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‘Sorry about the burnt offering,’ she said then.
‘I suppose that’s my fault is it?’
Yes, actually, she thought, but wriggled out of it with a lie to skirt any altercation. She would not load the gun he was pointing at her head with bullets.
‘No, mine. I put the heat up too high so apologies, though I quite like it a bit crusty. Oh and Sunny called in at Mum’s today.’
‘Oh yeah.’
She waited for him to ask how he was, the son he hadn’t seen for months. He didn’t.
‘Karoline’s off work with stress apparently.’
Bruce laughed at that, a humourlesshumph. ‘What’s she know about stress?’ he said, in a low voice that probably wasn’t meant to be overheard. Shay’s senses ruffled.
‘It affects people in different ways though doesn’t it? Some fold, some work through it, some project and try and blame others for it, some pretend it’s not happening.’
Bruce looked up slowly. ‘This directed at me, is it?’
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
Shay huffed. ‘I was talking about Karoline.’
‘Yeah, course you were.’
Enough now. She couldn’t be a human dartboard for him any more.
‘Why are you being like this, Bruce? You’ve been off with me since you told me about you-know-what. I haven’t put you under any pressure, I haven’t even mentioned it.’
‘You don’t think you do, but you have little digs all the time,Some pretend it’s not happening.’ He imitated her, giving her a whiney voice which incensed her, and that told in the rising volume of her response.
‘I can’t help you if you won’t let me in.’
‘I don’t want your fucking help,’ Bruce retorted.
‘Then tell me what you do want because I don’t know,’ she implored, at the end of her tether with it all now. ‘I don’t understand what’s going on between us. Do we need to go and see a counsellor—’
‘Counsellor.’ He repeated the word, scoffed at it.
‘Is there someone else?’ She blurted it out without meaning to because she didn’t believe it anyway.
Bruce screwed up his face in disgust. ‘Are you really asking me that? What sort of relationship do we have that you’d say that to me, Shay?’
‘I don’t know what sort of relationship we have at the moment, that’s the point. We are off track and I don’t know what’s caused it. If I try and talk to you, you won’t. I’m walking on eggshells around you in case I upset you, I’m filtering through things I say in case I inadvertently mention something you can take the wrong way. I’m worriedabout you, Bruce. I love you.’ She threw the last words at him, hoped they’d stick like hot sugar, brand onto his skin so he accepted them, believed them. She felt them bounce back, unwanted.
‘I think I’m going to move into the spare room for a bit, Shay. Don’t read too much into it. I just feel as if my brain is going to explode’ – he lifted his hands to his head, jiggled them in the air at either side of his ears – ‘and you lying… beside me, makes me feel inadequate. Just… give me some space, will you? No counsellors, no heavy talks, I need to work things out my own way,’ he said wearily. ‘Please.’
Shay swallowed before speaking. ‘Just promise me that you’reokay.’ Her meaning was clear. Bruce knew the sketchiest details about her childhood friend. He closed his eyes and let loose a long breath of veiled impatience.
‘Shay, I’m not going to do anything stupid if that’s what you’re thinking so you don’t have to hover over me and fret every time I walk out of the house.’
Shay nodded, relief blooming in her chest. She didn’t speak. What could she say anyway that hadn’t already been said?
Chapter 14
Shay had been sleeping alone for two weeks now. The bed hadn’t shrunk around her in that time, it felt as cavernous every night. She’d never minded sleeping alone when Bruce was working away from home, but there was so much more that was separating them now than a mere plasterboard wall.
