‘When’s dinner happening?’ he’d shout from Edie’s old room in our London flat, which we’d turned into his study.
‘I’m just in from work,’ I’d call back. ‘I don’t know what it’s going to be, let alone when it’shappening.’ Did he expect me to pull a perfectly roasted chicken from inside my coat? Very occasionally he’d put a wash on – but if I didn’t unload it the damp laundry would’ve been left in there for eternity, reeking of rotten cabbages.
‘And now, luckily for us, you’ve moved back to Shugbury where you grew up,’ Deborah enthuses.
‘Yeah.’ He grins. ‘It seemed like the right thing to leave London when we did. And we love it here. The peace, the beauty, thepeopleof course...’ She simpers and touches his knee, and again several people look round at me, unaware of how Vince had once described Shugbury’s residents.
As an only child, he knew he’d inherit the house when first his dad, then his mum passed away a couple of years ago. But I’d assumed he’d sell it or let it out. I still loved London, where my beloved museum job, my mum and brother and all my friends were. Our flat was rented but our landlord had barely raised the rent in fifteen years. However, Vince had decided that we should move to his parents’ place – that we’d be ‘crazy not to’.
Hang on! Hold those horses! Hadn’t he said he’d never move back?
‘It’ll be a fresh start for us,’ he insisted when I voiced my objections. ‘We’ll have a home that’s properly ours, with a garden.’
What did he want a garden for? Vince wouldn’t know a hoe if it smacked him on the forehead. I suggested that, if he wanted to buy a place, then we could think about that – IN LONDON. We certainly weren’t rich, but thanks to his book deal there would have been enough for a deposit. ‘But you’re sick of London,’ he retorted.
‘When have I ever said that?’ I asked, genuinely baffled.
‘Just the other day. You were complaining about that mattress in the road...’
‘That doesn’t mean I want to leave my job,’ I protested, ‘and all my friends and family—’
‘You took a photo of it and sent it to me.’
As we argued I could sense the ground shifting beneath my feet. It wasn’t the comforting rumble from the Central Line. It was more ominous than that. ‘Only to be funny,’ I muttered. ‘Only because they’d left a dirty sheet on it.’
‘Well, think how nice it’ll be, being able to go for country walks and never see anything disgusting,’ he retorted.
‘When haveyouever enjoyed walking?’ I asked, reminding him of the fuss he’d made about ‘traversing a mountain range on foot’, as he’d put it – when the Scotland trek had been carefully plotted to avoid the tiniest hill. He wouldn’t even walk his daughter’s dog.
I felt trapped. Next thing he’d told Gareth, our kindly old hippie of a landlord, that we were giving notice on our tenancy. I knew then that I couldn’t win. At least, not without Vince and me breaking up, and what kind of ‘win’ would that be?
However bad things were, I still loved Vince and didn’t want us to split up. I was also worried about his mental health. He was bereaved – of course I sympathised – and now he yearned to return to his ‘roots’, as he put it.
So I gave my notice at the museum where I’d worked, happily, for nearly twenty years. Vince had often teased me that I’d become one of the exhibits and should have a label attached to my chest:Kate. Homo sapiens, female, Gen X era. Stepmother. Wife.
Was that it?I couldn’t help thinking. The whole of me could be summed up on a tiny printed card?
The day was wet and grey as Vince and I drove away from our Bethnal Green flat for the very last time. A silence hovered between us and I realised my hands were bunched into fists. ‘You said it was all posh wankers in Shugbury,’ I reminded him.
He frowned, looking shocked. ‘No, I didn’t. I never said that. Some of them arereally nice.’
Now, as Deborah winds up the interview and the audience erupts into applause, I remind myself that I agreed to move here for the sake of our marriage. Yes, Vince was persuasive, but he didn’t force me. He didn’t drag me into the car and bind me with gaffer tape to the seat. So I’m going to make the very best of it, I decide, fixing on a bright smile as Vince joins me at the table and starts to sign copies of his new book.
He’s so good at this, I reflect as, swamped with fans, he jokes and laughs with each person in turn as I deal with the sales. If he’s pretty well known nationally, here in Shugbury he is something of a local hero.
Once the books are all sold, Deborah, Vince and I make our way out to the baking stall. She has organised for another batch of goodies to arrive first thing tomorrow, for the second and final day of the festival.
‘You were so great today, Vince,’ she enthuses, biting into the last remaining custard tart.
‘No,youwere great, organising it all,’ he says.
She shrugs in an it-was-nothing kind of way, and turns to me. ‘I hate to laugh, Kate, but thatwaspretty funny about someone bagging up your chocolate thingies as if they were poos...’
‘Oh, yes.’ My laughter spills out in jagged shards. ‘You heard about that, did you?’
‘Yes, Agata saw you on your hands and knees, gathering them up...’ Agata of the perfect macarons, she means. ‘But we shouldn’t go on about it, should we?’ She cracks a sly grin at Vince. ‘At least you broughtsomething...’
Vince smirks, perching on the sole chair at the stall. ‘Baking isn’t exactly in your skill set. Is it, darling?’
