AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The sunset was dazzling tonight. I stood at the front door and looked over the roofs of the houses opposite. It would be at its most beautiful on the beach, of course, but this was enough. I took a deep breath, letting the sweet scent of Cornish summer fill my lungs. Then another, and another, as if I was inhaling the strength I’d been missing with each gulp of air. I closed my eyes and felt it fill me, completely indulging myself. After all, we’d need as much strength as we could get for this final Herculean push to the end of the school year.
After a few minutes, there was still no sign of Petra. She loved sunsets, so I wondered if she was observing this one from the upstairs window. Or if perhaps she was getting ready. Sex was sure to be on the cards tonight, and I was rather looking forward to it. It had been a long time since we’d had anything close to such intimacy together, and it would prove that we were still us, despite everything.
But no. No, she was asleep. Crashed out on the bed on her front, still with her shoes on, dress bunched up around her middle. The excitement came crashing down and was replaced by a feeling of disgust. That was a new one. Why disgust? This was my wife. Was this what they called ‘the ick’?
Of course, I did what I had to do. Gently woke her up, coaxed her out of her dress, shoes and underwear, then helped her back into bed. She wasn’t really awake, her movements robotic and her gaze blank, and she fell straight back asleep once her head hit the pillow. I stood looking at her in the fading light, a multitude of strange feelings filling my heart, where the optimism and excitement had been just ten minutes earlier.
Chief among them was horror.
There is no ‘us’ any more.
Where have we gone?
Chapter Forty-Eight
Until they returned, I hadn’t been aware of the absence of our arguments. We’d had that few weeks back in the spring, and the odd few days of bad moods since then, but on the whole we’d been rubbing along okay, with a minimum of frayed tempers.
That all changed in the last two weeks of the school year, when the UK’s temperature really began to ramp up.
We began to argue every day.
Multiple times a day.
Over tiny little things!
The brand of jam I’d bought at the shop. Apparently it was wrong. (We’d never stuck to a specific brand, preferring to buy whatever was cheapest or best value for money, but that day, Petra got annoyed when she saw the newest unopened jar on the kitchen counter.)
A comment she’d made while we were watching the late news one night. (It had been uncharacteristically unpleasant, and my enquiry as to why she had made such a remark turned into both of us going for it hammer and tongs.)
My snoring. (Made worse by the menopause.) Normally it didn’t bother her, but I was awoken in the middle of the night by a jab of her elbow to my side.
“What was that for?” I’d cried out.
“Because you’re happily snoring away in the land of nod, and it’s stopping me from sleeping!”
Eventually, for both of our sakes, I’d relocated to the sofa. The following evening, when she came home, I suggested that I stay on the sofa. “Just for the next week. Until the end of term. I reckon we both need as much sleep as we can get, don’t you?”
“I think that’s a good idea,” she’d said evenly, so I resigned myself to the notion of a few uncomfortable nights of sleep. Neither of us had the time or energy to clear out the spare bedroom, so it was a toss-up between the sofa or an air mattress on the floor of the music room. Since the choir concert, our piano had fallen abruptly silent.
That, in turn, turned into an argument. “It’ll go out of tune if you don’t play it!” Petra exploded the following evening. “Don’t you know the most basic of things?”
“It’s only been ten days, for crying out loud!” I’d responded, and it had descended from there. That night, I’d actually walked out and driven to the graveyard to clear my head. I had ranted it all out to my sister, then gone for a walk. When I got home, Petra had gone to bed, and my phone’s in-built step counter notified me that I’d done six thousand steps in that walk alone. I ached all over the next day. The power of frustration.
By the time we got to the final weekend before school ended, I felt that we were barely hanging on. After a blisteringly hot few days that saw temperatures in the country reach record all-time highs, everybody seemed to be utterly drained. There were two more days – Monday and Tuesday – until the holidays started. I personally couldn’t see the point in them, but that was just the way it was. And I didn’t dare voice this to Petra, whose jaw grinding I could actually hear on Sunday night when I popped upstairs to use the bathroom in the small hours.
On that Tuesday morning, the last day of term, I wasn’t working, but Petra’s movements woke me as they always did. We faced each other blearily at the kitchen table, but didn’t say anything. She’d recently started taking her coffee black, although it made her wince every time she took a sip. I opened my mouth to ask her why she put herself through it, but I couldn’t be bothered risking conflict this early in the morning. Rather, I made her a sandwich while she was upstairs showering, and handed it to her as she picked up her bag on the way out.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice dull. Our eyes met, and she looked like she was going to say something. My heart thudded in my chest. But the moment passed, and all she said – mumbled really – was, “I’ll see you later.”
“Last day!” I said in as chipper a tone as I could manage. Looking back, it reeked of performance mode. “You can do this!”
“Yes,” she said, and left the house. I shut the door behind her and – despite everything – smiled.
It was the last day. Victoria had told her last night that she was going to return to the school as headteacher in September, even if she had to be wheeled in. So Petra’s role as Acting Headteacher would end today.
I suppose I was foolish enough to think that the strain would melt off Petra’s shoulders as she departed the school building that afternoon. That she’d canter back up the hill, burst through the front door and whirl me about the room, just like she used to at the end of each term. That she’d kiss me, and everything would click back into place, ready for a summer of clearing things up and getting to know each other again.
Little did I know…
