How Was It For You?

by Carmen Reid

  His smile was restrained and there was something about the curt nod he gave her that stopped her from calling out ‘Good morning.’

  She smiled back just as a petite dark-haired woman came up to his table with a cup of coffee and a plate of bread. She set them down before him and when he scowled and spoke to her, she took the plate of bread away again. It was obvious she wasn’t one of the hotel waitresses. The woman was definitely his wife.

  Xavier’s wife came back with a plate of croissants this time and a glass of orange juice. He let her put these in front of him and began to eat as she went back to the buffet to get her own food.

  When his wife returned again, she smiled and fussed over Xavier in such a babying way, Pamela thought she was about to tuck the napkin under his chin and spoon the food into him. It didn’t seem to be helping. Xavier snapped grumpily at her and finally pulled the paper up in front of him as she was in mid-sentence.

  Charming, Pamela thought. Not at all the suave, sophisticated gentleman she thought she had been with two nights ago. But it was strangely thrilling that this was a man whose mouth had been between her legs, yet now he was a total stranger to her. A man whose surname she didn’t even remember, whose home address and telephone number she didn’t know and never would.

  She drained the last of the coffee from her cup, stood up and walked slowly, pointedly past their table, quite enjoying the sight of Xavier wrapping the paper just about round his head, clearly terrified she might be about to speak to him.

  She was tempted to ruffle his hair as she walked past, but that would hardly be fair on his wife, who looked like a nice girl, who probably deserved much better than him, but who should have made a scene, got tough, got stroppy and threatened to walk out the very first time Xavier had expected her to wait on him like this.

  It occurred to Pamela that it was probably a good idea to know how a man treats his wife before you cheat with him.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘STOP THROWING THE doll about, just stop it! Now! It’s going to land on Manda’s head!’ Rosie glared in turn at her five- and seven-year-old sons, strapped into the back seat of the car, big cheeky smirks across their faces while their baby sister giggled wildly between them.

  ‘Just try to be quiet for five seconds!’ she shouted.‘Or my head is going to explode!’ All three children shrieked with laughter at this, so with a resigned sigh she faced forwards again and tried to remember what the hell she was talking to her husband about.

  ‘What was I saying?’ she asked in exasperation.

  ‘Erm . . .’ He glanced at her from the wheel.

  That was it. That really was it. He didn’t bloody remember either. Absolutely no-one listened to a single thing she said. Ever. She was about to tell him what she thought of this when his mobile rang. Saved by the bloody bell.

  She folded her arms tightly across her chest and huffed. She wasn’t going to turn round and tell the boys yet again to shut up because Daddy was on the phone. Let him bloody well deal with it.

  ‘OK . . . right . . . no problem,’ he was saying, glancing into the rearview mirror in annoyance. Then, abruptly, he braked hard, thudded the Isuzu up onto the grassy verge and got out, slamming the door shut, so he could carry on his conversation in peace.

  Rosie, deciding that she didn’t want to get involved with the fourth round of dolly catch kicking off in the back seat, unbuckled her belt, opened the door and got out as well. When she closed the heavy black door behind her, the noise from the children stopped completely. Like magic.

  She looked around and soaked up the moment of quiet. It was the first day of May to have real heat to it and she felt the warm touch of sun on her face and forearms. They had come to a stop halfway up one of the few gentle hills in the area and luscious green farmland rolled away into the distance, punctuated with bursts of trees and the odd farmhouse, crisscrossed with hedges and fences.

  Rosie had lived in this corner of Norfolk all her life, but never tired of the views, the greenness, the open spaces and the pale glimmer where sky met sea in the distance. Just a moment or two of taking it in, noticing how well the crops were coming on this year and she felt restored. She heard Lachlan say goodbye, fold up his phone, and she turned to look at him over the high bonnet of the 4 x 4.

  ‘Hello there,’ she said with a smile. Looking at him in the sunshine, really looking, for the first time in days.

  ‘Hello,’ he answered back, their eyes meeting.

