Peas, Carrots and Six More Feet, page 1
ALSO BY HANNAH LYNN
Standalone Feel Good Novels
The Afterlife of Walter Augustus
Treading Water
A Novel Marriage
The Complete Peas and Carrots Series
Peas, Carrots and an Aston Martin
Peas, Carrots and a Red Feather Boa
Peas, Carrots and Six More Feet
Peas, Carrots and Lessons in Life
Peas, Carrots and Panic at the Plot
Peas, Carrots and Happily Ever After
The Holly Berry Sweet Shop Series
The Sweet Shop of Second Chances
Love Blooms at the Second Chances Sweet Shop
Family Ties at the Second Chances Sweet Shop
High Hopes at the Second Chances Sweet Shop
Sunday Days at the Second Chances Sweet Shop
A Summer Wedding at the Second Chances Sweet Shop
The Lonely Hearts Book Club Series
Never Too Late
Lessons in Love
Illusions of Love
Table for Two
The Wildflower Lock Series
New Beginnings at Wildflower Lock
Coffee and Cake at Wildflower Lock
Blue Skies over Wildflower Lock
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Note from Hannah
Acknowledgments
About the Author
This story is a work of fiction. All names, characters, organisations, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any persons, alive or dead, events or locals is almost entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2019 Hannah Lynn
First published 2019
ISBN: 9781795574396
Imprint: Independently published
Edited by Emma Mitchell @ Creating Perfection and
Jessica Nelson @ Indie Books Gone Wild
Cover design by Vector Artist
All rights reserved.
No part of this book should be reproduced in any way without the express permission of the author.
For T and S, always brightening my day
CHAPTER 1
TWO SHARP KNOCKS rang through the door. Eric wasn’t going to open his eyes. He couldn’t. His head throbbed from tears and drink, and a smell that may or may not have been his own body odour was causing him to gag each time he breathed in. He was in no fit state to talk. Whoever was outside would go away, eventually. They always did.
‘Eric, you need to get up.’
He opened his eyes, only to close them again.
‘Eric, I know you can hear me.’
There was a pause. Eric rolled over and pulled a pillow over his head.
‘I’ll be back in ten minutes,’ Yvette said. ‘You need to get yourself sorted or I’m coming in there. You understand?’ Another pause followed as Yvette waited for a reply. Eric smacked his lips together. His pulse thumped in his ears. She could wait all she liked, he thought. He was saying nothing. Finally, the sound of footsteps retreated down the hallway and into the bathroom. At the click of the lock, Eric opened his eyes.
The onslaught of light burned through his retinas. The curtains were drawn and the light was no more intense than an average May morning, but to him it was blinding. He squeezed his eyes shut again and tried to shake away the headache that was crushing in around his temples.
Eric didn’t want to be awake. Being awake meant letting thoughts into his head. Thoughts that clamped around his chest and caused every nerve in his body to burn with a pain so furious and so overwhelming he didn’t understand how he was still alive. How was it possible to be alive when you hurt this much? How was it possible to feel this much pain and survive?
Suzy was dead.
She had been next to him, the car’s crumpled metal body keeping them separated. But he could see her. He saw it all. Behind him, the driver of the red car stumbling about, blood oozing on his forehead, struggling to stand. Eric didn’t care about him.
‘Suzy!’ Eric had screamed as her head lolled to the side, a thin trickle of blood snaking its way from her nostril. Shattered glass scattered across her body and the hiss of the deflating air bag leaked into the air around them.
‘God, no. No, no, no. Please. God. No. Suzy please.’ Eric pushed his body through the shattered window, barely able to breathe from the invisible vice around his lungs. ‘Suzy, you need to wake up. You need to wake up.’ Eric reached through the glass, hands outstretched, but the man with the busted leg yanked him backwards.
‘You mustn’t touch her,’ he said. ‘You can’t do anything. You need to wait for an ambulance.’
‘No,’ Eric screamed. ‘Suzy, please wake up. Please.’
‘You need to leave her there.’
‘Get off me!’ Eric swiped at the guy. The man held him firm. Eric swiped again and again.
‘Get off. Let me go!’ He could feel the tears and taste the salt. The man’s face was contorted with pain as Eric fought against him, thrashing and kicking and thumping at him to let go. Eric elbowed his ribs, his groin, even his leg where blood was seeping through the denim of his jeans.
‘She’s my wife!’ Eric screamed. Still, the man refused to let go. ‘She’s my wife. I need to get to her.’ That was when Eric realised. Even if he did get to her, there was nothing he could do. He had already done enough. His vision went, followed by his knees.
‘Ten minutes is up. You need to get sorted.’
It took a moment for Eric to realise that the owner of the voice was not outside the room, but looming over him, with great feather earrings dangling from her ears.
