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‘What do you want me to do?’ he tossed back at her. ‘Drop sauce on the living-room carpet, or sit in the kitchen on my own?’
‘No –’ she shrugged carelessly – ‘I just thought that, what with all the sawdust in here and everything …’
‘Tastes like sawdust anyway,’ he grunted, cautiously licking the fork. ‘A bit more isn’t going to make much difference.’
He ate in silence for a while, pausing between mouthfuls to watch her, his head cocked on one side.
‘So what’s it going to be this time?’ he finally got around to asking.
Susannah tightened the vice a little. ‘A coffee table – eventually.’ She glanced up to find him sawing at a chunk of lasagne with apparent difficulty.
The problem seemed to be one of those dried-up corners, she noted with dismay, where the pasta pokes up through the sauce and turns to indestructible cardboard in the oven. Stainless steel cutlery was no match for it – the saw she held in her hand might be more suitable – but he managed to spear it at last and surveyed it with resignation. It sat solidly on the prongs of the fork, steaming gently, and looking about as palatable as layers of loft lagging.
And if she was meant to feel guilty about the quality of the meal that evening, she did. Pulling something from the freezer and re-heating it simply wasn’t good enough, she reminded herself, even if you had made it earlier yourself. Guilt could only be kept entirely at bay by starting a meal from scratch and creating a sink-full of dirty pots. Then you had proof that you cared.
‘What’s wrong with the table we’ve got?’ Paul wanted to know, ploughing manfully through the meal.
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. This isn’t for us anyway.’ She hesitated before going on. ‘It’s going to have its top done in mosaics.’
‘Oh.’
Their eyes met.
‘Bringing out the big guns now, are we?’ He was trying to make a joke of it and not succeeding. ‘I mean, if you threw something that size at me …’
Damn! She’d splintered the wood. ‘That could always be arranged,’ she growled.
He grinned at her crookedly. Then suddenly pushing the plate to one side he went over to where she was working.
‘Here, hadn’t I better do that?’ He jerked back the sleeves of his sweater to reveal the hairy backs of his wrists.
It was some seconds before she realised what he was about. ‘What? No, no, of course not,’ she protested. But she was practically having to elbow him out of the way. Or was he elbowing her? A ridiculous little scuffle ensued during which she grew increasingly cross. ‘Look, I did do woodwork at evening class, you know.’
‘Yes, I know you did, but –’ he shook his head with a kind of shudder – ‘I can hardly bear to watch you. You’ve made a right little cock-up there, haven’t you?’
‘It’s nothing I can’t put right. And if you hadn’t sat there, chewing – a-and putting me off – I’d be almost finished by now.’
‘That’s right, blame me.’ He shrugged and folded his arms. ‘You just carry on and make a pig’s ear of it; I’ll enjoy the laugh. It just doesn’t seem right, though, somehow.’
‘What doesn’t?’ She straightened up to glare at him. ‘The fact that a woman can be perfectly capable of carpentry? Really, Paul, you must try to move with the times. You sound like you’ve just stepped out of the Ark.’
‘Well, I can’t help that. I was brought up to believe certain things. In my day girls got pastry sets for Christmas and boys were given tools. You knew where you were. If someone’s since decided to move the goal posts, why should I have to change my views?’
‘Because, dear husband, you’re going to look like some kind of dinosaur if you don’t.’
Susannah stood poised with a pencil in her hand. It really was difficult to concentrate with Paul hanging round. Usually he watched television or strolled down to the pub when she was involved with the chores or whatever. Why had he chosen her to be his source of entertainment tonight?
‘You know,’ she went on, while Paul ‘helpfully’ held her ruler in the wrong place, ‘you’ve had it too easy all these years. You haven’t had to adapt. What would you have done if I’d been a fully fledged career woman? The sort you hear about these days. You know: educated up to the eyeballs; smart, good-looking top executives; nannied children etc., etc. I don’t think you could have coped.’
‘I really don’t see why not. On the contrary, I would have liked it very much.’
‘Well, of all the bloody nerve!’ Susannah threw down the pencil.
‘What?’
‘How can you say that? You know perfectly well you wouldn’t have been able to hack it for one moment. What would you have done when your career clashed with your wife’s? When you needed to take up a post in – in Timbuktu, say, and she had to be in London?’
‘We’d have worked out something.’
‘Cloud cuckoo land,’ Susannah muttered.
‘You ought to have gone to college, Sue. You still could, you know, if you wanted. I wouldn’t stand in your way.’
