Page 2 of A Clean Sweep
As she skimmed a duster over the coffee table and gave the bookcase a quick once-over, she smiled at her large collection of paperbacks.
Most people she knew, herself included, downloaded everything on to their Kindles or similar devices.
Certainly a lot less baggage weight when going on holiday, but there was something special about turning the pages of a much-loved book.
Her fingers came to rest on one. A present from Jim.
Blood Angel – A Tale of Gory Revenge. About as far removed from Emily’s tastes as possible.
Pushing it back into position she realised with a jolt that today would have been their thirtieth wedding anniversary.
Thirty years since Emily had turned to Jim and said, ‘I do’.
When a little voice in her head had been whispering, ‘Are you sure? Really, really sure?’
She’d only been twenty-two when they’d got married, Jim five years older.
Far too young to be trussed up in white taffeta that stretched uncomfortably against her slightly protruding stomach.
Yes, caught in the age-old trap of finding herself pregnant just a year after finishing university.
They’d met there, at the students’ union, a rather tipsy Emily flattered by the attention from this rather earnest postgraduate with his unruly brown hair and tattered Jimi Hendrix T-shirt.
He drank wine rather than beer – which she thought the height of sophistication – and had a vinyl collection that filled his parents’ spare bedroom.
In the early days of their burgeoning romance, Emily felt safe and a little smug as her singleton friends bed-hopped around the campus.
Moaning continuously about their scruffy student boyfriends with their bacteria-gathering bathrooms and mountainous heaps of dirty washing that festered in corners of their cupboard-sized rooms. Jim was different, a grown man with a future in marketing already mapped out.
He owned his own place, thanks to a legacy from a dotty old aunt who’d secretly stashed away a fortune betting on greyhounds, and took her to nice restaurants.
Dependable, devoted, financially secure, what was not to love?
Except Emily couldn’t help wondering sometimes if something was missing.
Passion, perhaps? That feeling of a delicious fizz of anticipation when you were waiting to see the supposed love of your life.
The sex was fine – well, OK – not that she had much to compare it to.
Apart from the odd steamy novel or TV show that had her dad coughing furiously and her mum rocketing out her chair to deal with some suddenly urgent matter in the kitchen.
Not so much a fizz, perhaps, more like a glass of two-day old Lilt. Still drinkable but lacking sparkle.
For their silver wedding anniversary, Jim had bought her a pretty pair of earrings.
Shame he hadn’t noticed in all these years that she’d never had her ears pierced.
Her mum deemed it akin to self-mutilation – ‘You might as well get your neck stretched like those African women!’ – so she’d never got around to it.
She, in turn, had searched the internet for the perfect decanter with a delicate silver base in a pattern of intertwined grapes and leaves, Jim’s love for wine and all things tastefully alcoholic having blossomed over the years.
He would sniff, swill and pontificate on its provenance, whereas Emily just liked the way it made her feel mellow and couldn’t care less if it came as part of a ‘dine in for a tenner’ deal.
What was the symbol for thirty years? Pearl?
Couldn’t imagine Jim fishing a tantalising little faux-suede box out of his pocket, nestled inside a single lustrous drop on a fine gold chain.
Not one for romantic gestures, his gifts had been of a more practical nature.
Like the Christmas before he died. She’d bought him a bottle of vintage Armagnac produced in the year of his birth.
He’d given her an electric foot file designed to slough away dead skin and callouses.
‘Look, Em!’ he’d exclaimed as she attempted to generate some kind of enthusiasm.
‘It’s got real diamond crystals!’ Try as she might, Emily couldn’t imagine Eartha Kitt purring with pleasure over finding that in her stocking.
Poor old Santa Baby would most likely have been shoved unceremoniously back up the chimney.
Speaking of chimneys, it had been more than four years since her own one had been lit.
Metaphorically speaking, more like ten years since any kind of flame had smouldered in Emily’s life.
After Tabitha was born – and both she and Jim had been smitten by their daughter from day one – she had hoped to expand their little family.
