ‘When do you think that one will stop working?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hopefully not until they start having lie-ins.’

  ‘And remind me when that is again,’ he asks, tucking a strand of my hair back behind my ear. ‘It’s all a bit of a blur to me.’

  I smile, remembering how Alex, having earned countless brownie points for being such a brilliant stepfather to Chloe, then lost as many by being utterly hopeless with sleep deprivation when we had Otis and Ella.

  ‘I think Chloe was about twelve.’

  ‘Great, only another seven years to go until the end of the early mornings then.’

  I dig him in the ribs before kissing him. His breath is warm. His lips taste of mornings. I pull him closer to me, wishing we could have a bit longer in bed. Sometimes I feel the need to introduce myself to him when we finally grab a few minutes together.

  ‘Hey, don’t start all that stuff,’ he says.

  ‘Why not? We are married, apparently.’

  ‘Are we? When the hell did that happen? Did I actually wake up in time for the ceremony?’

  I kiss him again to shut him up. ‘Only just.’

  ‘Anyway, I need a shower,’ he continues. ‘Sticky night. I smell like a pig.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ I reply (working in a gym qualifies me as something of an expert on this subject). ‘And anyway,’ I add, running my fingers down his back, ‘even if you did, I could put up with it.’

  ‘Shame someone will be barging in here in two minutes complaining that his sister has nicked the Coco Pops then, isn’t it?’

  I smile and give him one last kiss.

  ‘They won’t like it next week, you know,’ I say. ‘When it goes back to being boring, healthy stuff for the school term.’

  ‘Well, if you set yourself up as the evil cereal dictator, you have to deal with dissent in the ranks.’

  ‘Thanks for your support.’

  ‘No problem. And just so you know when you have to referee the fallout, it was actually me who ate the Coco Pops.’ Alex leaps out of bed so quickly that my foot misses his backside.

  ‘I’ll get you for that later,’ I call out as he disappears into the en suite. I lie there for a second, breathing in the stillness, feeling the warmth of the early-morning sun, which is streaming through the new cream Ikea curtains just as Alex warned me it would. I can already hear the sound of bickering drifting up from downstairs. Ella’s voice, as usual, is the loudest.

  I try to block it out as I wonder how Chloe is doing. Whether she’s actually allowing herself to have a good time in France or if that is still too big a leap for her. I’ve only had a couple of brief texts so far. There was a time not so long ago when she’d have been texting me all the time. That was before, though. When we were still best friends.

  There is a shout of ‘Mummy’ and associated commotion from downstairs. I swing my legs out of bed. The laminate floor is warm already. It’s going to be another hot day. Though at least the gym is air-conditioned. I try to ignore the pile of laundry in the linen basket and the heap of clean clothes hanging over the balustrade on the landing still waiting to be ironed. I also try not to think about what Mum would say if she could see the mess which greets me in the kitchen. She offered to come and do some cleaning after Ella was born. I had to say no, even though I knew the house needed it. Because I also knew that if I said yes, she would still be our cleaner when Ella was sixteen.

  By the time Alex arrives downstairs the cereal fight has been broken up and Otis has just finished counting out the last of the Coco Pops so he and Ella have exactly the same amount in their bowls.

  ‘Mummy says you owe us a box of Coco Pops,’ Otis says, clearly still riled by the perceived injustice.

  ‘Grass,’ Alex mouths to me before turning back to Otis. ‘And you owe me about sixty quid for replacing the glass in Mrs Hunter’s greenhouse, which you mistook for a football net, remember?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ says Otis.

  ‘Quits?’ asks Alex.

  ‘Quits.’ Otis smiles, getting back to his Coco Pops.

  I swear under my breath as I knock over the open pack of ground coffee at the exact moment I realise I’ve forgotten to get the bread out of the freezer for Otis’s packed lunch.

  Alex comes over, puts his hands on my hips and whispers, ‘Chill out. Sit down and have your breakfast; I’ll sort it.’ I smile at him and for once don’t argue. He knows I’m uptight about Chloe. He was the one who suggested the holiday, said it would do her good to get away. He was right of course, though it pains me to admit it. But he doesn’t worry about her as much as I do. Nobody worries about her as much as I do.

  I pour myself a bowl of muesli, take two slices of bread from the freezer and put them in the still-warm toaster on my way past, and sit down at the kitchen table.

  ‘How many sleeps now, Mummy?’ asks Ella.

  ‘Three,’ I reply. She gives a little squeal. I have never known any child be quite this excited about starting school. Chloe was nervous about it, Otis was entirely nonplussed, but for Ella it appears to be on a par with Christmas.

  ‘We ought to be videoing this,’ says Alex, ‘so we can play it back to you in ten years’ time when you’re saying “I hate school” and refusing to get up in the mornings.’

  ‘Why would I hate school?’ asks Ella.

  ‘You won’t,’ I say in between mouthfuls of muesli. ‘It’s just that some teenagers can be a bit grumpy.’

  ‘Like Chloe, you mean?’ she says.

  I glance up at Alex. Chloe has made an effort to be her old self in front of Ella and Otis. She made
me promise not to tell them what had happened. She didn’t even want Alex to know, although I couldn’t agree to that. There are some things which can’t be passed off as teenage moods. Anyway, I wasn’t prepared to lie to him. It was the one thing I insisted on before I finally gave in and agreed to his marriage proposal. Always being honest with each other. Which was why he said he didn’t think it was a good idea for me to be his personal trainer any more. Not unless I wanted to know what he really ate when he was on the road every day.

  ‘Chloe’s not grumpy,’ says Alex, crouching down next to Ella, ‘not compared to Daddy Bear when he discovers Goldilocks has eaten all his Coco Pops.’ He goes to grab Ella’s bowl. She squeals and collapses in fits of giggles as Alex tickles her. I smile, finish my muesli and wonder for the umpteenth time what I ever did to deserve him.

  2

  Muriel

  The house reeks of emptiness. It does so all the time but I notice it particularly in the mornings. Not that it was ever a noisy house. Not like some of those chaotic places you see in documentaries about people on benefits on the television. But there was always some low-level noise in the mornings. A workman-like hum as Malcolm and Matthew went about their morning ablutions and got ready for the day ahead.

  I didn’t really notice it at the time. It is one of those things you only miss when it has gone. There are rather a lot of those. Malcolm was generally considerate with the toilet seat, Matthew perhaps not so much. It is strange to think how it used to bother me. And now I am bothered by something I do not have to do. Do not have to remind someone of.

  And socks. I am disturbed by the lack of socks in the house. It hardly seems right, does it? I mean most women are forever complaining about having to wash them (my mother even used to iron my father’s socks) and find lost ones. But now, living in a house without socks doesn’t seem right somehow. It is yin without yang. Everything is out of balance. There are plenty of houses with only female occupants of course. It is simply that this house was never meant to be one of them.