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A silver kettle stood to attention on the kitchen worksurface, polished to a shine by a meticulous hand. After she had brought all her stuff in from the car, she filled it up from the tap and switched it on, made herself a coffee. She settled on the fancy cabriole sofa that sat in front of a functional, but not pretty, gas fire. Her mother had bought the piece from an antique shop years ago for the Old Rectory and when they moved house, it hadn’t come with them. She always wondered what happened to it because she’d liked it, but presumed it had been given away. The sofa wrapped around her like a welcome and she felt calm, cradling her mug, sitting there in the silence, as if her brain had given her a temporary ledge to rest on, in order to gather some strength.
She switched on her phone to find a string of texts and missed calls from Courtney, all on the same theme,
Mum, I’m sorry. Are you okay? xxxxxxxxx
She replied with a simple message. She might not have wanted to engage, but neither did she see any sense in worrying her loved ones stupid by totally ignoring them.
I’m okay, don’t worry. I’m just taking some time out. I’ll be in touch soon. Love you. Mum x
There were also a couple of missed calls and texts from Morton.
Hello r u in?
Calld to av a natter. Nieghbor says you av gone away. Hope you is allright. Al ring tomoz.
She sent him a quick text too, that she had gone away for a break. As much as she felt sorry for him, she would not be drawn into being a plaster for someone else’s wound. She was overdue some ‘me’ time and she was going to spend it wisely, whichever way that might be.
She yawned, hoped that tonight she’d get some sleep, sleep that didn’t involve too-real dreams that jerked her awake to an unsettling few moments where the lines between fantasy and reality were horribly blurred. She swilled her cup under the tap, it was still early but she would go to bed, wake up with no particular plan in mind; she just wanted life to carry her like a leaf downstream for a while. Tomorrow was another day, but tonight she wanted only space and nothingness.
Chapter 28
Shay slept until ten o’clock the next morning in the small, but cosy bed. It was softer than the one they had at home because Bruce had insisted on an orthopaedic mattress for his back. She wondered if he’d do that with Les and then dragged her thoughts from them. There was no sense in moving away and bringing them with her.
She had a shower which was very different from the one in their bathroom at home, a much weaker flow bordering on a dribble, but it did the trick, even if she didn’t have any soap and made a mental note to add it to a shopping list. She had a coffee and a slice of toast from the loaf and tub of butter she’d brought with her, then thought she’d brave the supermarket on the High Street, if it was still there. The thought of venturing out, mingling with people she might recognise – who might recognise her – brought a ball of dread to her stomach, even though it had been twenty-nine years since she was last here. She fought the fear, picked up her handbag, put on her shoes, locked the door behind her.
The High Street was a mere left and immediate right turn away from Candlemas and for every change she spotted,there was a counterbalancing familiarity. The archetypal village post office had been extended into the buildings at either side and through the large windows, it was unrecognisable with its four counters. Back then, there had just been two hatches and behind them either the wizened Enid Leathem or her sister Maud. Both of them had fuelled gossip about her in this village, tipped petrol on the smallest spark, embroidered salacious stitches into the tapestry of the tale, whipped up hostility, twisted the lies until they were even bigger and more warped. She supposed they must have died by now and be franking letters in hell. The quaint old ironmongers had gone, replaced by a card shop; Olive’s bridal boutique was now a newsagents, Mr Clegg’s newsagents was now a Chinese takeaway. The Yorkshire Rose Tea Room was still there but now it was called Bees n Cheese and the roses painted on the plate glass window had been replaced by buzzing bees, honeycombs and hives. It looked busy; a young waitress in a black dress and white apron was delivering scones to a table of two. The menu stuck in the window featured a lot of cheese and honey: honey cakes, afternoon tea with honey, honey scones. Also apple pie baked with Yorkshire Crumble cheese, the same cheese featuring in a variety of toasted sandwiches. She’d passed this tea room too many times to count. She and Denny had gawped through the windows at the cakes in the glass case and vowed that when they were a bit older they’d come in every Saturday and sample every one of them in turn. There had never been a reason to think it wouldn’t happen.
The supermarket was still in the same place but much bigger. She filled a small trolley with shopping and a local newspaper. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see her photo splashed on the front page and the headline ‘LocalKiller Returns’. As she walked up and down the narrow aisles, she felt her anxiety levels twitch up, as if she were waiting for a siren to begin wailing and everyone’s attention to swing to her. She couldn’t get out of there fast enough. It was too early to be brave, right now she was an animal who needed to curl up into a ball and lick her wounds, let herself adjust to the respite of not being beaten.
