Cathy Kelly - What She Wants

‘It’s only across the road,’ protested Elaine.

‘Better safe than sorry,’ Hope said. ‘It’s half twelve, you know. Time for the deviants of the world to emerge.’

‘In Maltings Lane?’ asked Elaine incredulously.

When Matt came back, Hope was sitting waiting for him at the kitchen table. Her hands were still shaking, so she put them on her lap and clasped them tightly together as if she was praying. Perhaps if she had prayed, none of this would have happened, she thought wildly.

‘I thought you’d be on your way to bed by now,’ Matt remarked, pouring himself a glass of milk. It was the longest statement he’d made in about a week.

‘Jasmine said a very strange thing to me tonight,’ Hope said evenly. ‘She said you were taking a sabbatical to live in the country to write a book – not this country was the implication. I just wondered when you were going to tell me of this plan and if I and the children were actually included.’

‘Ah.’ Matt sat down with her. ‘Too much red wine is a terrible thing.’

‘You mean Jasmine misunderstood?’ Hope could barely get the words out.

‘Not exactly,’ Matt said slowly. ‘I’m afraid I got a bit carried away and said too much.’

‘So it’s true.’ Her legs began to shake too with fear.

‘Hope,’ Matt wasn’t sure how to start but he knew he had to. Telling Jasmine had been a decision fuelled by too much wine but it had been a relief to talk about it with someone other than Dan. It was time to tell Hope. ‘It’s been a dream of mine for years and you know me, respectable family man, I’d never do anything wild or out of the ordinary, anything that would jeopardize our future but now I’ve got the chance and I thought, why not take a year out. I know that Adam would keep my job open for me – he’d have to, I’m the best he’s got,’ he added, proud of the fact.

‘But what about me and the kids?’ asked Hope, eyes wet and filled with terror. Was Matt drunk? Didn’t he care about them at all?

‘I mean all of us going away. You, me and the kids for a year. To Ireland; Kerry, in fact. Uncle Gearóid’s solicitor phoned me on Monday about the old house. I know it’s sudden but it’s like the answer to my prayers. I’ve been so down, Hope, so depressed and then he phones to say the house is officially mine. I haven’t been able to think of anything else all week.’

Hope’s whole body was shaking now; she could barely take in what he was saying because her mind was so befuddled with fear and anxiety.

Gearóid had been a poet who, over forty years before, had left his home in the UK for a small town named Redlion in Kerry, where he lived a bohemian life with gusto. Hope had never met him because he’d refused to leave his beloved adopted country to come to their wedding but he’d always sounded like a mad old rogue who pickled his liver and wrote bad poetry that nobody had ever wanted to publish. He’d even changed his name from Gerald to the Irish and unpronounceable Gearóid, which Hope still found impossible to say, no matter how many times Matt said it phonetically: ‘ Gar , like garage, and oid like haemorrhoid.’

Matt had spent a few summers in Redlion as a child and still talked mistily about what a wonderful place Kerry was. But as Gearóid became more eccentric with age, he refused to travel to stay with Matt, who, in turn, never seemed to have the time to visit his ageing uncle. When he died, he left Matt everything; partly because he didn’t have any children of his own and partly, according to his solicitor, to annoy the other distant relatives who’d been hanging around like vultures hoping for a piece of property in a popular tourist destination in south-western Ireland. ‘Everything’ turned out to be a run-down house the solicitor imagined wouldn’t fetch much. Hope had assumed that Matt would simply sell the house. They could certainly do with the money.

‘Probate’s finally been sorted out,’ Matt explained. ‘The house is mine. And yours, of course. There’s a bit of land but only an acre or so. It all seemed much bigger when I was a kid. I thought he had loads of land. Anyway,’ he paused, ‘this is my idea. I’ve told you about the writers’ community there that Gearóid helped start up in the Sixties?’

Hope nodded, still looking shell-shocked, although Matt didn’t notice because he was fired up with the enthusiasm of telling her his plan.

‘It’s spooky because this is so coincidental,’ Matt went on eagerly, ‘but last week I read an interview with the novelist, Stephen Dane – you know the guy, he writes those literary thrillers. Anyway, he’s just sold a book to Hollywood. We’re talking millions, Hope. And in the middle of the interview, he mentioned that he wrote his first novel in Kerry, in Redlion, actually, in the writer’s centre. Don’t you see, it’s got to be a sign.

‘We’d both take a year out and go and live in Gearóid’s house. I’d write a novel. I’ve got one in me, I know it. Imagine it, Hope,’ Matt said, his eyes alight with enthusiasm, desperate to transmit his excitement to her and unaware of what she’d been thinking since his birthday, ‘we could be with the children all day. I could get some part time copy writing work and we’d live cheaply enough. We could rent out this place for a year and cover the mortgage. We wouldn’t lose out. This is our big chance.’

And it was, Matt was convinced of it. He’d slay the demons that lived in his head and told him he’d never amount to anything but a bitter old ad man. And he’d get the chance to live another life, even if only for a brief time.

Hope stared at him, hardly daring to believe that it wasn’t the death knell she’d been expecting. Matt wasn’t leaving her; he wanted her and the children with him. She leaned her hands on the table. Her sleeve immediately stuck in the sticky patch left behind from Millie’s morning yoghurt.

‘Why couldn’t you tell me?’ she said, her voice unsteady. ‘I didn’t know you felt this way.’

‘I’m sorry I kept it to myself. It’s embarrassing to talk about your dreams like that, Hope, but I want to write and I’m never going to do it here, not with a full-time job, not in this house. You need a creative atmosphere. It would be fantastic for us as a family. Having the house there in Redlion takes all the hassle out of it. It’s perfect.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this on your birthday?’ she said helplessly. ‘I knew there was something wrong, I asked you what it was then and you wouldn’t tell me! I thought you were having an affair.’

It was Matt’s turn to look astonished.

‘An affair! Whatever gave you that idea?’ he said incredulously.

‘Everything,’ Hope said. ‘You told me there was something wrong but that I couldn’t fix it. And you didn’t kiss me or touch me and I was just so sure…’

Her voice broke off and Matt sat down at the table and took her hands in his.

‘Darling Hope, what a crazy idea. I was killing myself wondering whether I could do this to you. All I could think of was that you’d hate it, that it was such a huge step to go abroad for a year. I kept telling myself it was a stupid idea, that I shouldn’t do it but I’ve been talking to Dan about it and…’

‘Dan!’ Hope felt a spark of fury that while she’d been dying inside at the thought of Matt leaving her, he could have saved her a lot of anguish if only he’d told her the truth. Meanwhile, he’d actually been asking other people’s opinions on a move that affected her more than anyone else. ‘Is there anyone you haven’t discussed this with, apart from me, of course?’ She ripped a tissue from the box on the table and rubbed violently at the yoghurt marks on the table.