‘Oh. Yes. Shit. Well, yeah. I suppose it wasn’t such a great day. I mean, not initially. I was made redundant.’
‘You’re not serious?’ She’d seen Ben grow pale before. Once, when he was at the business end of things when Ty was born, another time when he’d come down with a bad dose of flu. But she’d never seen the colour drain so fast from his skin after such a mild stimulus. He sank onto the sofa next to her, his light brown hair – which was, she noticed, desperately in need of a cut – flopping against his forehead as if it, too, was disappointed.
‘Yep. Apparently I’m surplus to requirements,’ she said, shrugging.
‘Oh my god.’
‘Yep. My thoughts exactly.’
‘Well, don’t panic,’ he said, gripping her hand more tightly than was comfortable.
‘Actually, I’m not panicking… I wanted to…’
‘We’ll be OK,’ he continued, not making eye contact. ‘My salary will cover the mortgage and most of the bills, and we’ve got a bit saved, and there’s your inheritance – only in an absolute emergency, obviously.’
‘Yes, but, Ben, don’t you see, this could be our chance!’ she said, turning to him, fizzing with excitement. ‘We could use the money to do something. I thought, you know, we’re moving to France next year anyway, why not just do it now! There’s nothing stopping us.’
He looked at her and she saw his eyes widen – not with excitement but something else, something unreadable. He reached up and pushed the wayward strand of fringe away from his forehead. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I mean, we were going to get the place spruced up weren’t we, before we sold? The bathroom needs doing and…’
‘I don’t care about changing the bloody cistern… This would be changing our lives, Ben!’
He took her hand. ‘I just want to wait till the time is right.’
‘But can’t you see? The time is right.’
‘What about Ty?’
She nodded, feeling a familiar flash of guilt. ‘I’ve thought about him a lot, of course I have,’ she said. ‘But honestly, it’s not like we’ll be that far away. We can even keep the house here for a bit – I’ll have the redundancy money; a bit of Mum’s… the inheritance. We could…’
Something in his expression made her stop.
‘It’s just…’ he said.
She looked at him, sitting in his crumpled T-shirt, hair in disarray. Worn out from a week of work and too many pints at the pub. Imagined him instead in France, sipping coffee on a terrace – no real ‘boss’ to answer to. Imagined the kind of life they could have together, rather than the existence they had now.
But his face was sombre and thoughtful rather than excited.
‘I’m not saying no,’ he said, carefully. ‘It just feels… well, too soon.’
‘Too soon?’ She felt her eyes fill with tears. ‘But we agreed… we waited for Ty’s GCSEs, then A levels… For your work to pick up. All those things. Now we’re meant to be waiting for Ty to get through his first year at uni. But I’ve realised, there’s always going to be something, isn’t there? Even next year there’ll probably be something.’
‘Well, if there is… we’ll wait. There’s no point rushing…’
‘Are you serious?’ she asked, her stomach flipping over as if she’d just eaten another bowl of snails.
‘What?’
‘Well…’ she said, carefully, ‘you promised. We decided, didn’t we, that we’d definitely do it next year.’
‘I wouldn’t say promised… I suppose I promised to think about it… But if things aren’t right…’
‘Oh my god.’
But his expression was firm.
‘Probably better to talk about it in the morning when you’re not… so emotional,’ he said, standing up and reaching for her hand.
‘Emotional?’
‘Yes, I mean it’s very… I can understand it. But you’re thinking with your heart, Lily. Not your head. It’s just too soon.’
Say it! her mind urged. Either come with me, or I’m going on my own! Or, if you loved me, you’d come. Something! ‘Oh,’ she said instead, looking at her hands and feeling a tear touch her cheek.
‘Well, look. How about this,’ she added, almost desperately. ‘Take a month off work…’
‘A month?’
‘Yes, just listen,’ she said, putting a hand on his leg. ‘Come to France with me. We’ll rent a house in a great location and try it out. It’ll be a holiday at worst; at best maybe the start of something really exciting!’