‘Eric, are you listening?’
He groaned and rolled over. His hand landed on something cold and smooth next to him. A bottle. He extended his grip only to have Yvette snatch it up before he could check if there was anything still left.
‘Lydia’s only taken Abi out for a short walk, they’ll be back soon, and she can’t see you looking like this.’
‘Abi?’ Eric snapped upright in bed. The effect was instant and nauseating. His head swirled as if his brain had been liquefied and its melted remains left sloshing about inside a hollow skull. The smell didn’t help. There was no way that could be him he thought. No one could smell that bad. He steadied himself with a hand against the bed frame and frowned.
‘Why are they coming back? I thought Lydia was going to take her? I thought they were going to do something together? Why is she coming? I said she couldn’t come.’
‘Really?’ Yvette marched across the room and pulled open the curtains. Eric recoiled at the light. ‘You’re going to stop her going to her mother’s funeral? And Lydia too? You expect her to miss it? To miss her own sister’s funeral?’ She tutted, but it was more than just the average tut. It was laden with disgust and disappointment, and Eric was certain that he deserved every bit of it.
She looked old, Eric thought as Yvette fixed him with a glare. Old and tired, and now she had to bury her daughter. And he had to bury his wife.
‘Have a shower and sober yourself up or it’ll be you who’s not attending,’ she said. Then added, ‘I’ll have breakfast ready in twenty minutes. Tom and Lydia are going to eat here too, and we’ll all go to the crematorium together. The service starts at two.’
Eric bristled.
‘You think I don’t know that? I know what time my wife’s funeral starts.’
Yvette pursed her lips, but for once didn’t offer a reply. She had been talking less and less recently, to a point that even Eric could tell. She probably didn’t think there was much worth talking to him about anymore. Taking her silence as compliance, Eric reached down the side of his bed and felt around with his outstretched hand. When the floor offered nothing, he re-angled his body and pulled open the bottom drawer of his dresser; he had been keeping a store there, not loads, but enough, and away from Yvette’s prying eyes and nosey do-gooding.
‘If you’re looking for your drink, it’s all gone.’ Yvette’s cheeks pulled in as she spoke. ‘I got rid of it. Again.’ A dense silence stippled the air between them, which Eric took to mean she was either going to storm off and slam the door, or else lay into him yet again. Though instead, she sighed. The bags below her eyes grew visibly as she dropped herself down on the end of the bed. Her shoulders slumped and her hands rested in her lap. Another sigh was expelled from between her lips, even longer and heavier than the first. ‘This has to stop, Eric. You’ve done your wallowing. You’ve got a daughter to think of.’
‘You know I don’t drink in front of her.’
‘No, just around her constantly. You think she can’t smell it on you? She’s not an idiot, Eric, and you’re pushing her away.’
‘I am not.’ His nostrils flared as the muscles along his jawlines tightened.
‘So you think you’re being supportive?
You think you’re being the kind of father she needs in her life right now?’
Grumbling incoherently under his breath, he looked down at his hands and picked at some invisible dirt under his nails. This was why he preferred the screaming and door slamming, because every conversation he had nowadays ended with him feeling worse than he had before. Even when he didn’t think that was possible.
Drawing a long pull of air in through her nose, Yvette levered herself up to standing before brushing down the small patch of the bed on which she had been sitting. She turned towards the door, then stopped.
‘I don’t suppose you’d be sober enough to tell, but have you seen a ring lying about anywhere? A diamond one?’
Eric continued his wordless mumblings. Yvette waited, lips pouting, eyes scowling.
‘Well thank you for all your help,’ she said, moving towards the door. ‘It’s much appreciated.’
When she was halfway down the stairs, she stopped at called back up to him.
‘You need a shower,’ she said. ‘You smell disgusting.’
Eric picked up another pillow and held it over his face. Maybe if he smelt bad enough, she’d stop coming in and bothering him.
Despite the desire to while away yet another day in bed, Eric knew that today, of all days, it would be an impossibility. After one last check of the floor and bottom drawer, he grabbed a towel from off the back of the door and headed for the bathroom. If bathrooms could have talked, Eric knew for a fact he would have asked his not to. At the beginning of the year Eric had had the misfortune of walking in on his mother-in-law in a compromising position with a twenty-something plumber; an image he thought would be ingrained in his mind for the rest of his life. Occasional flashbacks of lacy underwear and spine shuddering groans still, now and then, leapt into his consciousness, but now there were other images seared in his memory; ones of twisted metal and angry tears and Suzy’s lifeless body pulled from the wreck of her car. Those were the images that would be with him for all eternity, of that there was no doubt. Clenching and unclenching his fists, Eric focused on the task in hand. A shower. He could manage that.
