Me and Mr Jones (17 page)

David was all ‘Let’s live here and have a family’, but we can’t both afford to give up work. Maybe it would be different if we already had children and were ready to leave Bristol, but . . . Well, to be honest, I’m worried we can’t actually have a baby, much as we want one. We’ve been trying for ages, but nothing’s happening. Yet!

Enough of my problems anyway. A treat! Yeah – do it! Make it a big, proper, Hell-I’m-going-to-be-40 treat too, the kind you wish someone else would buy for you. That’s an order. (And when is your actual birthday, by the way? Sorry – for some reason it isn’t on the calendar.)

Take care anyway, love to Hugh and the kids.

Em x

Alicia smiled as she read the message a second time. Permission granted to treat herself – just the kind of order she had wanted. But oh, she’d had no idea that Emma and David were trying to start a family. How did you go about replying to something like that? She wrote:

Hi again,

Well, at least you gave it a go – at the B&B, I mean. At the end of the day, it’s only a house – it wouldn’t be the end of the world if they had to sell it. We don’t want to move in, either, and I think everyone knows Charlie isn’t really in a position to take on that kind of mortgage. I think it’ll do L & E good to move out now anyway – it’s got a bit much for them to cope with.

Sorry to hear that the baby thing hasn’t worked out yet. Fingers crossed for good news soon. Ring me if you ever want to chat about it.

Off to research treats now . . . half a glass of wine down, and I’m feeling reckless!

xxx

PS My birthday is 10 April.

She pressed ‘Send’, then opened Google. Emma was right. If she was going to do something nice for herself, she should do it properly, make a bit of a song and dance about the whole thing. Now she just had to decide what to do.

The glossy magazines she occasionally flicked through in the staffroom were always urging women to indulge in pampering weekends and spa breaks. Alicia didn’t really have much truck with that sort of thing – she hated the idea of taking her clothes off and letting some complete stranger rub scented oils into her skin, for instance. However, the thought of actually going and doing something special on her own, just for her, definitely appealed. Was it disloyal of her not to want to invite Hugh along too, though? Was it somehow un-wife-like to want to be alone, to enjoy her own company?

She wrestled with the idea for a moment, then remembered the stream of stag weekends that her husband had been on in the last fifteen years, the golf trips he and his friends sometimes organized, the conferences he went to, often in interesting cities or even abroad, and, to a lesser extent, his constant gym visits. Hugh got plenty of time to do his own thing. She couldn’t imagine him ever losing sleep worrying that his behaviour was remotely ‘un-husbandlike’.

‘Do it,’ she muttered to herself, and began typing into the search engine.

An hour or so later Alicia felt flushed with her own daring. After much enjoyable deliberation, she’d whittled down the vast wash of options to a shortlist of four. They were:

1) A walking weekend in Dartmoor. She’d never properly gone there before – never camped, never truly braved the harshness of wild beauty on her own. Stopping off for a picnic en route to north Cornwall didn’t count. She wanted to experience being truly alone somewhere remote and barren and potentially rather dangerous. Was that crazy of her?

2) A watercolours weekend in Somerset. It would mean staying in a beautiful old manor house with a group of other painters, exploring the grounds and taking the time to create something beautiful. It sounded tranquil and relaxing, with the simplicity of only having herself to think about.

3) A trip to London to a concert. She didn’t know which concert yet, but she’d always wanted to go to the Albert Hall to hear an orchestra. Obviously she’d have to stay in a gorgeous hotel as well, for the full experience . . .

4) Finally, she’d like to go to Paris. Oh, Paris! She could admire the beautiful buildings, dawdle through the Louvre, climb the Eiffel Tower, enjoy the ambience of Notre-Dame. She would sit in a bar watching the world go by, with a strong French coffee and a buttery croissant. She could walk the Champs-Elysées, drink good red wine, wear silk knickers and—

She broke off in surprise at her own thoughts. Silk knickers! That was Sandra’s bad influence. But all the same: when in France . . .

She clicked on a link and started looking at hotels before she lost her nerve.

‘Paris?’ Hugh repeated, taken-aback. Then his face cleared. ‘Oh – I see, as a romantic weekend away?’ He smiled, dropping his gym bag to the floor (where it would later be picked up by her, no doubt). ‘What a wonderful idea, Alicia. I’m sure Mum would look after the k—’

‘No,’ Alicia said, awkwardly. ‘Not as a romantic weekend. I mean, at some point, yes, it would be wonderful to go there together, of course. Definitely. But this time I meant . . . just me.’