‘I see.’ She nodded grimly. ‘So you really do think you’d have preferred a professional wife. You no longer think I’m good enough. You can’t go bragging to your pals at work about your wife who’s doing such-and-such a clever course at so-and-so college and who’s going to walk off in a few years’ time with some spiffing sort of degree. All you can talk about is my wife who’s only a pay clerk and mucks about making these god-awful coffee tables.’
‘Susannah,’ he said wearily, ‘this is not what I’m saying at all. Nothing could be further from my mind. What’s actually bothering me at the moment, if you really want to know, is that I feel you slipping away from me, and I don’t know why. You’re remote. You’re preoccupied. We don’t do things together any more. I’m beginning to wonder whether you stayed with me because of the children all these years and now you’d like to go.’ He stared out through the window at the night. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening to us.’
Susannah melted towards him. It must have taken a lot to admit his insecurity – Paul, who normally exuded nothing but inner strength; a core of solid rock running through him that could never be shaken.
‘Paul, I –’ But the phone began to ring. Tutting with exasperation, she snatched the receiver off the wall.
The voice on the line was not immediately recognisable; it was thin, high, and tearful.
‘H-hello?’ it said haltingly, then there was a long, drawn-out sniff. ‘It’s me. I’m at the station. Can you come and get me?’ Then the caller cut off.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Paul said as Susannah looked blankly surprised. ‘That was one of the children … Simon?’
‘No.’ Susannah’s thoughts had gone winging in a different direction: sickness, death, disaster! But she managed a grim little smile. ‘When did Simon ever phone us?’
‘Not since he discovered it cost money. So it was Katy, then, was it?’
‘Well, how many children have we got? Yes, it was our dear Katy. She wants me to pick her up at the station.’ Susannah frowned as she moved towards the door. ‘She sounded very upset. I wish, now, that I’d had time to pay her a visit after the funeral. I was a bit rushed, though, in the end. What do you think’s the matter?’
‘No idea. Boyfriend trouble, I shouldn’t wonder. But I’ll go.’ He’d already reached for an old gardening jacket behind the door, eager to have something to do. ‘You’d better make up the bed, hadn’t you? I doubt whether she’ll be going back to London tonight.’
‘The bed … yes, of course. I suppose you’re right.’
The guest room had been the last one they’d decorated in the eight months since moving in, and there had been little point in making up the bed before it was needed. Actually, Susannah thought, it seemed a shame to take the new, co-ordinated sheets out of their packets. But Katy might need them so she would have to.
She sighed. She had so wanted to get on with her new project; this additional interruption was most annoying. But she instantly admonished herself for her selfishness. What kind of mother was she, to put new sheets and her own needs before a daughter who sounded as if she was in trouble?
After leaving school Katy had spent a year at secretarial college and had lived at home until she was twenty while she gained work experience with an assortment of local companies. When London beckoned with its better opportunities and higher salaries she had set herself up with a good job there, sharing a bedsit with a college friend, and leaving her parents feeling slightly nervous for her safety but with their blessing.
They needn’t have worried. Katy had fallen on her feet. When months passed with barely a backward glance or a visit from her they had decided it was time to look to their own future, hence the purchase of the cottage. So, Susannah now wondered, what could have gone wrong?
Casting a last lingering look at her splintered wood, she went upstairs.
Paul scanned the small group of people waiting outside the station. There was Katy all right; she’d abandoned her luggage and was running full-tilt towards him, her arms stretched out for a hug. Nice to know someone loved him. And she didn’t look ill or anything, which was a relief. Her ‘problem’ was probably nothing at all. An incident blown up into a crisis, if he knew his little Kate. It would all be over by bed-time. And then perhaps life in the cottage would feel a bit more normal for a few days – if she was going to stay that long. She would probably stay the weekend, anyway. And her mother could hardly ignore her.
CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_60e04073-72da-57a4-93f3-b178798471cd)
When the bed was made Susannah stood back to look at the room. Everything in it was new, not just the sheets. Out had gone all the dilapidated furniture they had made do with over the years, and in its place was pine. The carpet and curtains were new too, and it all looked very inviting.
Giving the neat row of scatter cushions a final tweak, she switched on the two pleated table lamps and ran downstairs; already there was the unmistakable throb of Paul’s car outside on the drive, and the slam, bang, boof! of closing doors meant he’d successfully accomplished his task. He had brought Katy home.
Susannah reached the lounge just as Paul came staggering in with a huge blue suitcase weighing down one hand and a ghetto blaster in the other. He was followed by their daughter carrying – nothing at all. Except a tiny handbag in quilted leather that dangled from her shoulder by a chain.
