The Dream House (32 page)

‘Come on.’ Simon picked up their bags again and they trouped downstairs to reception, only to learn that, no, it wasn’t possible to change the room, they were full that night because of a golf tournament. So back upstairs they had to go. Simon wearily dropped their luggage onto the rack by the wardrobe.

‘I’ll make us some tea,’ Kate said, finding the kettle and the tray of cups and tea bags in a cabinet with the mini-bar under the television. While she boiled the water and dunked the tea bags, Simon sat on the bed armed with the remote control, flicking through the Ceefax pages looking for the sports results.

‘Surely there isn’t any football in July.’

‘Oh, a couple of friendlies. And there might be some athletics.. .’

Kate grabbed at the remote control, but Simon was too quick for her. ‘Simon, don’t be horrible, we haven’t come for this. Look, here’s your tea and then let’s go out. We could walk down to the village.’

‘I suppose,’ said Simon, pressing the standby button with a sigh. ‘What time’s dinner?’

‘I’ve booked a table for seven thirty. We could get a swim in first if there’s time.’

‘Fat chance – I’m knackered,’ said Simon, lying back and closing his eyes. Kate looked at him in alarm. What were they doing here, making small talk, misreading each other’s moods? Then Simon opened one eye. It twinkled at her merrily.

‘Oh, you,’ she said, and slapped his leg playfully. Then they sat side by side on the bed like an elderly couple, drinking their tea.

‘It’s so quiet without the kids, isn’t it?’ Kate said. ‘I keep expecting Sam to throw open the door with a bang, demanding a drink or help looking for something.’

‘Or that the phone’s going to go, with Gillingham demanding three impossible things before a nine o’clock briefing meeting.’ Simon laughed.

They were quiet again. Then Kate put down her cup.

‘Why did it happen, Simon? What’s gone wrong with us?’ Her voice was wobbly.

Simon drew his knees up and slowly began to take off his shoes.

‘I don’t know. I’ve been going over it and over it. It’s just we haven’t seen enough of one another, have we? You’ve been . . . losing focus, fading. I spend all my time living on adrenaline. The excitement is at work. It’s like a fix. And Meredith is . . . was . . . a part of it all.’

‘And I’m just on the edge.’ Kate felt drained of energy.

‘It’s different with you,’ Simon said earnestly. ‘You’re more restful. It’s like coming home when I’m with you.’

‘But you never come home, Simon, that’s the whole point. You’re supposed to be living in Suffolk, with me, with Sam and Daisy. But you’re not really, are you? You’re still mentally in London. You haven’t made the switch.’

‘No, I suppose not. But Kate,’ Simon turned and tried to put his arm round her, ‘I do still love you. And the kids. I want to sort this out. Really, I do. I’m not seeing her any more. I’m not.’ Again, his face looked strange, racked with stress, the effort of holding back tears. His skin had a grey pallor and his hair was lank. He was starting to look old, Kate thought.

‘You say that, but I can’t take it in yet, can I? I keep thinking of you with her . . . It’s not the same. It can’t ever be the same. How can I trust you now?’

‘I can see that. But we can build trust up again, Kate, we can. Believe me.’

‘I want to. But it hurts, Simon. It really really hurts.’

In the end there wasn’t time to walk down to the nearby village – they both fell asleep, exhausted by emotion. When Kate woke it was half past five. She turned to look at Simon, still deeply asleep beside her. His colour looked better now but he didn’t stir when she got up to go to the bathroom. She watched him for a few minutes, then wriggled her feet into her shoes and quietly let herself out of the room.

Her aim was to walk round the hotel grounds, but when she reached the front porch she saw it had started to rain quite heavily, so she turned and made her way to the bar area where she sat down and ordered some tea.

She looked about her. A couple who might have been in their mid-forties were sitting close together at a table in the corner to her left, finishing glasses of lager. The woman’s face, though not pretty, seemed lit by some inner joy. Her hair was beginning to show grey, but it was well cut. She made the best of herself, as Kate’s grandmother would have said. The man was lean, but his otherwise abundant hair was receding and his face was beginning to slacken. He sat thigh to thigh with her on the leather sofa. They were looking over some photographs, talking animatedly and laughing, comfortable with one another. When they stood up to go, the man put out a protective hand, then collected the cardigan she’d forgotten on her seat. They linked arms as they left the bar, she leaning slightly into him. Just an ordinary couple, thought Kate. No one would give them a second glance normally. Yet she envied the way they seemed so at home with one another, so utterly trusting, like two musical instruments playing in harmony.

