The Move

‘Yeah, well,’ he said smugly, ‘it was a no brainer really.’

I hooked my thumb over the waistband of his pyjama bottoms, and pretended not to notice him tense up. He turned and nuzzled my shoulder and, taking this as permission, I threaded my fingertips after my thumb. It felt like vertigo now, my desire – I could barely breathe. With a more or less convincing growl of lust, Nick made a lazy grab for my breast and I gasped with surprise and then, as his touch became more sensual, with gratitude. Pride left me now, and need took over. I manoeuvred myself in front of him, spread my palms wide across the windowsill and tilted my buttocks up and back interrogatively, as if posing for the world’s least imaginative pornographer.

‘All right then,’ he muttered, his voice thick, at last, with lust.

I didn’t look round, but waited for the first frisson of pleasure as his hands shucked my nightdress up over my hips, then the unbearable hiatus as he readied himself, the anticipation seeming to stretch out until the precise moment when fear that he would do this thing was perfectly balanced against dread that he might not. And then he was in me and I could no longer look at the view, because he had one hand on the crown of my head, pushing it down, and the other on my waist, for purchase, and all the disorientation and humiliation of the past was briefly, joyfully obliterated in the disorientation and humiliation of the present. My forehead juddered against the glass and he withdrew, flopping down on the bed with a faint harrumph of satisfaction. I stayed standing – limbs a-tremble, skin aflame, everything above the waist alive and energized, everything below numb and remote, yet still retaining the memory of pleasure, as an amputated limb retains the memory of an itch.

I leaned my forearms on the windowsill and took in, once again, the view beyond. It had a calming, almost soporific effect – the blueness of the blue, the greenness of the green, the emptiness of the landscape. Except it wasn’t quite empty, I noticed now.

‘Hey. There’s someone on our hill!’

Nick peered after my accusing finger.

‘It’s not our hill,’ he said, laughing. ‘It’s a local beauty spot. People go up there all the time. I shouldn’t think he copped much of an eyeful, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

I squirmed. I don’t know what I’d thought – certainly not that we owned it, but perhaps that we might have privileged access. A foolish idea, come to think of it, so I tried to make a joke of it, tapping on the window and calling out in my best cut-glass accent, ‘I say, you there! Get orf our land!’

By coincidence, the hiker chose that moment to start heading down. Nick was delighted.

‘There you go. Breeding will out. You’re a natural. Rounding up the peasants, keeping down the foxes. I told you you’d take to country living.’

Foxes. Oh God. I felt again the slither of tyre on gravel, the dull thud, the dread and minutes later, as my hand skimmed the moulded plastic of the bumper, the certainty of what I had done. I thought of the poor beast’s stiffening carcass decaying somewhere under a hedge. I glanced down at my fingers, half expecting to see blood on them.

A two-tone chime sounded downstairs, startling me. I stared at Nick and for a moment he stared back, equally flummoxed. Then his face cleared.

‘It’s the door. You’ll have to go.’ He nodded apologetically towards his still semi-erect penis.

‘Oh God!’ I grabbed my dressing gown, wiping my soiled fingers on a screwed-up tissue in the pocket as I hurried downstairs, desperately hoping it wasn’t a neighbour or anyone on whom I needed to make a good impression.

I needn’t have worried. A courier was peering impatiently through the mullioned windows of the front door. I opened it with an apologetic smile and he thrust a large square box into my arms and handed me an electronic pad to sign, almost taking my eye out with the stylus in his haste to get away. The package was light but bulky and addressed to Nick. I tried not to speculate. Let him have a life. Let him take delivery of a parcel without it being pawed and scrutinized by his mistrustful wife. But then I noticed the company logo.

I raced back up to the bedroom, and did a silly little jig.

‘I know what this i-is! It’s my thermocouple, isn’t it?’

‘Bloody hell!’ Nick muttered bitterly. ‘Three weeks they’ve had to deliver this and they pick the day after you arrive.’

‘I’d have thought that was when you’d want it to come…’

‘Well no, I was planning on having things ready for you, to surprise you.’

‘The kiln, you mean?’

‘Better than that. Come on, I might as well show you now.’

‘Show me what? What are you up to?’

He picked up the package in one hand and yanked me up off the bed with the other.

‘Where are we going?’

