Taken For Granted

by Caroline Anderson

  “I don’t know why you’re complaining!”

  “What you need is a real day’s work—a short spell in the real world, just to show you how lucky you are.”

  “Done!” Sally turned toward Sam. “We’ll swap jobs. You’ve got some leave owing to you—take it. Three weeks. I’ll stand in for you, and you— you can put your feet up and do my job!”

  The challenge vibrated in the air between them. Sally could feel the blood zinging in her veins. It had to work. He had to pick up the gauntlet.

  “You’re on,” he said softly.

  Caroline Anderson’s nursing career was brought to an abrupt halt by a back injury, but her interest in medical things led her to work first as a medical secretary, and then, after completing her teacher training, as a lecturer in Medical Office Practice to trainee medical secretaries. In addition to writing, she also runs her own business from her home in rural Suffolk, England, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, mother and assorted animals.

  Taken for Granted

  Caroline Anderson

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘CAN I blow out the candles, Mummy?’

  ‘No, stupid, it’s her birthday—she has to blow out the candles. Can I have the first bit, Mum?’

  ‘Maybe. And don’t call your sister stupid, Ben.’

  ‘Why not? She is.’

  Sally set the cake down in the middle of the table, among the remains of the ham sandwiches and the apple and celery salad. A dollop of mayonnaise winked at her from her cuff as she pulled back her arm.

  Great.

  She would have to change.

  ‘She isn’t stupid, she’s just younger than you,’ Sally reasoned automatically as she dealt with the cuff. Damn, it was bound to mark.

  ‘I want to light the candles now,’ Molly said plaintively. It was past the eight-year-old’s bedtime and she was beginning to whine, but they had to wait…

  ‘When Daddy’s home,’ Sally told them.

  ‘He’ll be hours—he always is,’ Ben said with all the pragmatism of a ten-year-old.

  Molly’s face puckered and she turned to her mother. ‘Not always—is he, Mummy?’

  She couldn’t be bothered to argue with them—not tonight, on her thirty-ninth birthday. It was the last one she would celebrate for a long, long time.

  Or she would if only Sam would come home.

  She glanced at the clock on the oven, then at the contents. Would the casserole survive if he was much longer?

  The phone rang, and she picked it up.

  ‘Hello? Sally Alexander.’

  ‘Sally, it’s Sam. I forgot to tell you, I’ve got a meeting tonight with a pharmaceutical rep. I’ll be back late.’

  She opened her mouth to tell him it was her birthday, but shut it again. What was the point? What was the point of any of it?

  ‘Fine. I’ll see you later,’ she said heavily.

  ‘Sally?’

  She cradled the receiver with infinite care. It was that or smash it.

  ‘Sorry, kids, Daddy’s held up. He said go ahead without him.’ She forced a bright smile and picked up the matches. ‘Who wants to help me blow out the candles?’

  The casserole looked unappetising. It was pheasant in red wine with tons of mushrooms and garlic—Sam’s favourite.

  She could freeze it, of course.

  She couldn’t be bothered. When would she heat it up? On another night when he would phone and say he couldn’t make it?

  She looked at the casserole, the sauce congealing, drying at the edges, and held it out at arm’s length above the middle of the kitchen floor.

  It smashed most satisfyingly.

  It splashed her dress, of course, and the walls and the fronts of the cupboards.

  She didn’t care. The dress was already covered in mayonnaise and probably ruined, and anyway it didn’t fit her any more.

  She needed to diet. Having an extra slice of chocolate cake probably hadn’t helped.

  Still, she wouldn’t be having dinner tonight.

  She gave the carnage on the floor a cursory glance, and took the champagne out of the fridge. Crunching across the kitchen on the broken glass of the casserole dish, she retrieved a tumbler from the cupboard by the dishwasher, popped the cork and poured herself a hefty slug.

  ‘Happy birthday, Sal,’ she told herself, raising her glass.

  ‘Thanks,’ she replied, and drained the glass.

  It tickled her nose. She poured another. That also tickled, and this time she giggled.

  Damn him. How could he forget?

  The laughter turned to tears, and she set the glass down and left the room, turning her back on the chaos.

  She would sort it out tomorrow—if she was still here. It was by no means certain.

  Sam shifted in his chair, bored. God, he hated these pharmaceutical ‘sweeteners’. They had adjourned to a local Italian restaurant for ‘a bite of something’. Sam was glad he wasn’t picking up the tab. There were four of them: Sam; the rep; Martin Goody, the senior partner; and Steve Dalton, the other partner in the practice. Martin was divorced, Steve was still single, and there was no reason to suppose the rep was in a hurry to get home. He told endless stories about his exploits, and ‘the wife’ was constantly run into the ground. Sam didn’t imagine for a moment that he would care if his wife worried about his lateness—if indeed she would.

  Sally, on the other hand…He glanced at his watch. Quarter past ten—on the fifteenth of March.

  Oh, God.

  Sally’s birthday.

  He closed his eyes, a wave of guilt and remorse washing over him. How could he have forgotten?

  ‘Sam? You OK?’

