Two Fridays in April (21 page)

‘I can’t live in this marriage any more. It’s killing me.’

‘It’s
killing
you?’ he asks, lips curling into a sneer.

‘Alex, please—’

‘You have everything you could possibly want.’ The words snapping out now, his voice rigid with anger. ‘I’ve refused you nothing.
Nothing
.’

‘Love,’ she says, the heat spreading up into her face. ‘You never gave me that.’

He rubs a hand across his jaw, still watching her. She hears the whispery rasp of his stubble.

‘Alex,’ she asks softly, ‘when was the last time you called me by my name?’ Her heart thumping so hard in her ears that she can hardly catch her own words.

‘Your
name
?’ The words dripping with scorn and disbelief. ‘
That’s
what you’re bothered about, that I don’t say
Isobel
often enough?’

She shakes her head. ‘Alex, that’s just a—’ She breaks off. What’s the point? He’s not listening. He won’t hear.

He grabs his drink, tips his head back. The relief when his gaze leaves her is immense, like a dead weight rolling off her, allowing her to breathe again.

When he lowers the empty glass his lips are glistening. Without warning he lunges for the bottle that sits between
them, making her flinch. He empties what’s left into his glass – it half fills it – and drains it in one long swallow. She watches, feeling a fresh clutch of fear.

She thinks of the women whose husbands throttled the life out of them, or battered or stabbed them to death. Is he working himself up to an attack, planning to beat her about the head with the empty bottle – or break it against the table and cut her throat with it? She wishes George were here.

Alex’s knife rests on his plate: she daren’t look at it. Could you stab someone with a fish knife? Should she make a run for it? No use: he’d catch her before she had half a dozen steps taken.

He’s never been violent towards her, never.

She’s never given him cause before.

His first wife left him; he let her go.

Or did she? Was Alex the one who ended it?

Her thoughts zigzag madly as she waits for whatever is coming.

He finishes the wine. He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, staring at her again. Then, without taking his eyes from her, he brings his arm forward and she recoils for the second time – he’s going to hit her with the glass – but instead he hurls it away, sends it sailing across the room to smash against the opposite wall.

He pushes back his chair and gets to his feet, and everything stiffens a notch more tightly in her. Convinced that he’s going to strike now, waiting for the weight of his fist against her body, or her head. Anticipating the pain it will cause, everything braced in preparation for it.

He stands looking down at her for several seconds that feel
like forever. She keeps her gaze trained on the table, every bit of her trembling violently now, more frightened than she ever remembers. He must see it, must realise the effect he’s having on her.

‘I’m going out,’ he says finally. Voice perfectly controlled, no sign now of the rage that caused him to slam a glass into a wall less than a minute before. ‘You’ve got two hours to pack your bags. Make sure I don’t find you here when I get back.’

The relief floods through her, releases her from her terror. She looks up at him. ‘Alex,’ she says – but he’s gone, the door slamming behind him.

She sits unmoving. The front door opens and bangs. His car starts up, roars out of the driveway. Most of a bottle of wine inside him – but he’s not her problem anymore.

After a few minutes she begins to unlock herself, piece by piece. She turns her palms upwards, sees the small pink crescents her nails have made in the skin. Her hands are shaking – she can’t stop the tremor.

Time passes. She hears a distant siren, a blackbird’s beautiful trill. A sudden snatch of piano music, abruptly cut off.

The end of a marriage. Ten years it lasted, less than five minutes to finish it.

When she ran away from Jack she left him a note, couldn’t find the courage to face him.
I’m sorry
, she wrote.
I can’t do this any more. It’s not you
– the hackneyed phrase mocking her even as she put it on the page –
it’s me. I’m the problem
.

He loved her, and still she left him. She was loved, and she’d thrown it away. At least this time she has a good reason to leave. This time she’s not the problem.

Eventually she gets to her feet, moving slowly. Moving like someone twenty years older than almost sixty. She takes the dustpan and brush from its corner and sweeps up the pieces of broken glass. She tips them onto a sheet of newspaper that she bundles together and drops into the bin.

She clears the table, fills the dishwasher and switches it on. She stows the empty wine bottle in the recycling bag. When the kitchen is tidy she goes upstairs to pack, every bone, every sinew, every muscle aching with weariness.

‘Daphne,’ she says, ‘how are you feeling?’

It’s a quarter to nine. It hasn’t taken her long to fill two suitcases with what she wants to take from this house. Nothing he gave her, none of the jewellery, none of the perfume. The laptop she unwrapped on Christmas morning still sits on the desk beside the window.

‘My car was stolen,’ Daphne replies.

It’s so unexpected it takes a few seconds to process. Isobel draws a breath. ‘God – when? Where?’

As she listens to Daphne’s response, she becomes aware that the day has taken on a quality of unreality. She looks about the bedroom and everything – her coat thrown across the bed, the suitcases by the door, the emptied-out dressing table, the wedge of light thrown onto the carpet by the open bathroom door – everything looks unfamiliar, as if she has wandered into someone else’s bedroom, someone else’s house, by mistake.

She crosses to the window and looks out. The encroaching darkness has washed the colour from the garden, but the
kitchen light casts a yellow rectangle on the lawn. She tries to take stock.

Her marriage is over.

She doesn’t know where she’s going to sleep tonight.

Daphne’s car has been stolen.

Finn has been dead a year today.

She becomes aware that Daphne has fallen silent. She pulls herself back. ‘Really awful, I’m so sorry. Have you reported it?’