He galloped me down the stairs, only letting go of my hand when we reached the kitchen, so he could unlock the back door. He was still wearing pyjama bottoms and his feet were bare but he strode up the garden, past the pond and the vegetable patch – a man on a mission.

‘Nick!’ I hurried after him, half anxious, half excited. ‘What’s the big—’

But he had disappeared, squeezing through a gap in the yew hedge I hadn’t even known was there. With some trepidation I followed him and found myself in a hidden dell, surrounded on all sides by shrubbery. In one corner loomed what at first glance looked like a tree house: a timber structure with a shallow-pitched roof, all clean lines and Scandinavian simplicity. Three floor-to-ceiling windows gave onto a narrow veranda, which was raised on stilts to clear the steeply sloping ground in front, while the back nestled into a bower of mature shrubs. Timber steps led up from the scrubby lawn to a glass-panelled side door. It was utilitarian without being cold, rustic without being hokey. I knew Nick hadn’t built it himself – he could barely put up a shelf – and I doubted he had even had much of a hand in designing it, but he had gone out of his way to think about what I would like and found someone to make it, and that, well… that was a kind of miracle.

Speechless, grinning, I shook my head as I followed him up the steps and through the door, which slid open with a satisfying rumble. It was hot inside. Dust motes swirled in the light. There was a smell of timber and fresh paint and the sound of a bluebottle flinging itself stupidly against the glass.

‘So yeah, this is it,’ said Nick, with quiet pride. ‘Your studio.’

I stood beside him surveying the view down the garden and beyond to the valley, and slipped my hand into his.

‘You didn’t need to do this.’

‘I wanted to.’

‘Trying to get rid of me so you can have the house to yourself?’

There was a pause. The temperature in the room seemed to drop a degree or two. I’d meant it as a joke, but it was too soon; too near the knuckle.

‘That’s right,’ he said, stretching his lips into a grimace.

‘I’m kidding. I know why you did it and I’m touched, honestly I am. Nick, I absolutely love it.’

‘It’s the other view,’ he said briskly. ‘The one you don’t get from the bedroom. Or from the house at all, come to that. It faces south-east, so it gets the sun nearly all day.’

I glanced around the room and nodded my approval. He seemed to have thought of everything – my wheel and kiln were there of course; also a wedging table, a glazing area, a sink, metal shelves for work in progress. Only…

He saw the brief frown cloud my features.

‘What?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘What have I got wrong?’ he asked wearily. ‘I thought I’d got it all covered. If you knew what I spent to get the floor reinforced for that beast over there…’

He nodded towards my kiln, cold and inert without its thermocouple, but soon to be the beating heart of the enterprise.

‘I love it. Honestly, there isn’t a single thing I’d change.’

‘Oh, but there is.’

‘It’s trivial,’ I shook my head, ‘I’m sure there’s a solution.’

‘A solution to what?’ he smiled through his exasperation.

I could have kicked myself. I had done it again. He had spent a fortune, but more importantly, he had invested his time, taken advice, thought through my methods – thought of me. And I had rubbished it with a moment’s tactlessness.

‘It’s just…’ I pulled a rueful face, ‘… Well… it’s lovely that it’s a sun trap and I love all the light. Only, with the clay – it can dry out so easily. I could have done with a damp room or at least a bit of shade, or cool somehow. I’m sure we can think of something though…’

He walked over to the kiln and stood with his back to me, drumming his fingers on its surface. One two three four, one two three four. I hovered nearby, mortified.

‘I’m sorry, Nick.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘No, I’ve been… I’m such a…’

‘I just wanted to get it right. To make it right.’ His voice was tight.

‘You have… you are. Please, Nick, stop beating yourself up. It’s time to stop now.’

I went over and laid my cheek against his bare back. He didn’t move. His skin was cool and clammy. I wrapped my arms around him and held on, trying to warm him up.

3

‘Funky, or elegant? What do you reckon?’

I held up an Ikat print tunic in one hand and a grey linen dress in the other. Jude reclined further on the bed, the better to appraise both outfits from a suitable distance.

‘I’d go with that,’ she said, leaning forward and swatting the dress, ‘the other one looks a bit “eccentric potter”.’

‘Oh, cheers, Jude…’

‘No it’s nice, and everything, it’s just… I’m not being funny, Kaz, you’ve got to be careful living in a place like this.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well, we had a little nose round the town on our way here – it’s very cute, but…’

I jutted my chin, defensively.

