That might well happen.
‘Thank you, Mildred,’ I say, with added sarcasm.
It will not happen.
I have been through enough.
I could not cope with that.
Dan, who is angry with me for getting angry with him, had taken two hours off in order to get his precious coffee machine fixed, because obviously, in the middle of a house move, having perfect coffee is of vital importance. I ache all over and I’m pretty sure I’ve ruptured something internal shoving bits of furniture around the place. I’ve also made a big scratch on the walnut flooring in the big living room, which will, no doubt, cost a fortune to repair.
Still, things are improving; boxes are more or less in the rooms I wanted them in. Now everyone is shattered and has gone to bed quietly, without any screaming matches from the older kids. Teddy had loved her bath in the giantold-fashioned bath in the peachy bath in our en suite.
‘Pretty, princess pretty,’ she’d said, admiring it.
‘Yes, princess pretty,’ I’d agreed.
Now I could walk around and look at the place with more of our stuff spread out and less boxes to clutter it up. Exhaustingly though, there is so much work to do. This room definitely needs to be painted, even inexpertly by Dan, who is a bit of a speed racer at painting.
It would probably be better to paint it sooner rather than later before the wall gets hidden by books and pictures and the endless supply of photos of the children that lined the walls in our old home. Still, shabby decor or not, it’s ours.
I wander back into the kitchen, looking out through the dark windows into the dark of the garden and tell myself that I am safe because nobody could scale those walls and broach the murderous pointy bushes all around them. Opening the fridge, I pour myself a second glass of wine.
Earlier, Dan and I had toasted our new home, but now he’s gone to bed. It’s odd to be in this new house feeling so alone.
Once he’d have stayed up with me and we’d have danced around the house, as well as christening every room. In our first flat, we’d even christened the dodgy old kitchen table, whereupon Dan hadhalf-fallen off it onto the floor and the people from the flat downstairs had banged on the ceiling because it was after midnight.
Not that many years later, we are in the house of our dreams (give or take a coat of paint and some serious work by a handyman) and Dan is in bed saying he’s a bit headachey.
Headachey. Somewhere inside me a snort erupts. Women are supposed to get headaches, not men.
It’s the Markhams’ fault for doing this, I think, enraged.
Since the announcement, we’ve been doingcouple-?avoidance, which we almost never do.
Is that the way all marriages go, I think gloomily? You start off really close, joined at the hip, doing everything together. Phone calls full of ‘I love you.’
‘No, I loveyou,’ and then it transforms weirdly into, ‘have you remembered to buy bin liners /milk/bread.’
The mundane creeps in. Loving other beautiful, precious little people explodes into the mix and suddenly the tiny unit of two is gone to be replaced by a family.
And families mean things change.
You’ve been neglecting him ...
I have not!
‘I love you, Dan Conroy,’ I say into the silent rooms, sorry I hadn’t hugged him earlier and agreed that it was not his fault hisex-mother-in-law was creating trouble by changing the rules.
A cute thing I’d seen on Instagram spins into my head.
It Never Gets Easier: You Just Learn How To Be Stronger.
Maybe this was true. Stronger. I have to learn to be stronger.
But how? If I wanted stronger abs, I’d lay off the carbs and do actualsit-ups instead of talking about doing them with Maura, who says her waistline has left the building and is unlikely to return.
How do you get stronger inside and why do you have to learn? Why does life test us?