However, it was not meant to be. No clear-cut medical reason, the doctors said.
And as the months and years passed and Jim retreated to his own study/guest room at night – 'hate to keep you awake with my snoring, my dear' – her dreams of a brother or sister for Tabitha faded along with her libido.
A perfunctory peck on the cheek or the lips, the occasional pat on the bottom, the very occasional coupling which lasted as long as a TV ad break.
And usually followed a fine bottle of St Emilion Grand Cru if Jim had been celebrating a particularly successful campaign.
There was still a basket of logs next to the fireplace. And, if her memory served her correctly, a box of firelighters on a shelf in the garage. Jim had disapproved of firelighters.
‘That’s the cheat’s way, Em. It’s all about arranging the kindling correctly, a few scrunched-up pages of The Telegraph, and Bob’s your uncle!
’ Then he’d huff and puff and almost blow the house down as the flames failed to take hold.
On the odd occasion when Jim was travelling, Emily took gleeful delight in lighting the fire herself.
With the aid of the illicit firelighters it took her approximately five to ten minutes to produce a roaring hearth.
Curled up with her Kindle and a glass of passable plonk she’d congratulated herself on a job well done, and with the minimum of fuss.
Then made sure to clear away the evidence before Jim’s return, lest his masculinity be reduced to a pile of cold ashes.
It was just after seven and Emily had set the stage; the fire ready for the touch of a match, the food artfully arranged on plates adorned with seedless green and red grapes.
Candles burned on every surface, suffusing the air with a hint of wild berries and cinnamon.
The lamps were turned down low, both for atmosphere and because women in their fifties and sixties preferred the subtler approach of ambient lighting.
Going into a brightly lit changing room these days was akin to torture; every lump, bump and line thrown into sharp relief by the brutal glare and wall-to-wall mirrors.
First through the door was Celeste. At almost sixty she was remarkably well preserved, like a plump Christmas ham glistening under the hallway light.
She'd recently taken to having hair extensions after complaining that her once-crowning glory was thinning at an alarming rate.
'I'll be damned if I end up with a bloody comb-over like that Bobby Charleston!
' she'd decreed, before emerging from the salon more footballer's wife than footballing legend.
One of her sister’s more endearing traits, in Emily’s view, was her proneness to malapropisms. Hence the Charlton/Charleston mix up.
'Hello, darling! You look fabulous! Haven’t seen that top before, is it new?
' Celeste clamped her sister to her bosom, nearly asphyxiating her in a cloud of La Vie est Belle. Emily smoothed down the simple but fitted teal blue number with its daring – for her – halter neck. At a time in life when women were forming campaigns like twenty-first century suffragettes to bring back sleeves she was inordinately pleased that she had succumbed to neither bingo hall nor bingo wings. And, with hopefully a real fire to keep them warm this evening, she felt a little flesh-baring wasn’t too over the top.
Celeste followed her sister into the kitchen, opening the fridge and retrieving a bottle of Pinot Grigio.
Pouring herself a generous measure, she sank down on a counter stool and scooped up a handful of Bombay mix.
Duly chewed and swallowed, she surveyed Emily with an appraising eye.
'A bit outré for book club, ma petite?' Celeste had briefly taken a French course at night school and liked to toss in a few Gallic phrases in a bid to impress. 'Shame we don’t have any male members, I’m sure dear Arnold Pettifer would be quite smitten with your defoliage.
' As Arnold Pettifer was nudging seventy and had a smile reminiscent of yellowing tombstones – with an odd familial gap or two – Emily didn’t feel it too much of a loss.
'Did you enjoy the book? Found it a bit boring myself. All that weeping and wailing and endless doom and death! Give me a good Sheila O’Flanagan any day of the week.
' On this, Emily had to reluctantly agree, even though it had been her selection. Over 700 pages of painstakingly researched historical fact/fiction did not make for a light bedtime read. It might have won several major prizes but to her it served only as a more effective sleeping pill than those prescribed by her GP. She’d managed a quarter before giving up and downloading something frivolous but eminently more entertaining.