‘… Also, let’s face it, a bit Middle Earth.’

‘It isn’t actually,’ I said hotly. ‘That’s just the touristy bit. There’s quite a decent commercial gallery that you wouldn’t have seen because it’s tucked away. And there’s a craft beer place and an art trail twice a…’

‘Don’t take it so personally,’ interrupted Jude, laughing, ‘it’s just where you live. It doesn’t define you.’

I looked at Jude in her Agnès b. shirt and her expensive haircut and felt a faint twinge of… what? Not dislike, surely? One could not dislike one’s best friend, who has stuck by one through thick and thin, particularly thin. Irritation, then. Yes, Jude could be irritating. Dave too. They had made fun of the Aga, as I knew they would. Dave had started humming the theme tune to The Archers and talking about milk quotas in a funny accent. But then the four of us had gone on to enjoy an evening of drunken camaraderie. Dave had brought coke ‘for old time’s sake’ and everyone had done a line except me. I was tactfully discouraged. There was a lot of repartee about what Dave insisted on calling ‘the Auld Neighbourhood’, even though he’s not Irish and it was in Hackney. Mutual friends were shot down in flames for their hypocrisies and pretensions. I found myself wondering what kind of jokes Dave and Jude made about us behind our backs, although to be fair, we had not really been joke material of late. Not unless you had a very sick sense of humour, anyway. It was a fun evening all the same and for a couple of hours, in the glow of the fire and the embrace of the wine, and to the strains of a mellow soundtrack provided by Nick’s music app that told you if you liked that, you might also like this, I started to see how I might become a person again, a friend, a wife even.

But that had been last night and this was tonight and the grey linen dress looked try-hard with the wedge heels that Jude had suggested, yet frumpy when dressed down with Converse, so I had abandoned it in favour of a drapey sweater and jeans. It had been a warm day and the sky was still blue, but a bank of pinky-grey clouds was scudding up the valley on a brisk evening breeze. The fairy lights that Nick had rigged in the trees around my new studio were swinging alarmingly, and smoke was swirling from the barbecue like a malevolent genie released from its lamp.

Jude and I stood on the grass, arms hugging our bodies and sipping our wine, while further down the garden Nick was greeting some early arrivals, his tone jovial and not a little strained.

‘This reminds me of my sixth birthday party,’ I muttered in Jude’s ear. ‘My mum invited the whole class and I hid in my bedroom and refused to come down.’

‘Let’s not talk to them,’ Jude said. ‘Let’s just get wasted and dance on the patio.’

I gave her an anxious glance.

‘Relax,’ Jude patted me on the shoulder, ‘I’m kidding.’

Already, Nick was shepherding an elderly couple up the garden path towards us: the man, white-haired and slightly stooped, in a houndstooth jacket and slacks; the woman ruddy-faced and beady in a polyester two-piece.

‘Darling,’ Nick said (he never called me darling), ‘these are our next-door-but-one neighbours, Jean and Gordon from Prospect Cottage. Jean, Gordon; meet my wife Karen and our very good friend Jude.’

I shook Jean’s papery hand, then Gordon’s surprisingly soft one.

‘Jew, was it?’ bellowed Gordon, his face contorted with what I hoped was curiosity, but feared might be something worse.

‘Jude,’ said Jude, with a beaming smile, ‘short for Judith.’

‘Ah…’ said Gordon, with a hint of relief.

‘But I am Jewish, as it happens,’ said Jude, ‘on my mother’s side anyway, which is how it works. All that wandering in the desert. I suppose they couldn’t be sure who the father was, so they made it matrilineal.’

‘I see,’ said Gordon, with a faint look of distaste.

‘Anyway,’ Jude said breezily, ‘I’m about to get a top-up. Can I bring you something to drink…?’

‘A light ale for me and Jean’ll have a tomato juice,’ Gordon said.

Perhaps Jean would like a Mai Tai, I felt like saying; perhaps she’s in the mood for a Sex on the Beach. I caught Jude’s eye as she headed off towards the makeshift patio bar.

‘Grab me another beer will you, Jude?’ Nick called after her. ‘On second thoughts, you won’t have enough hands, I’ll come with you.’

‘Nick…’ I protested, but they had gone and I was marooned, clutching my glass, as tongue-tied and awkward as if the new guests were some glamour couple from Islington, not our septuagenarian neighbours from two doors up.