Will that be Simon and me in ten years’ time? she thought and couldn’t see it, somehow. Their own piece of music had struck chaos, as if a petulant pianist was crashing his hands down on his instrument.

Her eyes teared up and she turned her attention to her tea. When she looked up once more it was to see a man standing at the entrance to the bar, hands in pockets, his shoulders slumped, an unhappy expression on his face as he gazed round, looking for someone. Goodness, she realized it was Simon! Suddenly he saw her, for he waved and smiled as he made his way amongst the tables towards her.

‘Should we ask for a different table?’

‘Where? There isn’t one.’

Dinner that evening was turning into a disaster. There was nothing wrong with the food itself – a marinaded salmon starter, followed by slivers of roast duck – but the presence of a birthday dinner (pink balloons printed with
30 today
attached to every chair) hotting up around a long table in the middle of the room, and a noisy ‘murder-mystery’ gathering at another on the far side (Kate had even come across the ‘body’ on the stairs when she slipped out to the toilet) meant it was hard for the couple to concentrate on what each other was saying. What is more, the golf tournament meant that the rest of the tables were quickly filled by groups of loud-voiced men in Pringle sweaters demonstrating just how Duncan or Jeremy missed that crucial hole-in-one at the thirteenth. This was hardly the ideal place to have a serious talk about a marriage.

But since tea in the bar, which had evolved into pre-dinner drinks, Simon’s conversation had become cryptic, as if he were working himself up to saying something that he didn’t quite have the courage to come out with yet.

For instance, while they were still in the bar Kate had brought up the subject of Fernley school again and asked Simon if he would have a look at the accounts when they got them; he merely said that perhaps it wouldn’t be their problem after all. Kate thought he meant that the school would close whatever line they took and was puzzled by his nonchalance. And when she broached the sensitive subject that maybe they had over-stayed their welcome at Paradise Cottage, he simply agreed with her and said, of course, they must do something about it.

That got Kate chattering away about looking at houses again, but she quickly detected that Simon was not interested. Instead, he was looking through his wallet as if he had to find something important in it. Worst of all was his reaction when she took a deep breath and embarked on what she felt was the crux of their difficulties – the fact that they spent so much of their time apart.

‘Debbie was telling me about friends who made a real effort to go away for weekends together. Maybe we should plan to do that more. Maybe Joyce wouldn’t mind looking after Daisy and Sam, and, now they’re older, they might be able to stay with friends sometimes, anyway.’

‘It’s a good idea, except I wouldn’t see the kids much then, would I?’ sighed Simon.

‘It would all be OK if you didn’t work in London, wouldn’t it, Simon? That’s what we’ve really got to do, isn’t it, to get you a job locally. Something less stressful. Then you’d be home every night.’ For the first time that evening, her husband was suddenly animated. He leaned forward in his chair and said quietly but deliberately, ‘Kate, you just don’t seem to get this, do you? I don’t
want
to work locally. I like my job. I want to go on doing it. I’m a success at it, finally. I’m about to get a promotion. I love the travel, and I like the other people I’m working with. It’s pretty cut-throat sometimes, but it’s exciting and I’m part of the team. I don’t want to get a poxy finance manager’s job in some firm in Ipswich that makes widgets or organizes crates going on boats. I’d hate it.’

Kate was stunned by the force of his emotion, but couldn’t stop herself from going on. ‘Well, there are surely accountancy firms in Norwich or Ipswich? Or you could re-train.’

‘I could, but I don’t want to. I’m sorry.’

They stared at one another across the table as if contemplating the damage his words had done. Simon looked calm – too calm, thought Kate.

‘Don’t you care,’ she whispered, ‘about us? Won’t you change anything?’

‘I . . .’ Simon seemed to lose courage. ‘Of course I care,’ he said savagely. He stood up and grabbed his jacket. ‘Come on,’ he snapped, ‘or we’ll miss our table.’ And he stalked off, not even looking back to see if she was following. Kate remembered the attentive husband she’d seen earlier in the bar and her spirits plunged still lower.

