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but even so.
She’d seemed mature.
She’d seemed sensible.
They live their own lives in the end, no matter what you do.
She’d be okay.
She wanted the parents to know.
14: Jess
Whenever she’d been unfaithful, Jess would prepare a special dinner for herself and Stuart, to make up for it. He didn’t know this, of course, but it made her feel as though amends were being made.
She didn’t think ‘unfaithful’ was even quite the right word. Strictly speaking, yes, that’s what it was. But it wasn’t disloyal. It came from a place of deep loyalty to Stuart, if anything. It was a way of ensuring their marriage could continue.
It was never difficult to arrange. Men were easy to read, and would alwa
ys say yes if she asked them directly. They accepted the terms as she set them out: once only, no talking about it afterwards, total discretion. It was never thoughtless or casual, and mostly extremely pleasant. She enjoyed the anticipation she felt, and the anticipation she saw someone else feeling. The sense of two people stoking a hunger that was bigger than both of them. She enjoyed the raw abandon she felt in a strange bed. Stuart would be hurt if he ever found out, obviously, but she knew that he’d be far more hurt if she left him for the sake of this one thing. It was just a particular form of aerobic exercise, when it came down to it. What sort of a person would break up a marriage for that? It seemed as reckless as leaving someone because they didn’t like playing cricket, or because they’d hung their rowing boat in the shed twenty years ago and not taken it down since.
So it was never guilt that she felt afterwards, exactly. But it did create an uncomfortable feeling of wanting to reconnect, and cooking for him was the best way she knew of doing that.
Tonight’s dinner was going to be a particularly elaborate affair.
*
The girls were staying at a friend’s house, and Stuart had been out at a meeting all afternoon, so she’d had plenty of time to prepare. He was late getting back, but it was probably too soon to worry. He’d gone to settle some business with Woods. The dinner would be a surprise.
Or should that be Mr Woods? She wasn’t sure if it was a surname or a nickname or even his name at all. It was one of those questions you didn’t ask. Some people would be apprehensive about meeting a man like that in the first place, but Stuart had said there was no need to worry. It was all a simple misunderstanding, he’d said.
She chopped some more garlic, and added it to a salad dressing, along with fresh oregano and a splash of lemon juice.
He’d worked hard on the meeting all the same: Land Registry paperwork, a legal opinion, existing contracts. Might as well get this thing resolved in one hit, he’d said. He’d been working hard on everything lately. Things had been getting tight, business-wise.
She weighed out the bulgar wheat and put it to soak. She covered the bowl with the tea towel they’d bought when they’d gone to Morocco. That was years ago, before the children. She poured herself a glass of wine. She checked on the lamb.
The meeting was about money. Most of their problems this year had been money-related. Woods kept some caravans on a strip of land fronting a timber yard that Stuart had recently bought, and had apparently always been paid an access charge by the previous owner. This wasn’t mentioned in the sale documents, and seemed to have no legal basis. It wasn’t even clear that he owned the land his caravans were on. It was a nonsense, Stuart had said.
The timber yard had belonged to Patrick Harris, who had died a few years ago. Cathy Harris hadn’t wanted to sell, but Stuart had offered her a good price. There’d been some bad feeling about it in the village, which Jess hardly thought was fair. It was a good price. But Cathy had seemed rather stilted the last few times Jess had seen her.
The lamb shoulder had been marinading since the night before. She’d waited for Stuart to go to bed, and then scored deep lines through the fat and rubbed it all over with olive oil, garlic, rosemary and crushed juniper. When she’d got into bed he’d told her she smelt nice, wrinkling his nose in that utterly puzzled way she found so affecting. She’d left the lamb hidden at the back of the larder until he’d gone to the meeting, and then blasted it for half an hour before turning the oven down as low as it could go.
She’d never met Woods, but she knew him by reputation. Most people did, around here. Cathy had once told her he was involved in illegal gambling, and Martin at the butcher’s shop changed the subject whenever his name came up. He seemed to be a kind of bogeyman figure, but there were very few specifics. It was simple reputation management, Stuart said. A type of business strategy. A face-to-face conversation would resolve the issue. He would be reasonable about it, Stuart was sure.
She laid the table. She’d ironed the tablecloth, and was using the heavy cutlery his parents had left them with the house. She’d polished the glasses, and put the wine out. She arranged some ivy around the good candlesticks, and laid out the napkins.
*
She checked the time. He really was late now. She popped outside for a moment, on the off-chance she might see his headlights along the road. It was cold and there was a thin coating of frost across the gravel. It was a cloudy night and the darkness felt close. The barn conversions across the yard were a silhouette against the darker hills beyond. The lights from the village seemed a long way off. There were no cars on the road.
Tomorrow she would put the lights on in the barn conversion, when she went over to air the rooms ready for the Shaw family’s arrival. This time of year could be dank even in the middle of the day, and she wanted them to feel welcome. She knew they’d been in two minds about coming at all. She was looking forward to seeing them again, and she wanted it to go well.
They’d come for a fortnight back in August, with their daughter, Becky. She’d invited them as a test-run, before they opened the new holiday lets to paying guests. The whole building process had been so fraught with cock-ups and delays, and they wanted to be sure everything was finally working properly. And the Shaws had been happy to act as guinea pigs. They were old friends, from university days. It had been good to see them again. They’d seemed to unwind over the course of the time they were here. And Becky had made friends in the village. Jess had even picked up, from her older daughter, that there was some kind of infatuation between Becky and the Broads’ son, James, although what that really meant at the age of thirteen was anyone’s guess.
Money had been tight, the last few years. The barn conversions were supposed to work towards solving that, as was the acquisition of the timber yard, but so far they were just deeper into debt than ever. And this business with Woods had stopped them being able to use the timber yard at all.
She went back inside, and checked on the roast potatoes. They were barely golden, and just beginning to crisp. She tossed them around in the pan and put them back in the oven. The sticky smell of caramelising garlic made her think, as it sometimes did, of their honeymoon in Greece. Everything they’d eaten there had been laced with garlic and dripping with oil, and they’d got very messy. They’d spent most of their time eating it half-naked. She’d thought, then, that their appetites would never be sated.