  ‘Nice to see you,’ she said. And it was a pleasure, her big, bull-necked, broad-shouldered hunk of husband. Still so Aussie despite all his years here, dark blond hair in a stumpy ponytail, Cuban-heeled work boots.

  ‘Nice to hear you!’ he replied, looking at her from beneath tanned brows scrunched together against the sun.

  ‘The third one was your idea too, remember.’

  ‘Yeah, I remember,’ and there was that particularly teasing smile on his face which could still give her a thrill. She smiled her own particular smile back.‘And don’t even think about giving me that look!’ he warned.

  ‘Why not?!’

  ‘Because, before I know it, we’ll have four!’

  ‘Oh good God! No way! Never! You’d have to drug me.’

  She tried to remember when they’d last made love. Was it last month? The month before that? February? Lachlan’s birthday? Oh God, surely not? And she still hadn’t gone to have her postnatal diaphragm re-fit and Manda was nearly two!

  ‘I love you, really,’ she said. As if that made up for it. She knew perfectly well their relationship was currently completely overdrawn. If there was a love bank they’d be thousands of pounds beyond even the agreed early parenthood overdraft limit. They would have to try and do something about this, try and pay some tiny little bit of attention to each other, despite their three small children and the busy, busy farm.

  ‘Can we go out?’ he asked, maybe thinking the same sort of thing.‘A babysitter? We must know someone who could come and babysit.’

  In her mind Rosie ran through the likely suspects. Mr and Mrs Portillo, the retired couple who lived on one of the farm’s cottages, and quite frankly didn’t like to be asked, although they sometimes grudgingly agreed, so long as the children were in bed and it wasn’t going to be a late night. Or Tony, Lachlan’s thirty-something psychopathic workman who also lived nearby. No, only in emergencies, although the boys loved him. There was Mrs Birbeck’s daughter in town . . . but she would need a lift in and back home again . . .

  ‘Why don’t you sort it out?’ she asked her husband because really, she couldn’t accept one tiny more single thing to do. Or crack, that was going to be it. The camel’s back would be well and truly buggered. Beyond anything a physio, an osteopath, or even a cranial-sacral osteopath (or was it cranial-whatsit-sacropath?) could do for it.

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  She wondered in which decade she would hear back from him on that.

  ‘We’d better go back in,’ she said, nodding in the direction of the children.

  ‘Once more unto the breach, commander,’ he joked. But it didn’t feel like so much of a joke when they opened the doors and found Willy and Pete fighting furiously over the dolly, pulling frantically at either end of it, while Manda screamed at full volume at the horrible tug-of-war taking place across her.

  When some sort of calm was restored, with the aid of the squashed packet of biscuits Rosie dug out from the bottom of her sack of a handbag, and they were back on the road again, she suddenly remembered what she’d wanted to tell her husband.

  ‘Harry and Ingrid,’ she said, catching his attention.‘That was it . . . Harry and Ingrid are going to make the move. They’ve put their farm on the market.’

  ‘Linden Lee?’ he asked, unnecessarily because he knew it well.‘Where are they going?’

  ‘They’ve had an offer accepted on the Dyer farm.’

  ‘Nah! That’s like 300 acres or something. Even Harry can’t weed 300 acres.’

  She
knew exactly what her husband thought of Harry and his precious 50 acres of organic fruit and vegetables. Lachlan thought he and Ingrid were barmy, but despite that, they’d grown very close to the couple over the years.

  ‘What the hell is he going to do with 300 acres? And how did he get the money for it?’

  ‘He wants to start a beef herd and apparently he’s done so well at Linden Lee, the bank are happy to loan him.’

  ‘Blimey. Organic beef?’ Lachlan asked.

  ‘Of course! He’s even talking about a dairy herd in the future.’

  The sound that came from Lachlan now quite closely resembled a ‘humpf’.

  ‘How do you know all this?’ he asked.

  ‘I met Mrs Campbell in town this morning and she was telling me. I mean, I know they’ve been talking about it for a while, but it looks like they’ve taken the plunge. We’ll have to go round. Hear all about it.’