As it happened, the shower did help with some things. It lessened the odour and the need to gag, and it cleared the crust from his eyes that had been hazing his vision for days now. But it sharpened other things, like his awareness of the need to shave and the fact he looked like absolute crap. It also sharpened his mind, his memories. A small coil of long blonde hair was slowing the flow of water down the plughole, and half a bottle of lavender and jasmine shower gel sat above the soap tray. Eric flicked off the lid, lifted the bottle up to his nose, and inhaled. A dull throb spread its way up through this sternum. Slowly the throb began to burn, searing through his skin until it was all he could focus on. It gripped and tightened around his chest and ribs, squeezing them. For a second he thought that his legs might buckle – the same way they had so many times in the last two weeks – but they held, and, with his hand trembling, he placed the bottle back on the shelf then adjusted its position until it was back in the right place. When he stepped out of the shower, he rubbed himself dry then picked up a razor for the first time since the accident.
The ambulance had come with its sirens on, lights flashing as it turned down the street and raced towards them. The paramedics dashed from the front, bags in hand, but they were too late. Eric knew it.
‘It’s my wife, my wife. Please, please. She’s my wife.’
One of the paramedics pulled him to the side as the other got to work. Someone else tried to drag him away, to stop him watching as they heaved her body out of the twisted wreck, but he pulled himself out of their grip.
‘Do something,’ he yelled at anyone who could hear. ‘Do something. You have to be able to do something.’
‘Sir.’ Someone spoke to him, the voice floating and calm, like they couldn’t see the chaos unravelling in front of them. ‘Please sir, you need to come with us. Is there someone you can call? Is there someone you want us to call?’
‘Call? She’s my wife. She is my wife. Who else am I meant to call? There is no one else. There is no one else.’
Eric half-heartedly ran the razor across his cheeks. It was a surprise to see that the quick shave made the outside appear better even if the inside was still a train wreck. He returned to his bedroom, towel wrapped around his waist. Yvette had tidied, and judging from the job she had done, he must have been in there longer than he had thought. The window was open, filling the room with a cool clean breeze, while his bed and the clothes that were strewn on the floor had all been straightened up and all the empty glasses were gone. Hung up by the window was a freshly ironed shirt and his funeral suit. Eric stepped towards it and ran his hand down the seam.
He had worn the suit only three times; once for each of his parents, once for an elderly friend that had died the year before. Norman. After he died, they had bought his house. The house they lived in now. The house of dead people, Eric mused.
He had never had to go to a funeral for someone younger than himself. Never did he once suspect that the first time it would happen would be for his wife. Attending Suzy’s funeral had always been an impossibility to him, like being a grandparent. Of course there was a chance it would happen one day, but at this point in his life it was all such an abstract concept he had never really given it a second thought. Now he was standing in the bedroom they had shared, preparing to say goodbye. Eric pulled his arm into one of the sleeves and stared at himself in the mirror. It wasn’t just Yvette who had aged recently. His skin had taken on a greyish hue, his eyes were bloodshot and shrunken from all the drink. Had he passed his reflection on the street he wouldn’t have recognised himself; he would have probably crossed to the other side of the road too. Still, he continued to dress, mindlessly moving from one garment to the next.
After knotting the tie around his neck, Eric stared some more. This was it, this was how he was going to say goodbye to his wife, to the love of his life, looking like an undertaker or a cheap wedding musician. He pulled on the bit of nylon around his neck. And in a skinny tie? Why did he not own a thick black tie? Why was the only plain black, funeral-worthy tie he owned from the days when C&A was still considered the height of fashion and men wore bell-bottoms in a non-ironic way? He tugged at the tie and loosened the knot before pulling it off altogether and throwing it to the ground. No chance. Not a chance in hell.
Opening the wardrobe, Eric rummaged through to the back. It was the first time in two weeks he’d had any kind of definite drive, and if what he was looking for turned out not to be there, he didn’t know what he would do. He tossed one garment to the side, then the next before finally finding the item crumpled at the back, having slipped off its hanger. He sighed with relief, pulled it out of the wardrobe, and dropped it onto the bed.
Suzy had bought the shirt in Camden market years beforehand. Eric had never been a great fan of it.
‘It looks like the Y-fronts my uncle used to wear,’ he had said when she picked it out for him.
‘I never knew your uncle was so fashionable,’ she replied, holding it up to him to get a gauge of the size. ‘It suits you.’
On reflection, it wasn’t anything like the neon patterned underpants his uncle would strut around in, much to the disgust of Eric’s father. Most of the material was black, it was a decent enough cotton, and the paisley pattern was thin and delicate.
‘Please wear it,’ Suzy would say, almost every time they went out. ‘You look so good in it.’