  He opened his eyes again, and nodded. ‘Yes—I’m fine. I’m sorry, I’m going to have to leave you—I’ve got a patient I’m a bit concerned about and it’s preying on my mind,’ he lied.

  ‘Can’t it keep for an hour?’ Martin asked with a quick frown of puzzlement.

  Sam felt guilty colour crawl up his neck. ‘I think I’d be happier if I went now,’ he said with absolute truth, and with another apology to the rep and to his bewildered colleagues he slid back his chair, retrieved his coat and left.

  The drive home was agonising. What could he say that would make it any better? Nothing. He hadn’t bought her anything, not even a card.

  He called in at the all-night garage on the way and picked up an indifferent card and a box of chocolates. They weren’t her favourite, but they didn’t have any Belgian ones in the garage. Damn. He looked at the flowers, but they were tatty and bedraggled, definitely past their best. He walked past them, wrote the card in the car and then drove the last few miles home.

  The house was in darkness, except for the light in the hall.

  Damn, again.

  Perhaps she was in the drawing-room at the rear of the house. He put the car in the garage and went in through the kitchen door, as usual, crossing the kitchen in the half-dark.

  Something crunched under his feet.

  ‘What on earth…?’

  He stopped in his tracks and peered down at the floor.

  Whatever it was smelt delicious.

  He backtracked cautiously and flicked on the light. Something dark red, rich and with mushrooms floating in it—mushrooms and something larger—a pheasant?—and the remains of a casserole dish adorned the tiled floor and the front of the kitchen units.

  An opened bottle of champagne—good champagne—stood on the side, an empty glass beside it, next to the massacred remnants of a chocolate cake. He studied the carnage in stunned silence, then, picking his way carefully over the mess, he kicked off his shoes at the doorway and walked into the hall in his socks.

  ‘Sally?’

  Silence, excep
t for the ticking of the grandfather clock. The sitting-room was in darkness, but there was enough light to see that it was empty.

  He crossed the hall and peered into the drawing-room. Darkness again. She must be upstairs.

  He padded up silently in his socks, opened the door and went into their room. The bathroom light was on, and he could make out her form in the bed, hunched up in one corner.

  She was mad with him. It showed in every line of her body. He sighed. He supposed she had every right to be, but she could have reminded him. Damn it, he was busy. She had nothing else to think about.

  Self-righteous anger warred the guilt. Guilt won.

  He sat carefully on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Sally?’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘Darling, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not just the meal.’

  ‘I know.’ He put the chocolates and card under her hand. ‘Happy birthday.’

  She sat up slowly.

  ‘You remembered.’

  ‘Not in time. I really am sorry.’

  ‘I should have reminded you,’ she mumbled, ‘only I wanted you to remember without being reminded.’

  He nearly told her that she only had herself to blame, but he stopped himself just in time.

  Instead he stripped off his tie, dropped his shoes and went into the dressing-room. He put his suit on the hanger, noting a mark on the lapel. Sally would have to take it to the cleaners for him.

  He went back into the bedroom in his shirt and underwear, shedding them as he went, and slipped into bed beside her. He would win her round. He always could. It never failed.

  I can’t, she thought. I’m so angry with him, I can’t be bothered to pretend to enjoy this any more, either for his ego or for mine.

  He kissed her, his mouth warm and gentle. It made her want to cry. She used to love his kisses, but not any more. She had lost him, somewhere along the way, and this man was a stranger—a stranger who took her for granted.

  She didn’t want to be taken for granted any more.

  So she lay there, without responding, and after a while he lifted his head.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Sally, you’ve made your point,’ he muttered. ‘Come on.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said no.’

  He was still for a second, then rolled away. ‘No?’ he repeated, his voice incredulous.

  As well he might be. She couldn’t remember a time when she had refused him without a good reason—and not feeling like it didn’t count.

  ‘I have apologised for forgetting it was your birthday,’ he went on. ‘It’s not as if I’ve been in bed with the rep, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘I just don’t feel like it,’ she said, in a tone that brooked no further discussion.

  Sam, however, was harder than that to deter.

  ‘OK, let’s have it,’ he said heavily. ‘Why not?’

  Sally was fed up—fed up with being used, with being sweet-talked and cajoled and coaxed into forgetting what she was angry about. It wouldn’t work this time, because she found the hurt went deeper than she cared to probe.

  Hurt made her lash out, dredging up the truth.

  ‘Because I find I can’t be bothered to fake an enthusiastic response tonight.’

  The silence was shattering. ‘Fake?’ he said softly, after an age.

  She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. God, she must do something with it, it was a mess. A mousy mess. Yuck.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she backtracked. ‘I’m just being bitchy.’

  ‘No, you’re not. What did you mean?’

  He wasn’t going to let it go, she realised.

  Hell. Her and her mouth. Why hadn’t she kept quiet?

  ‘I don’t feel like it. I’m angry with you, and I just don’t feel like pretending that I’m not.’

  He flicked on the bedside light and sat up against his pillows.

  ‘That isn’t what you said,’ he told her, his ice-blue eyes searching her face. ‘That isn’t what you meant.’

