Alex Hines - Chance

‘You know, things have changed,’ said Rob.

‘Yes, I do. But what changed was you , not them. All they ever wanted was for me to be with someone who loves me, which you do, so that’s fine.’

But this statement was met with further silence and no confirmation of the fact that he loved her. Welcome to stability , thought Ava, it looks a lot like being taken for granted . Meanwhile, Rob stared ahead, tensing his jaw. Ava watched the muscle on the side of his face flex and relax, and thought of the nights she had lain awake recently, hearing him grind his teeth. What has happened to us and how can we undo it? A tractor turned out in front of them, followed by a small rush of cars coming down the lane from church. Ava saw Rob’s hands grip the steering wheel even more tightly. Clenching and letting go … Clenching and letting go.

Of course the glass of Scotch she had had last night was nothing to do with why Ava felt so sick and in her heart she knew it. She had tried to look forward to the weekend, surrounding herself in a cloud of positively all week, but the nervous knots she could feel just tightened as doubt and anxiety unfurled themselves. She had tried to pretend to herself that she had had a stressful week at work, but she knew that wasn’t true. Matt had worked so hard and with such a sunny attitude that she was actually thinking about giving him a bit of time off to enjoy the last of the summer on his surfboard. He was charming to the female customers and mates with the men who needed a hand in choosing flowers for their loved ones. In so doing he had definitely affected the shop’s turnover and been a pleasure to work with.

Only a couple of days ago she had enjoyed a drink with Sarah from Ruston’s the hairdresser and their fruitful exchange of local gossip had been as much fun as ever. Ava was sure that other shops and businesses did it too, but she and Sarah always laughed at the way the locals assumed they were all so anonymous – especially some of the fancier wives from the smart villages outside Salisbury. Little did they know their shopkeepers were taking an interest in their lives, noticing their children growing older, their hair getting longer (or greyer); their cars bigger. It was as if a whole local soap opera was running, kept alive by gossip between the shops around the market square, and Ava adored being a part of it. There had been great pleasure in the discovery that one of her clients was ordering flowers to be delivered to herself at work, even going so far as to pen romantic cards to make her colleagues jealous. That joy was even greater when Sarah revealed she had attended school with the same woman, who had a terrible reputation for stealing other peoples’ boyfriends.

No, it hadn’t been a bad week at work at all – it was life at home that was behind this sinking feeling. Rob had not taken well to being reminded about the long-planned Sunday lunch and had been making sly little comments about it since Tuesday. The resentments bubbled over this morning, leaving them silent in the car, all the while simmering and unable to find a way out.

It was not how Ava had ever imagined that Sunday mornings with her true love would be. During two long years after she had broken up with Mick–just as all of her closest friends were falling in love, getting engaged or married – she had fantasised about the Sunday mornings they were all having. She would wake with a start, wondering how to fill the next three or four hours until it was acceptable to call someone and not be interrupting anything, while her imagination cruelly filled in the time by picturing her friends in exaggerated romantic scenes. She never went quite so far as the cliché of the single long-stemmed red rose in a slim glass vase on a tray, but there had been bleak weekends when similar images presented themselves and taunted her. The Romantics – wildly in love, sharing the newspapers in bed, their side tables holding smug little cafetières of heavenly-smelling coffee and dainty fruit salads comprised of carefully sliced berries that they would feed to each other between kisses. Whether or not these scenes had ever taken place was neither here nor there to Ava. Now she could grudgingly admit that when she first got together with Rob there had been very a little of that for he wasn’t really one of life’s natural relaxers. Enjoying a moment was ‘wasting time’ and holding hands in the street only meant ‘shoving it in people’s faces’. By the time they crossed the divide into romance, they had known each other for so long that those early Sunday mornings together had not proved as much of a discovery as they usually were with a new boyfriend. So little heat, so little intrigue. It wasn’t that Ava hadn’t loved him – in fact, she had been relieved when there turned out to be so little left to discover – thank goodness for none of the nasty surprises she had been dreading! But that stage seemed so far away, as if it had faded with time. If he was so reluctant to show her he loved her at all these days, what did that say?

It’s just a phase , she had told herself that morning, all relationships go through bad patches . So for the first time in months Ava had gone against her natural instinct and actually tried to be proactive about things. Convinced a bit of a spice was what would rock the status quo, she decided to channel Lauren’s effervescent confidence. Rob had been sitting up in bed reading the motoring section of the paper when she rolled over and kissed him, nuzzling right up against him, pushing her head through the crook of his arm. He had smiled, given a little sniff of a laugh and kissed her on the top of her head … then batted her away as if she were a naughty toddler. In that moment it was as if a piece of her had been rubbed away, as if there was slightly less of her.

‘Oh, come on! What’s motoring got that I haven’t?’

‘It doesn’t want to talk to me about the future – and it doesn’t have morning breath either,’ he told her coldly.

Ava withdrew at once and perched on the edge of the bed, increasingly vulnerable in her pajamas.

‘I see,’ she said quietly. ‘Thanks for that.’

He had smirked and muttered that it wasn’t personal.

What had been the loneliest time of the week when she was single turned out to be even lonelier now she was part of a couple. Shaking with despair, she pulled on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and an old T-shirt then went for an hour-long run through the crisp country lanes. As she closed the front door behind her at midday, Rob was there, showered, hair combed, tidying up the kitchen. He smelled of soap and self-righteousness, and greeted her with a tight smile – a masterpiece in passive aggression.

‘You know we need to leave in 15 minutes if we’re to have a hope of getting there for 1pm, don’t you?’

‘Yes, yes, I do! I’m just going to have a shower now,’ she replied, flustered.

‘Well, be quick – we wouldn’t want to be late …’ and when she headed up the stairs, ‘Hope you’ve got all that pent-up energy out now.’ As she turned into the bedroom, Ava could still hear Rob chuckling to himself.

The rest of the journey passed in silence but for the reassuring mutterings of Wogan, which Ava tried laughing at once or twice to make the point she was merely concentrating on the radio and not ignoring Rob. Finally they pulled into her parents’ driveway, just 10 minutes later than planned. As Rob’s car crunched on the gravel, Andrew stepped out of the kitchen door to greet them. He was wearing a pair of slacks and a classic ‘Dad’ jumper. There must be a thousand men like that up and down the country, thought Ava , and there isn’t a golf course in England that won’t have someone wearing that jumper somewhere on the premises . She waved back at her father and wound down the window on her side.