He was silent.
‘Can I think about it? A month is a long time… maybe… we could do something, shorter? Maybe a hotel? Or…’
She felt something inside her sink.
‘OK,’ she said. It was clearly pointless arguing with him. She felt some of the tears she’d held back start to sting her eyes, but blinked them away.
‘Are you mad with me?’ he asked in the silence that followed.
The man knew her too well. ‘I’m not mad,’ she said, carefully. ‘I’m just…’ She paused. ‘Ben, tell me honestly, all those plans we made. All those conversations about next year. Is it really a case of “right timing”, or is it that…’ She paused again. ‘Ben, are you ever going to want to come to France with me?’
He was silent for a minute. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘No. I mean, well, probably. Almost definitely.’
‘That sounds horribly like a “no”.’
‘It’s… Well, I suppose, if I’m honest, sometimes I wonder whether it isn’t better to let a dream stay a dream? Careful what you wish for, and all that. We have our whole lives here…’ he said, shrugging, his palms upturned in a gesture of surrender.
‘But…’
‘Look, let’s go to bed,’ he said, putting out his hand for hers again. ‘I’m knackered, I’ve had too many Guinnesses. I’m pretty sure you’ve had a few more wines than you usually would. It’s hard to think straight.’
‘I am thinking straight.’
‘Well, maybe I need to… uh, sleep on it. You know?’
‘OK,’ she said, not meeting his eye.
‘OK?’
‘Yes. We’ll talk tomorrow. You go on. I’ll be up in just a minute.’
The minute Ben was out of sight, she opened up her laptop and touched the mouse pad. The screen lit up and she was relieved to find that she hadn’t closed down her earlier searches. Because it ended here. She wasn’t going to be someone whom things happened to. She was going to be someone who made things happen.
Before she could change her mind, she clicked ‘select’ on one of the luxury g?te rentals she’d been looking at, and committed to, if not to a lifetime of indulging her Francophilia, then at least a month trying it on for size. Ben would probably come. And if he didn’t, it wasn’t the end of the world. After all, it would only be a month apart. And a step towards the life she’d always dreamed of.
Hopefully, if nothing else, it would show Ben just how serious she was.
Anyway, what’s the worst that could happen? she thought, as she closed the laptop and went upstairs to bed.
3
She gradually became conscious, her head heavy on the pillow, her eyes still firmly closed, feeling a pounding in her temples. It had been a while since she’d gone past her self-imposed two glass limit, and she’d started to forget why she’d set the limit in the first place. Yesterday, when she’d been knocking back the red and waiting for Ben to come home she’d imagined they’d be leaping out of bed to make new plans this morning; now she’d be lucky if she could stagger to the kitchen for a coffee without incident.
As the daylight poked its way through the gap in the curtains and flooded her skin with unwelcome light, she felt an additional throb. ‘Oh god,’ she moaned, turning over and covering her face with her hands.
There was a reciprocal groan by her side. ‘Oh Christ,’ she heard Ben say.
‘Hangover?’
‘Hangover.’ He half sat up, propped on his elbows, eyes screwed up against the light. ‘Bloody Baz. Always tempting me with one last pint.’
‘You could say no, you know.’
‘That is a very good point.’
‘How many did you have?’
‘I sort of lost count, I think. Anyway, you’re a fine one to talk, Miss Polished-off-a-whole-bottle-by-herself.’
‘Was it a whole bottle?’ she asked horrified. ‘All on my own?’
‘Well, almost.’
‘Bloody hell. No wonder I feel like shit.’ She tried opening one of her eyes, glimpsed the soft flesh of Ben’s belly next to her, then closed it again.
He laughed and shuffled up the bed. ‘Come on, we’ll get through it. Together. You’re only young once. Carpe diem – seize the day and all that!’ She heard him breathe heavily on his palm. ‘Christ, sorry about my breath. I smell like I’ve licked the inside of a bin or something.’