It’s two hours before they go, but before I have time to feel guilty about my lack of attention to my friends, my phone pings again.
i want to talk. can i come now? i see your friends have gone.
He’s watching me. Goosebumps cover my arms, and my fingers shake as I type my reply.
No. Ash is on his way home.
I have no idea when Ash will be home, but I’m about to text him to ask when my phone pings yet again.
i’m not waiting forever.
5
Saturday
‘Millie, go and ask Daddy if he wants a cup of tea, will you, love?’
Millie puts her Sharpie down on the kitchen table and obligingly trots off to the bottom of the stairs. I hear her shrill little voice calling up to Ash, who’s working in his study, reading through some case notes in preparation for an operation he has to perform in the morning. He rarely works on a Sunday, but this is a special case and he’s nothing if not diligent.
‘Daddy’s coming down,’ Millie says, returning to her drawing.
I walk across and lean over her shoulder, unable to resist running my fingers through her silky long blonde hair, touching her soft cheek with my lips. I often wonder how I managed to make something so perfect, especially as she is so small-boned and delicate – the opposite of me.
My mother always said I was statuesque – usually a compliment, but in her case a euphemism for being too tall with a large well-covered frame, a size sixteen who hates any form of exercise and is unlikely ever to be slim. I never did manage to tick the pretty, defenceless, fragile box that my mother thinks so important for trapping a man. If she thought that was my main objective in life, she didn’t know me at all.
I sigh as I return to preparing tonight’s supper. It’s a typical Saturday evening meal for us – a big bowl of meat and potato pie with a lovely crumbly crust, followed by an evening watching some rubbish talent show on TV that Millie loves, with all three of us crammed together on the sofa. I don’t know which one it is at the moment – The Voice, The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent? They all blur into one with me, although I do quite enjoy the auditions, particularly when the contestant has no talent at all but heaps of self-belief. And why not? They are the ones I cheer on. We should all believe in ourselves or we would never do anything.
I try not to think about the conversation I need to have with Ash after Millie has gone to bed, but I know it has to be done.
He walks into the kitchen as I’m taking the meat out of the bottom oven of the Aga, where it’s been stewing nicely for the last few hours.
‘I’ll just add these potatoes, then I’ll make you that tea,’ I say, smiling at him over my shoulder.
He returns the smile and bends over to see what Millie’s drawing. He points at a figure drawn in black. ‘Who’s this? Is it Mummy?’
I’ve seen the picture and I give him a dirty look. He grins and Millie giggles.
‘No, Daddy – it’s a witch.’
‘What’s the witch doing?’ he asks.
‘She’s come to capture me – to take me to her castle.’
‘Do witches live in castles?’ Always the pedant, my Ash, but Millie giggles again.
‘This one does, but she doesn’t get me, because I’m going to draw you in the picture now. You’re going to rescue me.’
He bends down and drops a kiss on her head. ‘Quite right. I’ll always rescue my little Millie.’
She lifts her sweet face and gives him such a loving smile it melts my heart. She adores him, and he couldn’t be a better dad, which makes my refusal to give him the one thing he wants even harder.
He lifts his eyes to mine, and for just a second I see the pain there – pain that I’ve caused – and I wonder if I’m being unfair.
‘Here’s your tea,’ I say to Ash. ‘Millie, are you okay drawing for a minute, sweetheart? I want to talk to Daddy about his schedule next week.’
I signal with my head that he should follow me into the sitting room, and he raises his eyebrows but nevertheless I hear his footsteps behind me on the bare floorboards of the hall.
I dump a pile of the costumes that I agreed to alter onto the floor and sit down on the sofa. Ash looks around at the disarray and manages to say nothing. But he doesn’t sit down. He paces back and forth. Maybe this would be the time to mention the Tinder photo, but I put it off until later. It would muddy the water now.
‘This can’t go on, Ash. I know I’ve hurt you, but we have to get past it. You know that I love you – you do know that, don’t you?’ I say.
He has his hands clasped behind his neck now, a look of hopelessness on his face, then he takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes.
‘I don’t think I know anything any more, Jo. You are fiercely independent. I understand that, and I know where it’s coming from. But what you don’t realise is that very same independence creates a barrier. I feel superfluous to requirements.’
I sigh with despair. We’ve had this conversation every few days for the last three months, and we never make any progress.
‘Just because I don’t want to get married, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with you for the rest of my life. I do! There’s nothing I want more. And how could you ever be superfluous? You’re the person who holds this family together. I need you. Millie needs you.’
He drops his eyes, and his voice. ‘You have no idea how rejected you made me feel.’
A memory flashes into my mind of that night three months ago when Ash had proposed. He had gone to so much trouble to get it right – a beautiful restaurant, flowers, champagne. He had even bought the ring.
And I’d said no.
I jump up from the sofa and move towards him, lifting my hands to rest on his shoulders. ‘Oh, come on, Ash. I wasn’t rejecting you. I was rejecting marriage. And—’
‘Mummy!’ I hear Millie’s voice from the kitchen. ‘I think something’s burning.’
I let my arms drop to my sides. This is futile, and for the first time I wonder if the damage I have done is irreparable.
6
We’re eating in the kitchen, as we almost always do, and despite the clutter it’s my favourite room in the house. It’s so cosy with my beautiful duck-egg blue Aga at one end of the room, and a wood burner chucking out heat at the other. We can hear the rain lashing against the window, but we sit in warm puddles of yellow light cast by the copper pendant above the stripped pine table.
Ash seems to have decided to push his disappointment to one side for now, although I’m sure it’s a temporary reprieve. He’s laughing at a story I’m telling about the last rehearsal of the theatre group, when there was a spat between two of the members because they both thought they should be centre stage in a key scene.
We’re sharing a smile when we hear a thundering knock at the front door. Three loud bangs.
‘Is the bell not working?’ I grumble as I begin to push my chair back.
Ash waves his hand at me to stay sitting. ‘I’ll go.’
‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘Stay where you are.’
There’s one other person who didn’t use the bell this week. Steve. Please don’t let it be him. But who else would come out in this terrible weather, and why make such a racket? If it’s Steve, I need to get rid of him.