Maddie Please - The Summer of Second Chances - The laugh-out-loud romantic comedy

I thought about looking through the filing cabinet and went to open the top drawer, but it was locked and there was no key. I wondered why and I began to feel the first shivers of unease. He was hiding something from me; I knew he was. But why? He always told me everything. Confided in me when he was worried about something, came home to share his successes with me first.

The front door banged and I gave a guilty start. Ian was back. I went out into the hallway to see him shrugging off his coat.

‘What are you doing in my study?’ he said. ‘You know I don’t like anyone interfering with my stuff. Poking about.’

I bit down my temper. ‘I’m not poking about.’ I wished I had thought to bring a duster and some polish with me as cover. ‘I do live here, you know. I was just tidying up. I opened the window, it was hot and stuffy in there.’

He went into the study and looked around as though he might have been burgled. He took the Post-it note from the computer screen, screwed it up and threw it into the wastebasket. Then he closed the window and turned to me.

‘Lunch?’ he said. ‘I’m starving.’

He hurried off to the kitchen and I’m afraid I stuck my tongue out at his retreating back. We sat down at the kitchen table and I passed him a pottery bowl filled with soup.

‘Nice,’ he said after a few mouthfuls. He reached for some pitta bread and dunked it into the hummus.

‘Are you OK?’ I said.

Ian looked up, surprised, ‘Of course,’ he said.

He carried on eating, his spoon scraping against the bottom of the bowl, setting my teeth on edge. I winced.

‘So have you thought any more about the food for the party?’ he said.

‘No, not really, I rather thought you had gone off the whole thing.’

‘Not at all, I’m looking forward to it,’ he said, and shook his head. ‘You do have some funny ideas.’

I was confused. An hour ago he had stormed out, berating me for my profligacy, now he was behaving as though nothing had happened.

‘I saw Steve when I was out; you know, bald Steve from the granite place. I bumped into him on the industrial estate. I’ve asked him to our party. I think he might come, although he did mention something about having visitors. You knew he and his wife had split up, didn’t you? I think the young brunette he was with might have something to do with it. Very naughty-looking little thing.’ Ian chuckled.

I couldn’t let it drop. ‘So why did you go off like the hounds of hell were after you an hour ago?’

‘Oh nothing at all, just a misunderstanding,’ Ian said, scooping up the hummus with a sweep of the last pitta, ‘all sorted out now.’

I got up to put some more in the toaster. ‘You’re sure?’

Ian sighed and smiled up at me. He put an arm around my waist and pulled me in against him. ‘You’re such a worrier, Lottie. Everything is fine. So, any plans for this afternoon?’

‘No, not really; I suppose I should get the ironing done,’ I said without any enthusiasm.

‘Well I know what I’m going to do, I’m going to put a new battery in that darned clock.’ He finished his soup and dropped the spoon into the bowl with a clatter. ‘I’ve been meaning to do it. Didn’t you realise it’s been stuck at eight thirty for weeks?’

‘Yes, of course I did. I asked you to sort it out ages ago. I can’t reach it.’

‘I don’t remember that. Anyway, there’s a tall man here now, little lady, I’ll fix it.’

I stood up and began to clear the table while he whistled ‘Edelweiss’ and rummaged in the kitchen drawer for a new battery.

Everything seemed fine again. His mood swings were becoming very hard to predict. In the following weeks, of course, it would become all too obvious what the matter was.

My brief foray into Bramford St Michael’s village shop that afternoon had sadly not uncovered a little known haven of locally produced delights, but a dingy place with half empty shelves and a freezer that needed defrosting. I liberated three packets of savoury curried rice, a sliced loaf reduced to 25p, some cheese slices, long-life milk, and an exhausted-looking Cornish pasty. Presiding over it all was an elderly woman with wild, white hair who watched me warily as though I was going to pull out a shotgun. She counted out my change with slow fingers and grave suspicion in her face.

‘I’m so pleased you’re still open,’ I said rather gushingly, wondering if I could loosen her up a bit with my devastating charm, ‘isn’t this a lovely village. So pretty.’

‘…and one makes five and five is ten,’ she said, not to be swayed from her task.

‘Well, I’ll see you again soon, I’m sure,’ I said with another bright smile.

‘Yes, mebbe we will,’ she said in a tone that suggested she’d heard that before.

The village straggled along the river valley, beginning with some modern-looking houses where a few children were leaping about on a trampoline in the garden, and then some older cob cottages, their thatch green with moss. There was a pub, The Agricultural Arms, still with a string of fairy lights outside, left over from Christmas. Beyond that was the church; everything but the tower hidden behind some dense rhododendron bushes.

I drove back up the hill to Holly Cottage feeling even more isolated. Below me the streetlights in the village began to come on and I sat in the car for a few minutes and watched lights appearing in the cottages below me. I went indoors, shivering a bit with the cold and the unfamiliar solitude.

I suddenly remembered that awful night. Ian nursing a large whiskey under the pool of light cast by the standard lamp in our sitting room. He had looked up at me with mournful eyes.

‘ What ?’

Oh God. That was the moment. If only he had said something else.

If he had apologised or cried or begged me to forgive him, things might have been different. If he had come up with some pathetic excuse, told me he had been a fool. If he had taken me in his arms and told me that he loved me. That he would never again hurt me.

I had waited for a moment, willing him to say something else, something kind. The seconds ticked past and he didn’t say anything. The little instant was gone. My temper flared again.

‘What. Is that all you can say? What ?’

‘Well what am I supposed to say? With everyone looking at me as though…as though…’

‘As though you’re a lying, deceitful bastard? Well should that be a surprise to you? Perhaps it’s because you are a lying deceitful bastard!’

‘Oh don’t start, Lottie,’ he’d said wearily. ‘I’m not in the mood just at the moment.’

‘Well nor am I, funnily enough!’

‘Look, we’re not even married, are we? I asked you to marry me years ago and you didn’t want to.’

‘And you knew perfectly well why that was! And what the hell has that got to do with it? Just because we’re not married? What about our commitment to each other? What about bloody fucking common decency?’

I went into the dingy little kitchen of Holly Cottage and flicked on the kettle. There was no point going over it again and again. It wouldn’t change things. I had to move on now, look to the future, do the job Jess had given me; repay her friendship in the best way I could.

I hoovered up the pasty straight from the wrapper, reasoning it would decrease the washing up and also the possibility of contamination in the mould- and grime-ridden kitchen. Wandering around, licking the slick of grease from my teeth, I investigated the cupboards, relieved to see that although they were dirty they were good quality and could soon be revived by some attention from me and a soapy cloth.