‘Of course.’ A little tartly.

‘Let’s hope they find it.’

Silence. Isobel searches for a more positive topic: they both need it. ‘How’s the birthday going?’

‘Una isn’t here. She’s having dinner in a friend’s house. It’s just me and Mo.’

‘Oh … well, do wish her a happy birthday from me when she gets home, won’t you?’

‘I will.’

She can make out the clematis, clambering over the garden wall. It will be good this year, its third. She won’t be here to see it bloom.

‘Daphne,’ she says.

‘Yes?’

She could ask; Daphne would surely say yes. She could make it clear that it would only be for a few nights, until she got herself sorted.

‘Hello?’

‘I’m still here … I was just wondering …’

She stops. She can’t do it; the words won’t come. What if Daphne says no, what then?

‘Wondering what?’

‘Well, I … Look, can we have lunch, sometime next week? There’s … something I need to talk to you about, something I need to tell you.’ Daphne will have to know; Jack too.

A tiny pause. ‘Can’t you tell me now?’

‘No, not really. At least, I’d rather do it in person, if that’s alright. Maybe Monday?’

More silence. ‘OK,’ Daphne says eventually.

They make an arrangement. There’s another brief pause. Stop, start, always the way with them.

Isobel thinks of something. ‘George is house-hunting,’ she says.

‘He told me.’

Of course he told her. Daphne probably knew before Isobel did.

‘I was at the cemetery earlier,’ she says. A long time ago, it seems now, since she stood in front of Finn’s grave and wept bitterly. ‘I saw the beautiful yellow roses, I presume they came from you.’

Nothing.

‘Daphne?’

‘I didn’t get to the cemetery today,’ Daphne says, her voice sounding peculiar. ‘I was too late, with the car—’

‘Oh, no—’

‘By the time I got there, it was closed.’

‘Oh, my dear, I’m—’

‘It’s OK, I’ll go tomorrow.’ She sneezes. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I got a ducking earlier.’

‘Me too. Horrible weather.’

Pause.

‘Well …’ Daphne says, and Isobel takes her cue.

‘I’ll let you go … give me a call if there’s any news about the car, won’t you?’

‘I will.’

‘Bye then, love. See you Monday.’

‘Bye.’

After hanging up she brings her cases downstairs, one at a time, and loads them into the boot of her car. She goes back inside and walks slowly through the house, thinking,
I will never be here again
. She touches walls, straightens a painting, pulls a wrinkle out of a rug with her foot. In the kitchen she empties the dishwasher and puts everything away.

She climbs the stairs a final time and stands on the threshold of the bedroom that was hers for nearly ten years. Ten years in October, it would have been. She married him a month after her fiftieth birthday, and she’s leaving him on the cusp of her sixtieth.

She wonders if he will remarry, and thinks he probably will. A man of his age, used to being looked after, won’t fancy going it alone. And by the sound of it, George will be moving out in the not too distant future.

She’ll miss George.

She will more than likely spend the rest of her life on her own. The prospect, she finds, is not unwelcome right now. Her own place, nobody to please, no hopes to be dashed. Could be alright – plenty of others do it. Plenty of widows, plenty of women who never walked down an aisle with a man.

She might enjoy a few dalliances, if any come along before
she’s past it, but she won’t look for them. She won’t be going online again. Never again; not that.

She might take up painting, or golf. Neither occupation has ever tempted her in the past, but maybe she should give one of them a go. Or bridge maybe, she could try that.

‘Right,’ she says aloud. She closes the bedroom door and goes downstairs. She leaves her house keys on the hall table and pulls the front door closed behind her. They’ll have to be in touch: things will need to be sorted out before the marriage can be brought to an end, but she’ll never use her keys again.

She walks to her car.

‘Isobel!’

Pat from a few doors down has stopped by the gate, accompanied by a little dog on a leash.

‘I’m glad I caught you,’ she says. ‘I’m having a coffee morning on Tuesday, in aid of Alzheimer’s. Hope you can come.’

‘Sorry,’ Isobel replies, ‘but I’m not going to be around.’ The dog cocks a leg at the gatepost.

‘Oh, too bad. Going anywhere nice?’

Isobel opens her bag, finds a tenner. ‘Not sure yet.’

‘Ooh – a surprise trip?’

‘Something like that.’ She hands over the money. ‘My contribution,’ she says.

‘Oh, aren’t you—’

‘Must dash,’ she says, turning away.

‘Thanks, Isobel. See you now.’

She gets into the car. She starts it up and reverses carefully out of the driveway and moves off.

The room is about a third the size of the bedroom she’s just abandoned. The walls are white, apart from the one that faces the bed, which has been papered in cream with fat taupe stripes, their uneven edges presumably meant to suggest that they were each created by hand with a single careless swipe of a roller. A small television on a bracket is positioned too high up to watch with any degree of comfort.

A laminated page has been screwed to the back of the door.
Escape route in the event of a fire
, it says, above a sketch of the corridor outside with a highlighted pink line running along it. A bottom corner of the page curls up, and resists Isobel’s attempts to press it back down. No matter: she’s made her own escape route.

A round white tray on the dressing table holds a pair of cups and saucers, sachets of tea, coffee and sugar, little plastic tubs of milk and twin packs of biscuits in cellophane. A drawer beneath holds a hairdryer, another an iron. A trouser press sits in a corner; an ironing board hides in the wardrobe.