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So she hadn’t chosen the song with any deep intentions, after all. Just because it was a good karaoke track for our voices. She didn’t see me, or my internal torment, even if I had briefly seen hers. She hadn’t even been looking for it.
She may have been in tune with the song… but she wasn’t in tune with me.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The next day, I realised how ridiculous my spiralling thoughts had been.
Of course Petra didn’t know how I’d been feeling. She wasn’t a mind-reader! I hadn’t mentioned a thing, so as far as she was concerned, I was still the same wife she’d always had, comfortable (ish) in her own skin. I gave myself a stern talking-to as I made seafood sandwiches the next morning in preparation for our picnic. This absolutely did not require the sleepless night you just had, I told myself sternly. Nor did it warrant you getting up at six o’clock in the morning.
But it meant you could go to the fishmongers early and get this seafood for Petra, another voice in my head replied. I ended the self-imposed lecture there, instead switching on some quiet jazz so as not to wake her while I chopped up some pre-cooked lobster and prawns, then mixed them with Marie Rose and lemon juice before stuffing them into two lettuce-laden brioche buns. Having tucked them into a Tupperware, I turned my attention to the fruit, washing the strawberries and raspberries before stashing them away too. And gradually our picnic was assembled – to be kept in the fridge until we went out later.
“You’ve been busy.”
“Jesus Christ, Petra,” I said, jumping out of my skin.
“Morning,” she said casually, yawning and sitting down at the kitchen table. “What time is it?”
“Eight-thirty.”
“Christ. I’ve normally been at work for an hour by now-”
“No, no, no.” I sat down opposite from her and stared into her eyes. “For the next two days, work is a taboo topic. No mention of it shall pass our lips. No thoughts of it shall enter your head. None. Nada. Zilch.” I made a slicing motion with my hand, just to emphasise the point, exactly as I imagined Felicia Wilson would have done. “Capisce?”
“Capisce,” she chuckled. “You were serious about this picnic then?”
“Dead serious,” I confirmed. “It’s all prepped and ready. I even bought some chocolate-chip pancakes to have for breakfast. What do you think?”
“You know the way to this girl’s heart.” She smiled up at me, although it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
In no time at all, I had heated up the pancakes, and had them on plates in front of us, drizzled with golden syrup. We ate them in an almost-comfortable silence, while I toyed with the idea of asking her, ‘And how IS your heart, these days?’
However, I couldn’t quite pluck up the courage. Perhaps the right moment would come on our picnic.
But as it was, it didn’t. Rather, there was a sense of unease hovering over it. We were simply just going through the motions.
All the ingredients were there – pun not intended. While Petra showered and dressed at a leisurely pace, I washed up, then packed the cool-box with sandwiches, berries, grissini and a bottle of pale pink wine that I’d acquired at work the day before. I placed the cool-box into the picnic hamper, then tucked a couple of plastic cups and some napkins down the sides before topping it with the picnic blanket.
We set off on our walk towards the fields, as planned. It was a picture-perfect day: sunny, pleasantly warm, blue-skied and tinged with the fragrance of the ocean. For the millionth time, I marvelled at how lucky we were to live in a place like this.
There the awkwardness began. Ordinarily, we would have walked through the village hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm – after all, our relationship was no secret, and any opposition to it had generally run its course aside from the odd eye-roll or sneer. However, today our usually-entwined hands lay limply at our sides. I had the hamper balanced on one hip the same way one would carry a child if it had handles, but the hand nearest Petra was free and available. However, neither of us reached for the other. I wanted the sensation of her warm hand in mine with the keenness of an addict, but she didn’t seem overly bothered, and I didn’t want to seem desperate. This dominated my thoughts for the first few minutes of our walk, until we reached the small alleyway which led to the fields and to Clearview Hill.
The alley was so narrow that we had to walk single-file with the picnic basket between us, but we had all the room in the world once we got through the gate into the field. It may have been my imagination, but I thought that Petra used this fact as an opportunity to put even more distance between us. We were walking diagonally across the field, and at one point it was as if we were practicing social distancing again, even though that pandemic-related rule had ended nearly a year ago. For the first time, I wished we had someone else with us. A little dog, or even – and this thought really shocked me – a child. It had been a mutual decision of ours not to have children, as neither of us had ever wanted them, but suddenly I realised that they would have been facilitators of communication between Petra and I, even if they were huge sources of stress too.
Communication, I thought. That was our problem. We were struggling to communicate with each other.
Exhibit A of that notion was being demonstrated here and now before my eyes. In the whole time it took for us to climb up the hill – an arduous task that ended up with both of us carrying the picnic basket before Petra took it off me completely – we exchanged ten words.
“Can I take a handle?”
“Okay.”
“Give it here.”
“Okay.”
Granted, both of us were rather too puffed to say anything more, but the air felt as if it was bristling with tension. It was so different from our usual easy chatter and affection and humour that it actually brought tears to my eyes at one point.
Where on Earth had we gone?
