They headed down the hill towards the shops. The only thing Bonnie didn’t like about Driftwick Bay, and the reason they’d rarely spent summers down here previously, was the crowds drawn to the Jurassic Coast, especially Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door, and all the other hidden treasures. She could see why of course. But selfishly she couldn’t wait for September when the busyness would fade. She was a people person – she’d had to be with her job – but she also liked solitude and already she was thinking about the kids returning to school, adult groups heading back to their own homes and jobs, and the town once again becoming a little quieter. This morning’s painting session had been wonderful though, because she’d purposely got outside nice and early. There’d been a light breeze, birdsong in the background, the crashing of the waves in the distance and the odd screech of a gull overhead, rather than any traffic noise or tourist chatter as holidaymakers made their way past the cottage and down the hill.
First stop in the small town was the post office where she posted a letter to Beverly. They communicated by WhatsApp most of the time but Beverly had said when Bonnie retired that she loved to write and receive letters, so Bonnie would surprise her with this one. The pair had worked alongside each other for more than a decade and Bonnie missed their friendship. She got a little thrill sending the letter on its way and tutted to herself that she was far too late to stop at the bakery as she’d hoped and chat with Cathy the owner or pick up their favourite farmhouse wholemeal loaf. They’d had supermarket-bought loaves for years until they were within walking distance of this bakery and now they were converted, favouring the most delicious breads, free of all the additives and preservatives that had become so commonplace.
Time to head back up the hill again, the hill that should help keep them fit as they cruised into old age.Cruised– Howard had started using the word when they were on safari and it had stuck. They’d both worked for so many years – she as a district nurse for Berkshire Healthcare, he as a civil servant in public administration, that she supposed this sort of life did feel like cruising. But, as she was sixty-six and younger than his seventy-one years, she’d told him that while he could use the termcruising, there’d be no talk of old age just yet.
‘I just want to nip down to the telephone box library,’ said Howard.
‘You could’ve done that after work,’ she said with a fond roll of her eyes, because it shouldn’t surprise her. It was in sight after all and no matter he’d spent all day with books, he loved looking inside this community initiative that saw people taking paperbacks out and leaving one in their place. He’d never been one to resist anywhere that had books, whether for free or for sale. At the airport terminal during their travels she’d known she could get through several cups of tea while he perused the books in whatever shop he came across. He’d found a gem of a bookshop in Amsterdam, and in Venice as they’d relaxed in a gondola she’d half expected him to jump in the canal and swim to the open door of the bookshop he’d spotted.
While Howard went down to the telephone box library Bonnie paused. This spot was perfect. She’d not thought about it before. Three-quarters of the way up the hill, it took in the best of the main street in Driftwick Bay, its small collection of shops, the mouths of the cobbled walkways, the lovely red of the postbox, the surviving phone box that Howard had now opened the door to. There was a sneak peek of Lulworth Cove way beyond but, best of all, Howard’s bookshop to the left had a commanding presence with its beauty. This view would be a joy to paint.
She took a few photographs with her phone so she could pin one or two to her easel while she worked.
When Howard emerged from the telephone box library they started the walk up the hill back to the cottage.
‘You didn’t grab a book.’ She hooked her arm through his, glad he was steady on his feet. He wasn’t always, another thing that came with old age she supposed, and when things like that happened she knew he worried about developing Parkinson’s like his brother had before he passed away. It was one of the reasons she’d retired sooner than she’d really been ready for, so that if either of them were faced with a life-altering illness or disease, they would have at least done the things they wanted to do, and they wouldn’t have any regrets.
‘Not this time.’ He pulled her arm in a little tighter against his torso. ‘I might donate a couple more though. I thought you’d appreciate me getting rid of some. I did promise I wouldn’t bring home too many more books when I bought the bookshop after all.’
She laughed. ‘Can I have that in writing?’
The rest of the evening passed with dinner, a Pimm’s in the garden to make the most of the weather, and when bedtime rolled around Howard climbed into bed beside her to read for a while before he would get up again and disappear into the back room quietly for another Midnight Book Club.