I turned back to them with my best hostess’s smile. ‘Have you… lived here long?’

Jean turned deferentially to Gordon.

‘How long is it, dear?’

Gordon raised his eyes heavenwards.

‘Nineteen sixty-seven we moved in,’ he muttered as if this were a topic of conversation he was tired of rehashing.

‘Nineteen sixty-seven, that’s right,’ Jean nodded fondly, ‘because we got a television and that lady won the song contest in her bare feet.’

Gordon muttered to himself and drifted off to weigh up the vegetable patch.

‘Goodness, that’s a long time!’ I said, with a forced smile.

Fifty years in this one spot. Fifty years married to Gordon. I felt a gloom descending and I wasn’t sure if it was on Jean’s behalf or my own. Would I find myself reminiscing at some future date on my own half century spent in this obscure little corner? The hedges growing higher every season, the trees growing taller, the wonky signpost finally falling off so that not even Jude would be able to find me?

‘We moved in with Gordon’s mother, after his father passed away.’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘And by the time she passed on I was in the family way, so it made sense to stay in the house.’

‘How lovely!’ I said, thinking the opposite. ‘It must be so nice to have that sense of continuity. Do your children still live nearby?’

‘Oh no, dear, Peter’s in Dubai and…’ she lowered her voice, ‘… Gordon doesn’t see eye to eye with our daughter, so we don’t see her any more…’ her tone was wistful ‘… or the grandchildren.’

‘Oh, what a shame,’ I said with a sympathetic pout, ‘it’s such a lovely spot for little ones too.’

Who was I kidding? Prospect Cottage was every estate agent’s nightmare – a blight on an otherwise desirable hamlet in which the average property prices had doubled in a decade. Its mellow stone frontage had been pebble-dashed over and the portion of its front garden not turned into hard-standing for the couple’s Honda Civic, was dominated by a vast Leylandii, whose one benefit was that it obscured a fuller view of the ugly uPVC porch which Jean and Gordon had filled with gloomy, Triffid-like houseplants. Neglect, the consequence of its owners’ advancing years, had been the property’s only saving grace, allowing its hedges to grow tall and shaggy, ivy to rampage up to its sagging eaves and moss to spawn on wall and outbuilding alike, softening its ugly profile into an irregular dark green carbuncle.

‘… They know who their granny is though,’ Jean continued now, the chirpy optimism in her tone more heartbreaking by far than despair, ‘I never forget their birthdays. Send ’em a postal order every year, on the dot.’

A postal order, I mused, was that still a thing?

‘That’s nice,’ I said doubtfully.

Jean gave me a wistful smile but as we both glanced across to where Gordon was still glowering at the kale, it died on her lips, and I looked away embarrassed. Over her shoulder I could see a young couple making their way down the lane, he carrying a bottle of champagne, she a Kilner jar trimmed with gingham. Behind them trailed two little girls in flouncy dresses and Alice bands, each clutching a small bunch of garden flowers. I squeezed Jean’s arm by way of ‘excuse me’ and her eyes met mine in mute appeal, as if there was more she had wanted to say to me.

‘Douglas Gaines,’ said the newcomer, pumping my hand warmly and handing me the bottle. ‘And this is my wife Imogen.’

She was a woman for whom the term pretty might have been coined: snub-nosed, blue-eyed, smooth-haired, with a mouth neither too big nor too small. She wore a fitted cotton dress and an angora cardigan over her freckled shoulders.

‘Courgette chutney,’ she said, thrusting the Kilner jar at me. ‘Last year’s, I’m afraid, but it keeps for ever.’

I juggled the champagne, the Kilner jar and my half-empty glass before finding a precarious equilibrium.

‘Thank you so much.’

Douglas ushered the two girls forward.

‘And these two monkeys are Honour and Grace. Say “hello”, girls.’

‘Hello,’ they chimed, thrusting their bunches of wilting flowers at me.

‘Oh! Sweet.’

I made an awkward grab for one of the posies and the jar of chutney slipped from under my arm and smashed on the path.

The faint babble of conversation stopped and there was a brief silence, before someone – it must have been Dave – filled it with ironic applause.

Slowly, I took in the tableau of horror – the green gloop on the path, studded with shards of inch-thick glass; the spatter of chutney up the legs, and yes, on the dresses of Honour and Grace; the expressions of polite dismay on the faces of their parents.