Later, in the dining room, as the laughter at the birthday table reached hysterical proportions, Kate and Simon both turned down dessert and ordered coffee.

Simon had been trying to explain again why his job was so important to him.

‘And we haven’t even got on to the subject of money. You don’t realize what a cut in salary I’d have to take if I did something down here.’

‘Yes, I do. But we’ve got lots of capital towards a house, and surely we could get together a big enough mortgage for the rest on a lower salary. You forget, I’m going to bring in some money at some point, too. When I find a job.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Simon absently. Then he took a deep breath and said, ‘Look, I’ve got something very serious to ask you about.’

A feeling of panic spread through her, but he read her thoughts at once.

‘No, no, it’s not about Meredith. It’s about where we live. Kate, it’s just not working for me here, out in the sticks. I know you’re going to think this is silly, and I suppose it is really, but I want us to move back to London.’

‘What?’ The adrenaline rushed through to her fingertips like an electric shock. ‘Are you crazy?’

A great baying of laughter from the birthday party drowned his next words.
Exactly, it’s ridiculous!
cried a voice in Kate’s head as she tried to cope with the enormity of Simon’s request.

He tried again. ‘Kate. I’m just not as at home here as I thought I would be. I know you’ll say I haven’t really tried, but I suppose I just haven’t wanted to try.’

‘No, you haven’t, you haven’t tried’, she cried. ‘How long have you felt this? Why couldn’t you tell me before now?’

‘I suppose I haven’t really recognized it until the last couple of months. It was partly going round all those houses. You were so picky, and then I began to realize that I wouldn’t feel at home in them either, in any of them. I just couldn’t see myself out in the country, wearing cords and a tweed jacket, chatting to the neighbours about crop spraying, having to drive to get a newspaper – to get anywhere and to see anyone. Becoming provincial and growing older. It would feel like giving up on life.’

‘But it isn’t like that!’ Kate protested. ‘Wait until you start making friends and having things to do round here. You would start to care.’

‘The difference between us, Kate, is that I don’t want to start to care. I’m sorry. We’ve spent so many holidays in the area and I guess I saw it all through rose-tinted spectacles. I just don’t want to be here all the time. I miss London. I never thought, brought up in the country as I was, that I would be like that. But I always wanted to get away. I’ve become a city person.

‘And there’s something else,’ he went on. ‘You’ve got to understand. Kate. It’s as if I’m living two lives at the moment. I’ve thought about it, and I’m sure that’s why everything has gone wrong for us. When I’m at the office, all I can think about is work, the people there, the excitement of the deals, the projects I’m involved in. I don’t think about home and you and the children. We need to redress the balance.’

Their coffee sat untouched, growing cold.

‘I can see all that,’ Kate burst out. ‘But why is it so different from when we lived in Fulham?’

‘Work and family all felt . . . more integrated when we were in London. It was a shorter journey from the office to home and I felt that with you working as well, we were like a team, that you were going through the same sort of problems as I was, holding it all together. Now, I’m only with you at weekends, aren’t I? And it feels like I’m slaving away while you’re having a jolly time at home all week with the children.’

‘You know it’s not like that,’ Kate snapped.

‘But that’s how it
feels
– and I want it back the way it was. Please understand.’

‘But I don’t want to go back,’ she almost shouted. ‘I don’t want it to be as it was – that’s why we moved. And you can’t ask the children to move again, it wouldn’t be fair. And, anyway, we wouldn’t be able to afford a nice house in a reasonable part of London any more. Simon, I like it here. I’ve grown into it. I’d miss the people now – Debbie and Agnes and Dan –
and
your mum. I’ve stopped thinking about London so much. It still feels strange visiting, but I’ve been able to put it all firmly in the past.’

‘Don’t you still miss Liz and Sarah and Claire?’ Simon demanded.

‘Of course I do, but we manage to see each other. We’re still friends. And I don’t want to work the same hours I used to, Simon, you know that. Surely I’d have to, to help pay for everything, and we’d be back where we started.’

There was silence between them, Kate shoving crumbs around on the tablecloth with small angry movements. On a nearby table a golfer with a loud Midlands voice was reaching the end of some shaggy dog story. Kate shot him such a look that he faltered for a moment and lowered his voice.