She switched off her bedside lamp when she grew sleepy. ‘You know, a lot of wives might be upset if their husband had a weekly midnight rendezvous with at least two other women, let alone if he still had his pyjamas on.’
His laughter rumbled in his belly and she felt him put a kiss to her cheek. ‘Good job you’re not a lot of wives then isn’t it.’
‘Goodnight, Howard.’
‘Goodnight, my love.’
She fell asleep, content. Time together was a precious thing and one that should never be taken for granted.
4
MARGOT
Margot was making a shopping list and planning the meals for the week. She liked to be organised before going to the supermarket, otherwise she’d wander aimlessly up and down the aisles and have Perry ask why she’d been out for so long. It was amazing how a businessman as busy as he was had the time to keep tabs on his wife using text messages, the app on his phone, and the doorbell security camera as well as the never-ending questions.
She caught sight of the calendar on the fridge door flipped over to the month of August. She didn’t need reminding that it was Wednesday, the Midnight Book Club was tonight and it had been three weeks since she last attended. Perry had booked them to go out to dinner with clients two weeks in a row, both dinners on a Wednesday night, the very night she appreciated his strict, and somewhat anal, bedtime of 11p.m. so she could sneak off once he was asleep. Those nights out could’ve got them home in plenty of time, but instead they’d led to drinks after the meal, then it was on to cigars, and they’d ended up getting home at just gone midnight on each occasion so she’d missed the only thing she looked forward to every week.
It sounded ridiculous that she didn’t have a life outside this house apart from an online club. It wasn’t as if the housework, the shopping, the admin tasks and what remained of her parenting duties now the boys were adults took up every hour of every day. But, Perry had made sure she’d been kept so busy with all of those things over the years that the very few friends she’d had fallen away one by one. Trinny, her closest friend from mother’s group when Sebastian and her son, Marty, were a couple of months old was the only one she was still in touch with, but even then Trinny was busy running a bridal gown business in Edinburgh and they barely got time to catch up on the phone let alone meet up. Bethany, the mum she’d hit it off with the most after Alistair was born – the boys were born so far apart that the first group had already disintegrated and Trinny had returned to work five mornings a week – called now and again and they’d met up once a fortnight for a long time. But that had faded away too with Bethany’s mother needing care and Bethany relocating to North Wales.
Tonight, Margot was determined not to miss book club. She was desperate to see her friends again and feel that little bit less alone, and she especially looked forward to seeing Howard, who had been so kind to her.
The first time she and Howard had talked about her marriage, she hadn’t intended to share her secrets with him. They’d been chatting normally, mostly about his bookshop, when she’d suddenly jumped up and disappeared off the screen. She’d thought she heard a noise upstairs but it must have been the trees outside in the wind or the washing machine on its spin cycle because there was no sign of Perry when she checked. She’d gone back down to the basement but trying to act nonchalant hadn’t fooled Howard.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ he’d said to her.
She was still shaking. It wasn’t like she was doing anything wrong, but Perry liked to keep her close. He didn’t like her doing things without him or away from the house, and if he knew she was in an online world with people he hadn’t vetted, he definitely wouldn’t approve. He would put a stop to it like he had her tennis and any shopping spree that was solo and too far away from home. He often went out with her, suddenly able to be away from the office, or he invented something that desperately needed seeing to at the house when she’d still been at the stage of inviting friends over, which felt like forever ago now.
‘The wind here is terrible,’ she told Howard that night. ‘The trees are bashing the windows. And the washing machine is on late. There’s not normally any sound when I’m down here for book club.’ She’d been reading and lost track of time, which was why the washing was on, because Perry wouldn’t be happy if he didn’t have the appropriate shirt to go with the right suit in the morning.
Howard wasn’t fooled, however, and asked her what was really going on. ‘Are you okay, Margot?’
Despite her best efforts her face betrayed her and all of the stress, the build-up of her feelings of failure, the misery inside her marriage, came to a head. ‘Actually, no. I’m very much not okay, Howard. And I haven’t been okay for a really long time.’
‘I’m a good listener,’ he’d said to her kindly. ‘And it’s just the two of us at the moment.’
