‘Well, you did.’
‘I didn’t, all right,’ I say, my voice tight. ‘Don’t keep insisting that you told me you were going away when you didn’t.’
I feel his eyes on me and busy myself making the tea
so that he can’t see how upset I am. And not just because he’s going away.
SATURDAY JULY 25th
My body clock still hasn’t adjusted to being on holiday,
so despite it being the weekend I’m in the garden early,
pulling up weeds and tidying beds, only stopping when
Matthew arrives back from the shops with fresh bread
and cheese for lunch. We picnic on the lawn and, once
we’ve finished, I mow the grass, sweep the terrace, wipe
down the table and chairs and dead-head the plants in
the hanging baskets. I’m not usually so obsessive about
the garden but I feel a pressing need to have everything
looking perfect.
Towards the end of the afternoon Matthew comes
to find me.
‘Would you mind if I go to the gym for an hour or
so? If I go now, instead of in the morning, I’ll be able
to have a lie-in.’
I smile. ‘And breakfast in bed.’
‘Exactly,’ he says, kissing me. ‘I’ll be back by seven.’
Title: The Breakdown ARC, Format: 126x198, v1, Output date:08/11/16
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b a paris
After he’s left I begin to make a curry, leaving the
door to the garden open for air. I slice onions and dice
chicken, singing along to the radio as I cook. In the
fridge, I discover the bottle of wine we started a couple of evenings ago and pounce on it. I pour what’s left into a glass and carry on with the curry, sipping the wine as I go along. By the time I’ve finished in the kitchen it’s almost six o’clock so I decide to have a long, bubble-filled bath. I feel so relaxed that it’s hard to remember the relentless anxiety that had burdened me last week. This is the first day that I’ve managed to push all thought of Jane to the back of my mind. It’s not that I don’t want to think about her, it’s just that I can’t stand the constant guilt. No matter how much I want to I can’t turn the clock back, I can’t not live my life because I didn’t realise it was Jane in the car that night.
A news bulletin comes on but I turn the radio off
quickly. Without the noise from the radio, the house is
eerily quiet and maybe because I’ve just been thinking
about Jane, I’m suddenly conscious of being home alone.
Going into the sitting room, I close the windows which
have been left open all day, then the one in the study,
and lock the front and back doors. I stand for a moment,
listening to the house. But the only sound I hear is the
soft ca coo of a wood pigeon outside.
Upstairs, I run the bath but before getting in I find
myself hesitating over whether or not to lock the door.
I hate that the visit from the alarm man has played
with my head so in defiance to myself I leave it ajar,
The Breakdown
69
as I normally do, but undress facing the gap. I climb
in and sink down under the water. The bubbles rise
up around my neck and I lie back against their foamy
cushion, my eyes closed, enjoying the stillness of the
afternoon. We’re rarely disturbed by neighbour noise;
last summer the teenagers who lived in the house nearest
to us came to apologise in advance for a party they were
throwing that night and we didn’t hear a thing. It’s why
Matthew and I chose this house over the much larger,
more impressive – and consequently more expensive –
property that we also looked at, although I think price
was also a consideration for Matthew. We’d agreed to
buy it jointly and he was adamant that I wouldn’t put
in more than him, even though I could well afford to,
despite having bought a house on the Ile de Ré six
months previously. A house nobody knows about, not
even Matthew. And certainly not Rachel. Not yet.
Under the bubbles, I let my arms bob to the surface
and think about her birthday, the day I’ll finally be able to give her the keys to the house of her dreams. It’s been a hard secret to keep. It’s perfect that she wants to go to the Ile de Ré for her birthday. She took me there a couple of months after Mum died and we stumbled
upon the little fisherman’s cottage on our second to last day there, an à Vendre sign hanging from an upstairs window.
‘It’s beautiful!’ Rachel had breathed. ‘I need to see
inside.’ And without waiting to consult the estate agent, she marched up the little path and knocked on the door.
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b a paris
As the owner showed us round, I could tell that Rachel
had fallen in love with it even though she couldn’t afford it. To her it was just a pipedream, but I knew I could make it happen so I arranged it all in secret. I close my eyes, imagining her face when she realises that the
cottage is hers. I knew it was exactly what Mum and
Dad would have wanted me to do. If Dad had lived
to make a will, he would definitely have bequeathed