‘God! Oh God. I am so sorry. I’m such a…’

Grace (or was it Honour?) started to cry while her braver sister cast a silent malevolent spell on me. Whatever she was summoning – pustules, incontinence, lameness, it couldn’t have been worse than the agony of standing there for what felt like decades, apologizing on a loop, while the Gaineses’ smiles grew ever more strained.

‘You’ve met the wife, then?’ Nick appeared from nowhere, clapping a matey hand on each of their shoulders, and looking from Douglas to Imogen and back again with an expression of such pop-eyed satirical enthusiasm that they had no choice but to laugh. Even I managed to crack a smile – my roguish husband, whose insults were taken for compliments, whose sins masqueraded as misdemeanours – always on hand with a ready quip.

‘She made it herself,’ I murmured, woefully, in Nick’s ear. He bent down to appraise the spilled chutney before sticking his finger in an uncontaminated bit and licking it ostentatiously.

He grimaced.

‘Lucky escape if you ask me!’

There was a moment of silence while the assembled guests digested the audacity of his remark, then Imogen turned on him an expression of scandalized delight and batted his sleeve and Douglas emitted a complicit snort. Jude handed me a dustpan and brush and ushered the little girls towards the kitchen. I heard her promising them Coke, crisps and stain removal, in that order. Day officially saved.

More people came. A friendly couple called Ray and Min who ran the B&B and overhauled vintage motorbikes in their spare time, followed by a plump Scottish woman, Cath, mannish of dress, unfussy of demeanour. She explained which house she lived in and I must have looked surprised. It was the picture-perfect cottage with roses round the door, which I had imagined might belong to some apple-cheeked matron and Nick had insisted was more likely a lucrative holiday let. Cath was a garden designer, she told me, and whilst her own garden reflected her old-fashioned preference for lupin and hollyhock, she had paid for it by designing minimalist gardens for city types who didn’t give a shit about plants but cared very much that she’d won two silver gilts at Chelsea. I smiled at that.

Things were getting almost buzzy now. The local farmer dropped in, accepted a glass of wine, offered us a discount on his organic beef and asked us to like his Facebook page before heading off to move the yearlings to their summer pasture. Then came an interesting pair, young and arty-looking with foreign accents and I got quite excited until Min took me to one side and explained, in embarrassed tones, that they were guests at the B&B, who hadn’t quite grasped the protocol, and thought it was open house. I didn’t mind. They bulked out the numbers and brought down the average age of the guests by a good couple of years. I even had a slightly stilted discussion with the woman about the merits of the Swedish education system, only to be told later by Jude that they were Dutch.

As twilight fell, a couple of rackety youths looked in, who seemed to know everyone, but only hung around long enough to eat a burger apiece and down a couple of beers, before heading up the lane towards the local pub. Nick muttered ‘freeloaders’ under his breath, but I didn’t mind – I liked their swagger and their air of entitlement and the way they came and went, like the weather. I could almost fool myself they were mates of Ethan’s – that we were a family again.

It was only when the four of us were clearing up at the end, trekking back and forth from garden to kitchen with glasses dangling between our fingertips, making cheery remarks as we passed each other on the path, that it occurred to me that Jean and Gordon must have left without saying goodbye.

4

I slept in the next morning. I could hear the murmur of voices downstairs, the chinking of cups and smell bacon cooking. For a while I pretended to myself that I was still asleep. I couldn’t face it. The laughter, the chitchat, the morning-after discussions, during which my progress would be monitored, my rehabilitation assessed and scored. But Jude and Dave were leaving today, and I knew that if I let them go without saying goodbye, I’d only regret it. I struggled into my dressing gown, ran my fingers through my hair, glanced into the mirror to reassure myself I still had a reflection, and then made my way along the landing, slowing as their voices came within earshot. I could tell from their hushed, confidential tones that they were talking about me. I stopped, one hand on the banister, and listened.

‘… I just think you have to be so careful,’ Jude’s voice – low and serious, ‘… It might be therapeutic, but it might be too soon…’

‘Yes, I haven’t forgotten, thank you,’ Nick interrupted tersely, ‘and of course I’m not going to push her. I’m not an idiot. Only the psych said, career aside, it could be a good outlet… a safe space…’