‘Wow!’ she said over her mother’s shoulder after the briefest of dutiful kisses. ‘Is it finished now?’ Her big brown eyes, made larger than life by the none-too-discreet application of eyeliner, began taking in her surroundings. She’d seen the cottage a couple of months after they moved in, when they were just starting work, but hadn’t been back since they’d transformed it.
But Susannah found it impossible to answer right then; she could only stare at Katy’s new hairdo. It had been bleached blonde from its normal, beautiful red-gold, and most of it had been cut off – except for one odd strand, which for some reason had been left to run down over her left cheek. Parts of it caught on her lashes as she blinked, though she seemed not to notice the inconvenience.
Susannah caught Paul’s eye and saw him shrug; then he gave her a quick shake of the head. So he had no idea why they were being honoured with this visit either. What had they talked about in the car, for heaven’s sake? Trust him to leave all the awkward questioning to her.
‘Yes, it’s all finished,’ Susannah said, spreading her arms wide and trying not to stare at the disastrous hair. ‘What do you think of it, Katy? Do you like it?’
Katy made considering noises in her throat. ‘It’s much smaller than I remember.’
Susannah and Paul exchanged glances again. So far, everyone who’d seen the cottage had raved about its cosiness and its charm; they weren’t accustomed to it being criticised.
‘It’s certainly smaller than Windy Ridge,’ Susannah had to concede, ‘but you know we bought it with a view to retirement.’
‘But that won’t be for ages yet!’ Katy shot her father an alarmed glance.
‘You don’t have to be old these days,’ Paul told her. ‘People are being thrown out of our place at a rate of knots.’
‘But that won’t happen to you yet, will it?’ Now it was Susannah’s turn to look fearful.
‘Who knows what will happen?’ Paul picked up the suitcase because it was blocking the sitting room. ‘I’ll take this little lot upstairs.’
‘You’ve bought a new three-piece suite,’ Katy declared as her father struggled out of the room. ‘What was wrong with the old one?’
‘What was wrong with it?’ Susannah laughed outright. ‘What was right with it, more like. After you and Simon had used it as a bouncy castle it was never the same again.’
She looked at Katy who had sat down stiffly on the chintz two-seater and was gazing thoughtfully round at the pale peach carpet. Anyone seeing her would have thought she had come home to discover a new set of parents instead of just different furniture.
‘Come and look at the spare room,’ she said brightly to cover her disappointment. Why wasn’t Katy falling in love with the place like everyone else?
Katy rose to her feet and trudged up the stairs in ugly lace-up ankle boots that looked almost identical to a pair Susannah remembered being forced to wear as a child. She had loathed those boots almost as much as the thick brown stockings that went with them. Come to think of it, Katy’s skin-tight leggings strongly resembled those awful stockings too. Ugh!
‘You saw our room when you were here before,’ Susannah reminded her at the top of the stairs. ‘But you haven’t seen this one done up. This is the guest room.’ Pushing open the door with a flourish she saw that the suitcase now dominated the bed and the ghetto blaster was perched on top of the smart pine dresser. It didn’t look quite the same.
‘Oh,’ Katy said from the door. She slowly stepped in, her eyes drawn to the bed. ‘You’ve got a new bed too!’ she gasped. ‘What have you done with my old one?’
‘Katy –’ Susannah picked up a doll from the window-sill and fiddled with its hat. She had dressed it to tone in with its surroundings, but Katy appeared not to have noticed it. Turning round she found a recumbent Katy – boots and all – testing the bed fully clothed. ‘Katy –’ she began again; but how could she explain to her daughter that this was not exactly her room? Nor was it her home any more, not really. Well, of course it would always be home to her in a sense. And yet … it wasn’t.
‘We – er –’ she thought quickly – ‘we decided we ought to put in a double, since this is really a guest room, you know. I mean, when you’re here a single would be fine, but when Simon and Natalie come to stay – and little Justin, of course – it makes sense to –’
‘But this one’s hard as a rock. Mine was nice and soft. It had a hole that fitted me, too. Right in the middle of the mattress.’
‘Well, now it’s gone to the tip.’ Susannah sat the doll down with a bump. ‘This mattress will be much better for you,’ she added, struggling for a more sympathetic tone. After all, she reminded herself, Katy had definitely sounded upset about something over the phone. ‘Soft beds are bad for your back. And anyway you’ll not notice it just for a few days.’
Katy slanted a look at her mother. ‘I’ve come for much longer than that.’