  She hadn’t seen Ingrid or Harry for weeks. What was the matter with her and Lachlan? They had to rekindle their social life, make some attempt to revive it, if rigor mortis hadn’t set in totally.

  ‘Well, Mrs Campbell.’ Lachlan was shaking his head.‘She gets the wrong end of the stick once in a while.’

  But Rosie believed it. Every time she went to Linden Lee, she marvelled at the neat rows, the glossy plants and Harry, Ingrid, their little kids and the two big dogs, out in rain or shine, picking, hoeing, planting, digging. Not like the farms round about: vast fields full of staggeringly dense rape, barley, wheat, or row upon row of uniform strawberries, like at their place, but empty. Sometimes a tractor, sometimes a combine, sometimes a sprayer gliding up and down, but apart from picking season, empty of people. At Linden Lee there was always someone on the land, farming.

  Sentimental old nitwit, Lachlan would tell her. No money to be made that way. But then how much money were they making at their place? Until the summer’s end when the strawberry money came in, they were pretty well broke. And when the money did come in, they would put their share away in the bank for that time in the future when they were definitely going to need it. They farmed land worth at least a million pounds, yes, but in reality it felt like they were flat, stony, no summer holiday, or even new summer outfits for the boys, broke.

  ‘Wonder who’ll buy Linden Lee?’ Rosie mused.

  ‘I wonder,’ Lachlan echoed. But she had already lost his attention. He was gazing into the distance, worrying: worrying about rain, about irrigating, about hours of sunshine, about ripening times, about which varieties he’d planted, about supermarket orders. This was the busiest, most anxious time of year for them all.

  Chapter Nine

  WHEN PAMELA PULLED up outside her flat in the taxi she’d treated herself to from Heathrow, she was surprised to see the sitting room lights on. Dave must have left them on when he went out to work this morning, she reasoned. Surely not burglars? was her next thought as she put the key into the mortice lock and found it open.

  Then, as her second key unlocked the Yale, and she pushed the door open, Dave came out into the hallway to meet her.

  ‘Hello!’ She tried to look pleased, but really, she was taken aback. Why was he here? Why wasn’t he at work? Allowing her some time to unpack, to settle down, to begin to think about how she felt about him now . . . now that she’d spent time away trying out the idea of leaving him . . . trying out more than just the idea of being with someone else. She had come back with one thing clear in her mind. There was going to be change. It would not carry on like this any longer. She was going to leave Dave . . . maybe . . . or maybe they would move out of town . . . or she would finally give up her job and freelance. All the things she kept thinking about doing. She would finally do something. No matter how scary it felt, or how Dave might argue against it.

  ‘Hello,’ he said and smiled broadly; came to hug her tightly, kiss her mouth, then pulled her in so his chin hooked over her shoulder.‘I’ve missed you.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said automatically, not liking the fact that it wasn’t true. She dropped her bag and let her head rest on his shoulder as she put her arms around him. She felt his collarbone under her cheek, his hands on her back. He smelled like toast. This was her safe place. This was home. This was . . . very confusing.

  ‘You look well,’ he said, looking into her face again.‘Have you had a good time?’

  ‘It was great. So warm . . . fantastic city . . .’ she wittered, taking off her coat and hanging it up on the hallway rack.‘Anyway, how are you?’ She turned to face him.‘Are you working from home today?’ she asked.

  ‘Er . . . well.’

  As Pamela waited for his reply, she thought about how much she wanted a cup of tea. She hadn’t had a cup of tea in all the time she’d been away, but now craved one.

  ‘I’ve been told to take a fortnight off.’

  ‘Really? Is there something big in the pipeline?’ She was heading for the kitchen now with Dave following.

  ‘Well, no, not at work. Well, there is something big in the pipeline . . . very big.’

  She glanced up to see him scratching distractedly at the back of his head, looking round the room. Twitchy, she thought, very twitchy.

  ‘But it’s maybe . . . maybe not what you’re thinking,’ he said at last.

  He sat down at the table, but then stood up again and began to shuffle through the pile of paperwork stacked behind the fruit bowl – which was piled high with fresh pears and apples, she noticed.

