good. I hope it was good,’ she said, in a strained voice.
‘You don’t sound like you hope it was good,’ he replied, eyes down, reading the rest of the letter.
‘Well, I sound like I did the first time I asked.’ She kept an easiness in her voice.
‘Ruth, I’m reading my post!’
‘I can see that,’ she mumbled, bending over to pick up the empty ripped envelopes that lay on the ground and on the hall table.
‘So what happened around here today?’ he asked, opening another envelope. The paper fluttered to the floor.
‘The usual madness. And then I tidied the house just before you got back, for the millionth time,’ she said, making a point as she bent down to pick up another crumpled ball of paper. ‘Marcia called a few times today, looking for you. When I could finally find the phone. Pud hid the handset again, it took me ages to find it. Anyway, she needs help with deciding a venue for your dad’s party. She liked the idea of the marquee here, and Quentin, of course, didn’t. He wants it in the yacht club. I think your dad would like either of them – no, that’s a lie, I think your father would prefer none of them, but seeing as it’s going ahead without his say-so, he’d be happy with either. Your mum is staying out of it. So what did you tell her?’
Silence. She patiently watched him reading the last page of the document and waited for an answer. When he had folded it and dropped it on the hall table, he reached for another.
‘Honey?’
‘Hmmm?’
‘I asked you about Marcia,’ she said, through gritted teeth, and proceeded to pick up the scraps of new paper that had fallen to the ground.
‘Oh yeah.’ He unfolded another document. ‘She was just, eh …’ He became distracted by the contents.
‘Yes?’ she said loudly.
He looked up and gazed at her, as though noticing for the first time that she was there. ‘She was calling about the party.’ He made a face.
‘I know.’
‘How do you know?’ He started reading again.
‘Because she – never mind.’ Start again. ‘She’s so excited about this party, isn’t she? It’s great seeing her really getting her teeth into something after the year she’s had. She’s been talking a mile a minute about food and the music …’ She trailed off.
Silence.
‘Hmm?’
‘Marcia,’ she said, rubbing her tired eyes. ‘We’re talking about Marcia, but you’re busy so …’ She began making her way to the kitchen.
‘Oh, that. I’m taking the party off her hands. Alison’s going to organise it.’
Ruth stopped. ‘Alison?’
‘Yes, my secretary. She’s new. Have you met her?’
‘Not yet.’ She slowly made her way towards him. ‘Honey, Marcia was really excited about organising the party.’
‘And now Alison is,’ he smiled. ‘Not.’ Then he laughed.
She smiled patiently at the in-house joke, wanting to strangle him for taking the party out of Marcia’s hands and putting it into those of a woman who knew nothing of the man who was celebrating seventy years in this life, with the people he loved and who loved him.
She took a deep breath, her shoulders relaxing as she exhaled. Started again. ‘Your dinner’s ready.’ She began to move towards the kitchen again. ‘It’ll just take a minute to heat up. And I bought that apple pie you like.’
‘I’ve eaten,’ he said, folding the letter and ripping it into pieces. A few pieces of paper fluttered to the ground. It was either the sound of the paper hitting the marble or his words that stopped her on her way, but either way she froze.
‘I’ll pick the bloody things up,’ he said with irritation.
She slowly turned around and asked in a quiet voice, ‘Where did you eat?’
‘Shanahans. Rib-eye steak. I’m stuffed.’ He absent-mindedly rubbed his stomach.
‘With who?’
‘Work people.’
‘Who?’
‘What’s this, the Spanish inquisition?’
‘No, just a wife asking a husband who he had dinner with.’
‘A few guys from the office. You don’t know them.’
‘I wish you would have told me.’
‘It wasn’t a social thing. Nobody else’s wives were there.’
‘I didn’t mean – I’d like to have known so I wouldn’t have bothered cooking for you.’
‘Christ, Ruth, I’m sorry you cooked and bought a bloody pie,’ he exploded.
‘Sssh,’ she said closing her eyes and hoping his raised voice wouldn’t wake the baby.
‘No! I won’t sssh!’ he boomed. ‘Okay?’ He made his way into the parlour, leaving his shoes in the middle of the hallway and his papers and envelopes strewn across the hall table.
Ruth took another deep breath, turned away from his mess and made her way to the opposite side of the house.
When Lou rejoined his wife, she was sitting at the kitchen table eating lasagne and salad, the pie next in line to be eaten, watching women in spandex jump around on the large plasma in the attached informal living room.
‘I thought you’d eaten with the kids,’ he remarked, after watching her for a while.
‘I did,’ she said, through a full mouth.
‘So why are you eating again?’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s almost eleven. A bit late to eat, don’t you think?’
‘You eat at this hour,’ she frowned.
‘Yes, but I’m not the one who complains that I’m fat and then eats two dinners and a pie,’ he laughed.
She swallowed the food, feeling like a rock was going down her throat. He hadn’t noticed his words, hadn’t intended to hurt her. He never intended to hurt her; he just did. After a long silence in which Ruth had lost the anger and built up the appetite to eat again, Lou joined her at the kitchen table, in the conservatory. On the other side of the window the blackness clung to the cold pane, eager to get inside. Beyond it were the millions of lights of the city across the bay, like Christmas lights dangling from the blackness.
‘It’s been a weird day today,’ Lou finally said.
‘How?’