‘Oh … really? How – how come you’ve got time off right now? I thought you were saving your days for Christmas.’
Katy swung herself off the bed. ‘I’ve lost my job,’ she said flatly, beginning to pull drawers from the dresser to see what was inside. There was nothing in them; only a woody piney smell that began to permeate the tiny room.
‘Lost your –’ Words failed Susannah for a moment. Then she hurried over to where Katy was standing. No wonder she’d shown no enthusiasm about the cottage, with news like this on her mind. ‘Oh, Katy I’m so sorry! But how?’ She could see the girl’s reflection in the cheval mirror and sensed that tears were close in spite of her attempt at non-chalance.
I –’ Katy swallowed – ‘I can’t do the work any more; they’ve given me the sack. I’ve got two months’ pay to come – and – and – oh, Mum, I don’t know what to do!’
Susannah saw her own distraught face reflected back at her as Katy turned and buried herself in her arms. When her daughter finally came up for air she ventured another question.
‘But why can’t you do the work, Katy?’ She took the opportunity of brushing aside the hair lock. ‘You were managing very well. I thought they liked you. They made you secretary to the Head of Department, didn’t they?’
Katy nodded and sniffed and mopped her eyes with a tissue. ‘I thought he was so nice at first but he turned out to be nothing but a slave-driver.’ She snorted with disgust. ‘He had me working all hours and I didn’t get a penny extra money for doing it. But if you complain you’re done for, you know; they just get shot of you for some reason or other and find someone else.
‘Do you know, there were forty-three applicants for that poxy little job? I was over the moon when they picked me. But now –’ her tears welled up afresh – ‘I’ve got RSI!’
‘Oh good God!’ Susannah whispered, her stomach taking a turn. This was her worst nightmare realised: that a child of hers should contract some deadly disease. How on earth would she cope? She found herself sitting on the edge of the bed, not knowing how she had got there, or what to say. ‘But what is it, this RSI?’ she managed eventually. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.’
‘Where have you been all your life?’ Paul said suddenly from the door. ‘It’s what typists and chicken factory workers get these days –’ He went over to Katy and hugged her for the second time that evening. ‘Isn’t it, my precious love?’
Katy nodded and allowed herself to be comforted by her father’s long, strong arms. He was like a cuddly bear in his thick woolly sweater and she sighed with a surge of relief.
‘Repetitive Strain Injury,’ Paul went on over his daughter’s head, for Susannah’s benefit. ‘I was watching a programme about it the other night. If you perform the same movement with your hands over and over again …’
But Susannah was nodding dumbly; she now recalled hearing about it. You got pains in the hands and arms after a while. Some people got it really badly and were crippled for the rest of their lives: they couldn’t even lift their arms to do their own hair. And they would never be able to work again.
‘A lot of doctors,’ Paul was saying, ‘don’t even believe it exists, let alone trouble themselves to try and sort out a cure. I believe I read about a case in the paper recently where someone successfully sued for compensation. I’ll look into the possibilities tomorrow.’
Katy cast him a look of gratitude: at least he wasn’t taking the attitude that she was swinging the lead, like some people did. ‘I can’t do anything much with them,’ she said holding out her hands. ‘And they hurt like flaming hell. Do you think I could have a hot water bottle, Mum? Oh, and I’ll need you to unpack my case …’
‘Of course Mum’ll make you a hot water bottle, won’t you dear?’ Paul was still clinging to his daughter as though she had been away for ten years instead of only a matter of months. He let her go at last and followed Susannah downstairs.
‘Well, this is a turn-up for the books, isn’t it?’ he said, rubbing his hands together as they went into the kitchen. ‘Fancy getting our Katy back! Now you won’t be bored any more.’
Susannah turned and stared at him for a moment, before going over to the sink. She began to run water on to the sad remains of lasagne she found there and went to wipe spills from the microwave.
‘How long is this RSI business going to last?’ she asked, Paul trailing her round the kitchen. She stopped to throw a startled look at the ceiling as loud thumping came down through the beams: Katy had managed to plug in the ghetto blaster.
‘No idea,’ he replied. ‘I expect she’s hungry, don’t you? What have you got to give her?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She suddenly felt extraordinarily tired.
‘Well, I must say you seem really pleased to see your own daughter. Couldn’t you make more of an effort? She needs your support, poor kid, not the cold shoulder you’ve been giving her.’
‘Oh, I haven’t! Have I? I didn’t mean to. It’s just that … look, there’s some ham for your sandwiches tomorrow …’
