Page 19

NINETEEN FOUR YEARS EARLIER

Do I have a job? Yes.

Am I a hospitality training director?

No, I am not.

It matters not what I do for a living, but let’s just say that it’s sporadic, ad hoc, I can do it whenever I want, cash in hand, under the radar, and it’s very useful in terms of filling gaps in my finances.

And right now, I have a massive hole in my finances, a hole so big that no amount of ad hoc, cash-in-hand work is going to fill it. I’ve just bought a car.

I’m in it right now, breathing in the aroma of a fresh valet service, my hands gripping the steering wheel as I drive home to my wife.

It was an impulse purchase. I took Martha and her boys to the big used-car dealership near their house and we spent three hours wandering around.

I bought them all lunch at the American-style diner there, then we returned to claim the Tesla that the boys had been so keen on.

I paid for it on a card, ￡25,000, making sure that they were nowhere in earshot as the man at the sales desk conducted his conversation with me as “Mr. Truscott.”

Buying a car was easy enough to do. Paying for it is a problem I will have to deal with later. You might think it’s stressful living as I do, from one credit card to the next, one lie to the next, but it really isn’t. I’m not like other people, you see.

The boys asked if they could drive back with me from the dealership.

I could tell that at the very least I had cracked the older one, who I now know is called Troy.

The younger one, Jonah, is still cagey, less impressed by flashy cars.

I can see him now in the rearview mirror, strapped in on the back seat, the seat belt cutting in at his neck because even though he’s ten, he’s still so small.

His hands are spread out on the upholstery at either side, and he stares resolutely ahead.

“What do you think?” I say, playing up the soft northern tones of my accent. “Do you like her?”

“Her?” says Jonah.

“Yes,” I say to his reflection in the mirror. “Cars, boats, airplanes, they’re all girls. Not sure why. And maybe that’s a bit old-fashioned now. Maybe nowadays it’s a ‘them’?”

The inappropriate joke hits the spot with Troy, who snorts with dry laughter, but I clock a red flush passing across Jonah’s cheeks, and I store it away for the future.

Martha smiles as she watches her boys pile out of my fancy new car outside her cottage. “Came on a train, leaving in style,” she says with a smile but a note of sadness. “Are you sure you can’t stay?”

I’ve already stayed longer than I meant to.

My phone’s been on flight mode since Wednesday night and now it’s Saturday afternoon and I have no idea what my wife is doing or where she is and it’s making me anxious and edgy.

I should have gone home yesterday. I could not tear myself away, but now I must. The boys head back into the house and I look at Martha, framed by her picture-postcard cottage, her curls held back with a floral band, in baggy jeans and a bomber jacket.

She smiles at me and it’s so sweet that my heart burns with affection and with desire.

“I wish I didn’t have to go. I wish that more than anything, but I’m already five hours late for work.

I’ll get the sack if I don’t leave now.”

“I understand,” she says. “Of course I do.”

She holds her arms out to me and I go into them. I rest my cheek against the crown of her head and give her a bear hug, squeezing her with all I have.

“What are you doing next week?” I say. “I want to take you for dinner. Somewhere amazing.”

We arrange to meet again on Wednesday night.

I tell her I’ll have my company send a car for her, I’ll meet her somewhere in town, it will be a surprise, she should dress up.

Her face glows. I am bringing things into her life that she didn’t know she wanted.

But then she, too, is bringing things into my life that I didn’t know I wanted.

I didn’t know I wanted this . This rural bohemia, wild curls, mismatched crockery, flowers, all this bloody pink.

This woman with her full mouth and big teeth and quirky kids, her cute dog, her knitted throws and old Britpop Spotify playlists, clumpy boots—all of it, all of it .

But first I have to work out what to do about my wife. And before that, I need to work out how the hell I’m going to find the money to pay for this stupid fucking car.

My wife stares at the car as I climb out of it two hours later.

I see her between the curtains at the front window and my stomach clenches.

On one hand, I’m relieved that she’s still here; on the other, I am sickened by her, the meanness and spareness of her.

But I find a smile from somewhere deep inside me and I climb from the car with an apologetic flourish, pluck the flowers I bought for her on the way here from the passenger seat, then my bag and coat from the back seat, and I stride up the garden path as if there is nowhere on God’s earth I would rather be right now, as if it is only the universe conspiring against me that has kept me from here. From her.

“Darling,” I say in that voice I use when I’m with her: clipped, elegant, private school, not the soft, swollen, northern lilt I use when I’m with Martha.