‘What, with a friend or something? Some of the book-group girls or—?’

‘No, Hugh,’ she said patiently. ‘Just me. On my own.’

He stared at her. She might as well have spoken the words in Cantonese, for all the comprehension he displayed. ‘Just you?’ he echoed.

‘Just me. I feel I need to stretch my wings. Do something exciting. Have a little adventure. Just me, before I get too past it.’

His face changed again, as if he’d worked something out. Then he nodded. ‘Ah. This is your panic about getting old, isn’t it?’

‘Well, kind of. But it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. To be honest, there are other options, though. Hiking on Dartmoor. Seeing a concert at the Albert Hall. Oh yes, and there’s this painting weekend I’ve seen in Somerset that I’d like to do too. Watercolours. I haven’t made my mind up yet.’

‘But . . .’ He’d gone back to flummoxed, three steps behind her. ‘Wait. I don’t understand. Why do you suddenly want to go off and do all those things? And why don’t you want me to come with you? I haven’t been to Paris for years.’

‘Yes, you have,’ she replied. ‘You went there for that conference eighteen months ago.’

‘Yes, but . . .’ He’d lost the ability to finish a coherent sentence again. ‘But, Alicia . . . I just . . . WHY?’

She shrugged, a proper Gallic shrug. It was rather enjoyable, to be honest. ‘Because I thought it might be fun, that’s all.’

Fun! That word again. It seemed to be cropping up in her vocabulary with increasing regularity these days. Great fun. What fun. Just for fun. It was so light and easy on the tongue, so much more pleasing than ‘routine’ or ‘housework’, for example. It kept taking Hugh by surprise, though.

‘Fun,’ he repeated haltingly.

‘Yes,’ she said, smiling. Perhaps now wasn’t the right time to tell him about the silk knickers she’d ordered online, in a fit of bravado, she decided. He’d probably collapse with a coronary from shock.

‘Is everything all right?’ he asked when they went to bed that evening.

‘Why?’

‘It’s just . . . you seem different lately, that’s all,’ he said.

She let the words hang for a moment in the velvety darkness. ‘I feel different,’ she admitted. ‘In a good way, though. I feel as if I’ve suddenly come to life, as if I’ve woken up from a long, boring sleep.’

They were lying as they usually did before drifting off, her head on his chest and his arm curled around her. She felt him freeze at the word ‘boring’ and realized she’d offended him.

‘Not
boring
,’ she amended hastily, ‘but . . . unchanging. As if we’ve been caught in a tessellating pattern and have forgotten how to – you know – strike out and surprise ourselves.’

He was quiet, so she rushed on before he could speak again. ‘Approaching forty feels rather momentous; I want to mark it somehow, have a last hurrah. Or maybe two hurrahs. I don’t know, maybe we should have a massive round of hurrahs, share some hurrahs together. We could both carve out time to focus on ourselves again, Hugh, couldn’t we? Because in a family like ours it’s so easy to plod on and on, and for the years to float by, and you realize you’re just running around after everyone else, but never really thinking about yourself any more. Do you know what I mean? And, actually, there are still things I want to do in life. I don’t want everything to be the same for the next forty years as well. Don’t you think?’

He didn’t reply. Oh dear. Was he taking this personally? ‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m bored with
you
– that would never happen, Hugh. Never. I just mean . . .’

He snorted in derision and she fell silent, worried that she was perhaps protesting too much.

‘Please don’t sulk, darling,’ she said, propping herself up on her elbow and trying to make out his expression in the darkness. His eyes were tightly closed as if he couldn’t even bring himself to look at her.

Then he snorted again . . . but this time she realized it wasn’t a snort of sarcasm or disagreement. He was snoring. He’d actually gone and fallen asleep, right when she’d been pouring her heart out!

She sighed crossly. ‘Well, I bloody well will go to Paris then, if you’re that uninterested,’ she muttered, rolling away from him. ‘So there!’