  She turned away. ‘How do you know what I meant? You don’t know who the hell I am any more.’

  There was silence, then he sighed heavily.

  ‘No, maybe I don’t. One thing’s for sure—you aren’t the woman I married.’

  He flicked off the light, turned on his side away from her and thumped the pillow.

  Sally felt the tears welling again. Was this all her protest would amount to? A huffy silence because she refused to sleep with him?

  Her stomach rumbled.

  God, she was starving.

  It was sheer pride that prevented her from going and eating the supper off the kitchen floor—pride and the knowledge that it was by no means clean enough.

  Instead she lay in the half-dark, staring at the broad expanse of his back, and wondered what on earth she could do that would give them both back the people they had married—the people they had loved.

  Because one thing was certain. There wasn’t much love lost between them at the moment, and if something didn’t happen soon, it would be too late…

  It was four days before the last of the casserole disappeared from the fronts of the kitchen cupboards.

  The day after Sally’s birthday, they all stepped cautiously round the mess in the middle of the floor, the children regarding it with wide eyes but wisely saying nothing. By lunchtime leaving it there seemed such an empty protest that Sally dealt with it, functioning on autopilot while she pondered the state of her marriage.

  Was it Sam’s fault? she wondered as she scrubbed the red wine out of the grout between the tiles. Or hers?

  Both?

  God knows, she thought. Does it matter, so long as it changes?

  But it couldn’t change without help, and to help, they had to know what was wrong.

  Defeated, she swabbed the floor down and gave up on the stains.

  He was off that weekend, and on Saturday night Sally packed the children off to bed as early as she could get away with, and resolved to talk to Sam.

  ‘There’s casserole on the cupboard doors still,’ he said as she came back into the kitchen. The table was still littered with plates, and he threw the remark over his shoulder as he disappeared towards the sitting-room with a glass of wine in one hand and the paper in the other.

  ‘So clean it off,’ she said sharply.

  He stopped, turned and came back, his face wary.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘It isn’t my job. I didn’t chuck it on the floor. You clean it off.’

  ‘No.’

  He sighed and stabbed his fingers through his hair, tousling the gold strands still further. ‘Look, Sally, for God’s sake, you’ve had days to deal with it. You’ve got nothing else to do——’

  ‘What! Nothing else? How do you think your suit got to and from the cleaners? How do yo think the children get backwards and forwards to school? Who does the washing, the shopping, the gardening——?’

  ‘It’s winter, there’s no gardening——’

  ‘It’s the middle of March, Sam—in case the fact has escaped you again. That’s spring. I’ve been out in the garden for weeks battling the winter wreckage, pruning and clipping and weeding and tidying——’

  ‘Aren’t you lucky to have the time?’

  Sally poured herself a glass of wine with a shaky hand. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Sam—no, I’m not lucky! I’m bored out of my mind, I’m totally taken for granted—I’m wasted! I’m a lively, intelligent member of the human race, and I’m rotting in this——’

  ‘If you dare call this house a hell-hole——’

  ‘Yes? You’ll what? Throw me out? I own half of it.’

  ‘Only because of the crazy law in this country. I’ve put every penny into this place.’

  ‘And I’ve just cleaned it.’

  He looked pointedly at the cupboard fronts. ‘On occasion.’ />
  Her breath hissed out through clenched teeth. ‘Bastard,’ she said softly. ‘You bought the house. It’s me that’s turned it into a home for us. Left up to you it would be a chaotic, empty shell.’ She took a steadying gulp of the wine. ‘It’s so easy for you. You get up in the morning, you wash yourself, dress yourself, feed yourself, take yourself to work, do your job, come home, eat a meal prepared by someone else, pick up a drink and a paper bought by someone else and go and flop down in front of the television while the skivvy does another two hours in the kitchen clearing up after the chaos of the day and getting the children to bed!’

  ‘Oh, yes, and during the day, of course, I’ve had nothing better to do than go off to garden centres and swan about at the health club and have coffee with friends and natter at the school gates—God, you women, you’re all the same,’ he ranted. ‘You think you’re so hard done by, and none of you have done a full day’s work in years!’

  Sally was so angry she could hardly speak. ‘And who’s got the weekend off?’ she said finally. ‘Who spent the afternoon dozing in the study? Who will spend tomorrow reading the Sunday papers?’

  Sam gave an aggrieved sigh and shovelled his hand through his hair. ‘So what? I work bloody hard, Sally. I deserve a rest.’

  ‘So—do—I.’

  He snorted, his eyes travelling round the kitchen. ‘Well, it’s a good job I’m more efficient at what I do than you are at what you do, or all my patients would be dead.’

  Sally counted to ten. She was going to kill him. She was.

  ‘Is medicine your chosen career?’

  He looked a little stunned. ‘Yes—of course. You know that.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I do. If you remember, that was how we met. I was a GP trainee, you were a junior partner. It was love at first sight. Seems a hell of a long time ago.’

  She turned away, refilling her glass. ‘I chose medicine as my career as well—but I’m not doing it, Sam. Because of an accident of biology, I’ve had to turn into a cook, a gardener, a decorator and a financial manager.’