She made herself an omelette and read thePennine Times, the Millspring edition, cover to cover, but there were no names she recognised. There was mention that plans had been approved to build a sixth-form wing onto St John’s School. The name was enough to flood her with memories, whizz her back into her dark blue uniform, Jonah Wells strolling towards her in the corridor with the wall of lockers in it, feeling her heart rate begin to increase in response. He rocked that uniform. He rocked everything, especially her world. She wondered where he was now. He’d have gone on to uni and then probably on to some high-powered job abroad. He’d have a glamorous wife, a son and a daughter both set to follow in his footsteps and she’d flit across his mind once every ten years, if at all. She hoped she’d got that right for him. He’d done nothing wrong, only she’d been blamed. Only she’d been lied about.
For the next week, her routine was simple, regimented. She got up when her internal alarm clock went off, she had a coffee, walked up to the High Street supermarket to buy a newspaper and whatever else she might need. She checked her phone periodically in case her father’s care home had rung. She’d had a text message from Sunny as Courtney had obviously been in touch with him, though how much she’d told him was anyone’s guess.
Hope you’re okay, mum. Giving you space but ring if you need me x
To which she’d replied:
Thank you, I will. X
She set up a temporary office in the front lounge and did whatever Colin sent her to do from there. She made work for herself when her prescribed jobs ran out: updating spreadsheets and learning her way around the new version of Word, Excel, Powerpoint. She checked out what was happening with the company pages on social media and made some suggestions for change. ‘JoMint Media’ who were managing it for Colin weren’t great and they were charging an absolute fortune for their services; she knew that because she processed their invoices.
Even she, with her limited knowledge, could do a better job and she watched a few YouTube videos on how to do what on Insta, but there was too much to learn. Courtney was a wizard on it. She knew everything about engagements and reaches and how/when/what to post. She knew about hashtags and archiving, framing, layouts, geo-tags, it was as if her brain was made specifically for showing off to the world via a screen. Sunny had never been one for giving up his every move to strangers though, and Bruce didn’t have the want or need for promoting himself or his business online.
Shay found herself unable to resist looking up Les on Facebook but couldn’t find her any more, suggesting that she’d probably been blocked. Pre-social media days were so much kinder on dumpees, she thought. There were noglossy loved-up photos to torment the rejected, no air-brushed new partners to smash an already damaged ego to pieces. Les had done her a lesser kindness by shutting her out, if that’s what she’d done. A very lesser kindness.
She had been living in Millspring for a week and a half when she saw the postman wandering up the path with a large white envelope in his hand which, seconds later, landed on the doormat. Redirected from her home address by the neighbours, it had a franked sticker in the corner: ‘Douglas, Fellowes and Tapp – solicitors’. Whatever she was expecting the envelope to contain it was not a divorce petition. Her eyes gobbled up the type, absorbing little but the odd word:client; Bruce William Bastable; irretrievable breakdown; unreasonable behaviour.
She gulped breaths like a goldfish deprived of his bowl, sat on the sofa, forced herself to concentrate. The grounds for divorce were laid out clearly and concisely. She was not supportive. She was concerned only with other people’s business outside the marriage. She did not contribute enough financially to the marriage. Didn’t undertake her fair share of tasks in the house. She had psychological problems which made living with her a strain. She was insensitive to the plaintiff’s needs. She was emotionally distant. Boy, he was really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find something that stuck.
Shay read on, unable to recognise herself in this wife of ‘the plaintiff’. Not supportive? She’d been the one who told him to take the leap and go self-employed. She’d sold her car to buy him his first van. As for being concerned only with other people’s business outside the marriage – presumably their parents and children? They’d have beenup a certain creek without a paddle if she’d had no time to spare for them, she’d had to be on hand for them all twenty-four-seven.
Psychological problems? Was that a dig at her being slightly concerned that their son was fast-tracking down the aisle with a woman he couldn’t even remember proposing to, and for their wild daughter who battered people with toasters? How bloody cruel could someone be? He hadn’t just stuck the boot in, he’d changed it halfway through for a bigger, harder, heavier boot. Her default position at the moment was a low-lying anger which worked to keep every other possible emotion at bay, but it had just revved up to max after reading this.
Plaintiff Bruce was, however, suggesting they split the costs. She laughed at that.
So, in a nutshell, she surmised aloud for herself, her husband of twenty-four years, who had just left her for her multi-millionaire best friend, was divorcingherfor unreasonable behaviour?
She threw the papers down on the work surface, grabbed her handbag and keys and rammed her feet into her pumps. She needed some air and she needed it fast.
