‘You think that’s why I invited you here?’
‘No, but…’ I shrugged, unsure how that sentence ended.
‘I wanted to see you,’ she said. ‘Make sure you’re coping without Cliff.’
‘Erm…’ I stared at her in disbelief. She was actually asking how I was? ‘I’m okay. One day at a time.’ It was such a non-answer but her question had stunned me.
‘Five years, isn’t it?’
I nodded, thrown even more that she knew how long it had been.
‘You must miss him.’
‘Every single day.’
Desperate not to cry in front of Marianne, I focused on theTop Gunposter. I used to lie on my bed staring at it and wishing I could jump on the back of Tom Cruise’s motorbike, ride off into the sunset with him and start over somewhere new. Cliff Kellerman in his russet-coloured Ford Cortina hadn’t exactly been my Maverick but he had given me the fresh start I so badly needed.
‘Were you happy with him?’ Marianne asked.
‘Of course I was. We were married for thirty-three years, you know.’
‘There isn’t always a correlation between the length of a marriage and how happy a couple are. Look at Mum and Dad. Married twenty-nine years and miserable for at least half of them.’
I frowned at her. ‘They weren’t miserable. They loved each other.’
‘You can love someone and still be completely and utterly miserable. Did you not wonder why…’ She sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter. So back to my original question, were you happy with Cliff?’
‘A repeat of my original answer – of course I was. He was a wonderful husband and my best friend and, as I said, I miss him every day.’
‘Good. Not good that you miss him every day. I mean the rest of it. I’m glad you were happy.’
Silence settled on us once more, only broken by Marianne’s intermittent slurping on her tea.
‘Why the questions about Cliff?’ I asked, bewildered by her sudden interest in my marriage.
‘Just wondering.’
‘But why?’
She shrugged and that was the conversation over – no more questions from her and nothing I wanted to share with her. How could I admit that every day was a struggle for me when she lived like this? I searched around for a topic of conversation. It was pointless asking if she’d been anywhere because she never left the cottage.
‘Are you keeping okay?’ I asked.
‘I’m tired.’ She sighed. ‘Very tired recently.’
‘Is there anything I can?—’
She stood up suddenly, cutting me off. ‘I need to show you something.’
Intrigued, I followed her into Mum and Dad’s bedroom. There were boxes piled up in there but no bin bags so she evidently didn’t use their room to dump her rubbish. She placed her mug on the bedside cabinet, slowly sank to her knees beside the bed, peeled back the rug and lifted up a couple of the wooden floorboards.
‘Everything you need is in here,’ she said.
‘Need for what?’
‘If anything happens to me.’
Her words sent a chill through me. She replaced the floorboards and flicked the rug into place before sitting back on her ankles, breathing heavily.