The next evening Alicia took down the calendar that hung on the kitchen wall and flipped through to April, her birthday month. The only dates already pencilled in were those marking the Easter holidays, a dental appointment for Hugh and a reminder that the buildings insurance needed renewing. The empty, unmarked spaces didn’t promise thrills so much as threaten a dull trudge of name-tagging new cricket kit for the boys, horrendous queues in Clarks to buy all the school shoes, sandals and trainers that the children would need, and boring evenings slaving over the iron as she tackled the Mulberry House laundry mountain. Same old, same old. She could almost write herself a script.

ALICIA’S BIRTHDAY she wrote on the 10th in big letters, with three jaunty exclamation marks. She wondered if Hugh had even thought about it yet, if he’d started planning special treats, maybe even a surprise party. Much as she hoped he had, with every cell in her body, she knew with immense certainty that he wouldn’t have. For the last few Christmases and birthdays he’d actually said, ‘Just buy yourself something you want and let me know how much I owe you.’

Not wanting to be seen as greedy or extravagant, she’d gone for sensible, practical choices each time: a jumper she’d liked in Marks and Spencer, a pair of walking boots, a new nightie. All things that she needed, nothing luxurious or special. What had she been thinking? Why had she sold herself short for so long, as if she didn’t think she was worth more than a machine-washable jumper?

It was Hugh’s fault, though. If he’d bothered to think for ten minutes, he could have chosen something perfectly nice himself. But no. He’d taken the lazy way out, got her to do the legwork. Well, if he
dared
try that for her fortieth, she would refuse to play ball. ‘Surprise me,’ she imagined herself saying archly to him. Her mind boggled, trying to compute what he might come up with. As long as it wasn’t oven gloves or a cake tin, she wouldn’t care.

She leaned over the calendar thoughtfully and then, seized by a sudden decision, wrote in big letters through the Friday, Saturday and Sunday before her birthday ‘ALICIA AWAY’. It was the first weekend of the school holidays, her last weekend as a thirty-something. Damn it, she would have some fun, whatever Hugh said.

Seeing the words in black and white on the calendar made her feel better already. All she had to do now was book her Eurostar ticket and find somewhere to stay. She hurried off to the computer, a thrill rippling through her. The thrill of the unknown, a frisson of daring. She was sure that Christine was applauding her every step of the way.
Paris, here I come!

Over the next week Alicia fine-tuned her plan. She spent an enjoyable few evenings drawing up a list of all the Parisian sights she wanted to visit, and researched some wonderful-sounding restaurants. Her silk knickers arrived – they were very
Ooh la la!
, to say the least – as did the train tickets she’d booked. Then, after much website clicking and consulting the French teachers at school about where to stay, she finally plumped for a small, cosy-looking hotel in Le Marais, a stone’s throw from the Place des Vosges, the oldest and perhaps most beautiful square in the city, as her new guidebook informed her. It wasn’t flashy or cool – Alicia didn’t do flashy or cool – but it looked gorgeous, sounded friendly and was in a brilliant location. ‘This is the one,’ she said to herself, scrolling through oodles of fabulous pictures and glowing reviews.

Gripped by a surge of can-do energy, she picked up the phone and booked herself in, there and then. Not even the mortification of having the receptionist reply to her rusty GCSE-level French in faultless English could dampen her spirits. This was really happening. It was official. She was off on an adventure!

‘I’ve done it, I’ve booked myself into a hotel,’ she said to Hugh when he arrived home that evening. ‘I’ve sorted out my train tickets too. I’m going to Paris, Hugh. I’m going!’

‘Right,’ he said, his voice barely more than a grunt as he read a message on his phone. It was blindingly obvious that he didn’t share her delight, but she was so full of happiness and excitement that his disapproval didn’t touch her.

Humming cheerfully, she set about making dinner. Just knowing that she had the trip waiting there for her on the next page of the calendar made everything more bearable. She couldn’t wait to tell Sandra, either. Even her sister would be impressed by this!

Glancing over at Hugh again, she saw him slumped in a chair, staring at his phone, his face tense. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked.

He didn’t reply immediately; he seemed stunned by whatever message he’d just read. Or was he really in a massive sulk?

‘Hugh?’ she prompted.

He dragged himself away from the screen at last. His mouth had gone strangely saggy. ‘I . . . Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Yes, of course. It’s just a work thing.’ He turned his phone off and stuffed it in his pocket, getting up abruptly.