  ‘Really?’ she felt a wave of concern.‘So, what’s this all about?’

  He knew this was too soon. He hadn’t meant to rush into this conversation as soon as she came in the door, he should have thought of some stalling tactic. But now it was too late. He would have to plough on.

  ‘Well, apparently I’m stressed.’ He gave a shrug.‘The Trust’s doctor – and there are plenty of them, as you can imagine – has diagnosed me as officially stressed and signed me off for a fortnight.’ He gave another shrug and a little laugh this time.‘It’s almost quite funny. Infertile? Worried about it? Going through repeated IVF treatments? Marriage falling apart? Never mind, have a fortnight off, that’ll sort it.’

  He laughed again, a little too forcefully: ‘A fortnight off. Yes, that’ll really help me get out of this shit hole of a situation called my life.’

  And then he sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and faced her, awaiting some kind of response. Pamela was rooted to the spot, kettle in hand, horrified that she was hardly home and they were already having to do this to each other.

  ‘Has something happened at work?’ she asked, trying to stay calm, determined not to let this be a row already.

  ‘Of course something’s happened at work. Everything’s happened at work.’ Dave was still scratching his head and she was desperate to tell him to stop it, but clenched her teeth.

  ‘I can’t do this any more. It’s a crap job, Pammy. I’m not going to do it any more.’

  ‘I see.’ She put the kettle down on the counter top, switched it on, concentrated on it in an effort to hold back the things she really wanted to say: Good grief! Let me sit down. Let me drink my bloody cup of tea. Don’t wallop me round the head with all this . . . already!

  ‘Do you want tea?’ she asked, calmly, feeling anything but calm. Feeling guilty, feeling confused . . . feeling unable to deal with Dave and Dave’s new problems right now.

  ‘Yes, I’ll have some tea.’

  ‘So what’s been going on?’ She came over to him and put her hands on his shoulders.

  ‘I’m not going to work there any more. And since I made the decision, it’s been quite good fun really.’

  ‘OK.’ She didn’t add more. She wanted to try and listen to him first.

  ‘I can’t take it seriously any more, it’s a joke. They’re all such pompous arses. All their stupid little worries: who’s in the next promotion round; who’s been given which project, what funding and why. I can’t be bothered. I’m not playing the game any more, Pammy, I’m
not going to do it.’

  ‘Dave, running three hospitals is hardly a game, is it?’ She couldn’t help herself.‘I mean, I can think of a lot of funnier games.’

  ‘Oh it’s a bloody hilarious game, believe me. But it’s even more fun when you’re not playing.’

  She pulled up the chair next to his and sat down, putting a hand over the clenched fist on his knee.

  ‘On Monday,’ he went on, ‘we had this big ring-fencing strategy meeting and at the end of an hour-long, completely dull load of meaningless waffle, that we all know is just entirely for show, because all the decisions we take will be retaken for us further on down the line . . . but anyway, at the end, Robert, “team co-ordinator” for the day, wanted to know if there were any questions. So you know what I did?’ He was looking at her with a peculiar sort of earnestness that was more than worrying.‘I put up my hand and said: “Robert, global warming . . . do you think about it a lot? You know, icebergs melting, devastating floods, irreversible climate change . . . do you think about that at all?”

  ‘It was hilarious! You should have seen his face! Not to mention everyone else around the table. Of course, he tried to dismiss me with “I don’t think that’s really relevant right now, David, I’m looking for questions pertinent to the agenda, thank you.” But I kept at him. “Not relevant? I think it’s a pretty major issue actually, I mean, our planet is being destroyed and here we are sitting about discussing this load of old crap, not thinking about the problem at all. Do you recycle? Is your home insulated as well as it should be? Do you buy organic? You’re a father . . . don’t you worry about this stuff?”’

  ‘Jesus,’ Pamela interrupted. She didn’t want to hear more, had a horrible vision of the scene. Fifteen or so senior trust managers thinking about work, or golf, or maybe even lunch, and then right in front of them, quite out of the blue, one of their colleagues goes truly mad, right there, in the conference room!