‘I remember you,’ countered Mrs Hoolit, leaning over the gate like she knew Roz was on the ropes and another nudge could topple her. ‘The bigger question is, Rosalyn McIntyre, do you remember you?’
That evening, Roz found herself hunting for her husband, who’d sneaked away to the repair shed as soon as dinner was done. She hadn’t mentioned that morning’s conversation with her old boss. He’d been lost in thought and wolfing his food anyway, hardly in a chatty mood.
She found him at his workbench, the radio on, his head bent over his work, absorbed in the way only he could be when faced with a broken Walkman from 1989 which was making him squint from behind two pairs of spectacles. There was, astonishingly, a third pair on top of his head.
‘Are you no’ wanting to get away into the house?’ he said, slowly dragging his attention away from the repair.
Roz hadn’t thought her husband was even aware of her presence until now.
‘And do what?’ She was growing sullen and not liking the feeling at all.
McIntyre’s eyes, diminished to dots behind the double lenses, blinked in confusion. ‘Oh, well… anything you want. You’ve the whole evening ahead of you and nothing to do.’
That was precisely the problem. She wasn’t used to this. There’d always been someone needing her.
‘You could walk Wayward again?’ he tried, his whole posture betraying how much he wanted to get back to his tinkering.
Roz didn’t tell him the once impossible-to-tire Wayward was beginning to look at her with apprehension whenever she approached her cosy spot by the Aga. Roz would walk the pup’s little legs clean off if she took her out again today.
‘Sewing project?’ he suggested as he turned back to the Walkman’s spilled innards.
Roz shrugged this off. ‘I’m all sewed out after helping Peaches finish her collection, to be honest.’
‘Well, read a book? Take a bath? Telly?The Repair Shopwill be on the iPlayer. You like that.’
He was trying to get rid of her, she knew, and she hated herself for asking if he was coming inside to watch it with her. There was a bottle of red wine in the mill house kitchen. Maybe this was the evening they’d open it and curl up together in front of the fire.
He didn’t answer.
‘Mac?’
‘Hmm? Oh, I’ll be in when I’m finished with this wee beggar.’ He fiddled with the cassette spool. ‘I will be beaten by no machine! You hear me?’ He shook a fist at the Walkman.
She knew what ‘when I’m finished’ meant. He’d be out here until bedtime, an old habit of his that she thought he’d grown out of when the repair shed officially opened, saving him from his post-Covid-redundancy wallowing, but lately, since the kids moved out, he’d fallen back into his old withdrawn ways. No, not fallen; that implied he was neglecting her unknowingly, when in fact, he was wholeheartedly embracing hiding away out here. Maybe this was his own way of coping with the silence around the mill house without the kids?
His busy fingers drew her eyes. His bare, busy fingers. ‘You’re not wearing your wedding ring?’
‘Oh!’ He covered the spot where the thin silver band usually was. ‘It kept falling off. I took it off for, uh, safe keeping? Wouldn’t want to lose it.’
He’d certainly grown thinner of late, and yes, she’d heard him remarking how the ring would slip over his knuckle. Still, it seemed a shame not to wear it after all these years, and without his wedding band he appeared even less like his old self than he had in recent days.
‘So long as you’re OK out here,’ she said, making to leave. ‘Not lonely, or anything?’
He didn’t even hear this, it seemed.
Giving up, Roz went back to the house to open the bottle alone and to scroll through reels on her phone of other people’s perfect lives.
No sooner had the shed door slid shut behind his wife, McIntyre sagged in relief, removing all three pairs of specs and shoving the Walkman aside – it was, in truth, an easy fix, one he could do in his sleep. Checking with a sneaky peek that Roz was indeed back inside the mill house, he bolted the doors, turned the shed lights down, and retrieved a dirty old cardboard box from the locked cupboard under his workbench.
Rubbing his hands together with furtive glee, he reached inside to rummage through its secret contents.
The first glass of wine had left Roz feeling parched and sorry for herself. By the second she was glowing with annoyance. She’d somehow fallen down an Instagram rabbit hole of watching women’s post-divorce ‘glow-up’ videos, finding the ‘before and after’ makeovers oddly fascinating, when a sponsored advert popped up, confirming her suspicions that her phone apps were always eavesdropping on her conversations. This one had evidently been listening to Mrs Hoolit this morning.
Return to teaching refresher course.
Qualified before 2000? Out of teaching for more than 10 years?
You can retrain in as little as ten weeks.
