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When she heard Chris’s van draw up she felt her jaw tighten with tension. Since deciding to leave, she’d felt deceitful pretending everything was running along as always when she knew what was coming. He hadn’t noticed anything amiss, hadn’t picked up on her awkwardness, hadn’t felt the air thickening around them when they were together; sometimes she’d felt it cloying on the back of her throat enough to choke her. She wanted him to suspect something, because it would at least mean he was taking some notice of her, but there was fat chance of that. It wouldn’t have changed anything though, not now. They were too far past their finish line.
‘Hi,’ she called and pushed out a civil smile of greeting when he walked in.
‘Smells good,’ he said. ‘I’ll be down in five for it.’
He dropped his bag where he stood. She’d lost count of the times they’d had the subsequent exchange and they were about to have it again.
‘Please don’t leave it there, Chris. I’m sick of having to move it.’
He rolled his eyes – how she hated when he did this. ‘Why? Is it in the way of anything?’
Was he blind? ‘I can’t get to the bin, I can’t get to the door.’
‘Do you want to get to the door?’
‘It’s not the point.’ He dumped, she shifted, that was the point and it had been one of the many little things that had helped to wreck their relationship.
He gave it a petulant kick to the left, that’s all it took for it no longer to be an obstacle, while chuntering under his breath about not needing this when he’d just come in from work, plus the word ‘nag’ was thrown in for good measure. He then went upstairs to change and Polly checked on how things were in the oven.
He came downstairs shortly afterwards in tracksuit bottoms and an old sweatshirt. He smiled at her and she registered the rare phenomenon and silently gulped. He smiled at customers about to part with their cash, he smiled at his daughter, but in all honesty, she couldn’t remember the last time she got his full beam trained exclusively on her.
‘Want your wine topped up?’ he asked, opening the fridge for an energy drink.
‘Er, please.’ He never usually asked her.
She served up and he tucked into his dinner as if he hadn’t eaten for a week and made small noises of approval as he was chewing.
‘I haven’t stopped for as much as a cuppa all day. This is lovely. Tastes like restaurant food,’ he said.
It didn’t. It tasted like what it was, easy and convenient. She used to love cooking for him. She used to put a flower in a vase on the table and try to make their evening meals feel intimate and caring for him after a full day’s work, but he’d just bolt down the food and then get up, shove his plate in the washing-up bowl and go and watch the telly, leaving her to finish her meal alone. She hadn’t ever wanted to stop making the effort, but eventually she had. She’d made hardly any meals from scratch over the past few months; fresh had been replaced by frozen and dried, more things were delivered to the table from the microwave and she didn’t want to think how many unappreciated man-hours she’d clocked up in the kitchen over the past eight years.
‘Really nice,’ he went on. ‘Delicious.’
More compliments. Something prickled in her scalp. Looking back she remembered him being especially buoyant at the time of his fling. Bouncy as a dog with two dicks, not a hint of conflict or guilt. She watched him secretly as he ate with gusto and wondered how she would feel if he announced he was having another affair. She wished he would. It would make things so easy because she could say, ‘Well, off you go and fill your boots.’ A mutual split would be an ideal scenario.
He wouldn’t be single for long, she knew. She’d seen how women flirted with him at the garage, because he looked good in petrol-blue overalls with his perfect stubble, and he had the gift of the gab when he didn’t have to back it up with any substance. He was more handsome in his mid-forties than he had been in his mid-thirties and he’d been quite the looker then. He’d always looked after himself, had nicewhite teeth and though his sandy-brown hair was thinning and greying a bit at the sides, he wore it short in a cut that suited him. He kept himself trim and toned with weights in their garage and he never had a problem spending money on clothes for himself, even if he had a problem spending it on other things. He always smelt either of his garage or a pricey cologne, both easy on the olfactory nerves of people he encountered. She’d liked that he took pride in his appearance and had enjoyed being on his arm whenever they went anywhere, knowing that other females were admiring him but she was the one he went home to. Until she wasn’t.
That night in bed, Chris kissed her. Not a perfunctory peck but a longer kiss that grew in intensity and she could tell where it was heading. She stopped him before it went to ‘access all areas’ and said not tonight because she was whacked.Not tonight. Not again. She didn’t even want to sleep beside him any more, it felt wrong to, but keeping things on an even keel until after Camay’s wedding had been her master plan, for right or wrong. It did help that the bed was so wide, it didn’t even feel as if they were sleeping together.
Chris was snoring softly within five minutes, while Polly lay there imagining herself in a cosy, single bed with a springy mattress, not a hard orthopaedic one for the back, as had been Chris’s choice. Everything was always Chris’s way or the highway, and for her that highway was now approaching fast.
TheDaily Trumpetwould like to apologise to Mr Martyn Eagles of Eagles Carpets, Doncaster for inadvertently printing that he had ‘a vast selection of drugs in his seventy per cent off May Day sale while stocks last – 9am–5pm’. This should have read ‘a vast selection of rugs’. We also have to apologise to South Yorkshire police for them having to turn out in force to dispel the crowds that had been queueing since the previous evening.
Chapter 5
Four days to the renewal of the vows ceremony
‘Do you think you’ll ever get married?’ said Sheridan the next day at work. Then it was as if someone had taken out a foundation stone from a whole tower block, causing it to collapse. Poor Sheridan couldn’t have known that Polly would fold quite so dramatically at such a gentle probe. Polly couldn’t have known it either: she wasn’t aware of how much stress she was operating under. Her head told her she was coping just fine; her body obviously knew otherwise. Her eyes started squirting out tears to the extent that she couldn’t wipe them fast enough with her fingers. Sheridan hurriedly took out a pack of tissues from her bag and threw it over the divide.
‘Bloody hell, Pol, what did I say?’
Polly looked around her hoping no one had noticed. It was bad enough breaking down in front of Sheridan but if any of Jeremy’s team were around, they’d attribute any such show of emotion to ‘women’s hormones’, ‘time of the month’ or ‘early menopause’ and females in this place had enough of arubbish deal without handing the males ammunition with which to load their guns.
‘Is it that pathetic pay rise? Has it been on your mind?’ whispered Sheridan, hoping to jolly her.
It wasn’t, but it had its part to play. Another straw on the donkey’s back, and there were quite a few of them bearing down their weight on her at the moment.
‘Right, go to the loo, get yourself together and I’ll meet you in the canteen in five minutes,’ commanded Sheridan. For a woman so young, she wasn’t half a bossy beggar at times.