“I am so, so sorry. I cannot even begin to tell you the whole thing. It’s been…

” I’ve had two hours to work out what I’m going to say to her and I think I have it straight, but I need a minute just to put myself back together.

Her eyes go over my shoulder to the shiny black car, and then back to me.

“Let’s go inside,” I say. “I’ll explain everything.”

Inside, I hang up my coat, put my bag into the cupboard in the hallway, and pass the flowers to my wife, who takes them uncertainly and then silently moves into the kitchen, where she dutifully puts them in water, which I take as a good sign.

I had half expected her to throw them in my face or beat me with them.

I was ready for that, deliberately hadn’t chosen roses.

I’d also half expected her to have left or changed the locks.

I feel my breathing steady. I am Jonathan Truscott again.

She’s sitting at the kitchen table, with a gin and tonic by her hand. She doesn’t usually drink unless she’s socializing.

“We need to talk,” she begins.

“Let me just pour one of those first,” I say, softly.

The silence between us as I pour my gin and tonic is profound. I rest my drink gently on the table in front of me and then I sigh heavily.

“I am so, so sorry. I am…” I bring tears to my eyes; I know they look extra blue with that glassy layer.

“I just think… I think I’m falling apart, Tara.

I think… I don’t know. I feel as if I might be going a bit mad.

It’s work, the stress of it. And on Wednesday, I just had this horrible, overwhelming fear…

” I turn my wet eyes up to her. “That I was losing you.”

She wrinkles her small nose. “Losing me?”

“Yes. I’ve been feeling lately, since that stupid business with the police, that you’ve been backing away from me.

Closing down. And I don’t know what to do about it.

I just don’t know what to do.” I let the tears come now, hard.

I shove my fist into my nose, and sniff and gurgle.

I wait, just a beat. Is this right? I wonder. Is this going to do it?

She blinks, so slowly that I wonder if she’ll ever open her eyes again. When she does, the coldness in them chills me.

“And you decided that disappearing for three days, switching your phone off, and coming home in a weird car was the solution?”

I don’t have to fake the existential chaos that goes along with finding an answer to her perfectly reasonable question, because I’m in it.

“I know,” I croak loudly. “I know ! I can’t explain it.

I’ve just been driving around, for three days, driving endlessly.

I’ve barely slept. I’ve been trying to clear my head, find a way back to myself.

I think I’m burning out. I’ve been feeling it coming for years, to be truthful.

This job is just… it’s killing me, darling.

I can’t keep doing it… I need to escape.

With you. Just the two of us. Sell this stupid house—we don’t need such a big house—cash in our savings, go somewhere quiet, start again, live off the land if we have to.

But I simply cannot do this anymore. I can’t. ”

I am channeling all the angst I’m feeling about my overwhelming need to be with Martha into this story of my desperate downsizing dreams. “Please, darling,” I say, “please. Help me.”

She picks up her gin and tonic, takes a slow, measured sip, then puts it back again.

“The car?”

“Oh God, yes. The car. It’s my friend’s.”

“Your friend?”

“Yes, a guy at work. He lent it to me. I need to… well, I suppose I need to give it back to him. Although he did say I could keep hold of it for a while.”

“So, you didn’t buy it?”

“Buy it?” I ask tearfully. “Of course I didn’t buy it. How could I have bought it?”

“I don’t know, Jonathan. I really don’t. I don’t understand anything, really, about the way your finances work. Where does all the money go? You work all these hours and yet still…” She sighs.

I jump on her words. “Exactly, darling, exactly. I work my guts out, I sacrifice time with you just to be at the beck and call of these people, and even then, there’s never enough money. So come on. Let’s do it. Let’s sell up and cut ourselves loose.”

“Jonathan,” she says, grimacing at me as if I am a moron.

“I’m about to become a grandmother. The baby is going to be here in under a month.

How can I possibly think about selling up and moving now?

Em needs me. And not only that, but I want to be here.

This is where I belong, where my friends are, my family, my job, all of it. ”

She’s done it, I can feel it. She’s cut the rope that tethers her to me, but I know there are still a few strands intact and I grab for them. “Tara. Please. I can’t live like this. You know I can’t. It’s killing me. Help me.”

I make my eyes big, and I see a flicker of pity across her face. But then the coolness returns. “What do you want me to do?” she says. “I don’t understand. How can I help you if we both want different things?”

I turn it round. “So, what, darling, what do you want? What would make you happy?”

She pushes her tumbler round in a tense semicircle with her fingertips and then back again.

I gulp, silently, as I stare at her. She suddenly looks beautiful again, the light catching the hazel streaks in her hair as she lifts her head and says, “For you to leave, Jonathan. For you to just leave .”