had come spilling out, even before they sat themselves down at the table – about how helpful Marjorie had been in the shops and how they’d decided she should take them over now that Eric wanted to retire – it was all laid bare.
Phil had turned an unpleasant shade of red, and had made it clear in no uncertain terms that it simply wasn’t on. Neither he nor Marjorie would be able to take over the shops, he’d told them; he had to go to Bristol in accordance with his employers’ wishes, and that was that. Redundancy? Not for him, and he couldn’t have afforded to take it anyway.
The pie was cut but no one enjoyed it. Marjorie had sat stony faced, Sheila pink and embarrassed, while Eric expressed his feelings at length and grew so agitated that he drank his wife’s glass of wine by mistake as well as his own, and then helped himself to more. In the end Phil had to run them home in his own car because his mother’s health prevented her from walking even the two blocks back to their house, and his father’s swimming head prevented him from driving them himself.
Marjorie snatched up her book once more, Phil’s return being heralded by the dull thud of a loose paving stone beneath the bedroom window. Propping the book open against her knees she tried to focus on the print. Perhaps, if she took no notice of him, he’d give the matter a rest. She’d made it clear that his plans didn’t suit her; he just needed time for the fact to sink in.
But he couldn’t leave the subject alone. He came into the room, walked round to her side of the bed and sat by her legs. She could no longer ignore him because she had to shift her balance on the mattress.
‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’ he asked after a while.
‘Tell you what?’
‘About working for Dad all this time.’ He gave an incredulous gasp as though he still couldn’t take it in. ‘What did you think you were doing?’
‘What do you think I was doing? Helping out, of course.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant, what did you think you were up to, not telling me about it? I realised you helped my mother a lot, but I had no idea you were working practically full-time for my father too. You’ve made me look such a fool.’
Marjorie bunched up a piece of frill on the edge of the duvet cover, her hands beginning to tremble with suppressed anger. Could he think of nobody but himself? And couldn’t he at least give her credit for the way she’d managed to pack so much in to each day? She’d obviously succeeded in making him feel as pampered and cosseted as he always had been – not an easy task on top of doing everything else – otherwise he’d have noticed something amiss.
‘I always meant to tell you. I would have done … but it’s your own fault, really. If you’d been more reasonable, where your father’s concerned … And anyway I was bored with being at home all day. Couldn’t you see that?’
‘You never said you were bored.’ He sounded miffed; insulted that being his wife hadn’t been fulfilment enough for her.
‘What would you have done if I had? Suggested I join the Women’s Institute? I already belonged to that. And the Housewives’ Register. And the PTA when the girls were still at school.’ She gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘These things are all very well, Phil … Oh, I suppose I just outgrew them. I never meant to work for your father. It just sort of happened one day when he needed some help with his VAT.’
A weary sigh whined from him. ‘It’s made everything so much worse!’
Getting up from the bed he walked over to the window and looked out. Marjorie had been loath to close the curtains against the setting sun, but the huge orange ball had dropped behind the houses opposite some time ago and it was dark. Nevertheless, Phil still stood looking out.
‘Fancy coming up with this crazy idea of taking over the shops! Don’t you think you should have consulted me before putting impossible notions in Dad’s head?’
‘What’s crazy about it?’ She thumped her fists into the duvet. ‘And why should it be impossible?’
‘Well –’
‘You’re surely not implying that I’m incapable.’
‘I didn’t say that, now did I?’
‘You didn’t need to. It’s what you were thinking, though, wasn’t it?’
‘I hadn’t actually got that far. What I’m saying is … well … that you can’t.’
‘Well, of course I won’t be able to now. Not if you insist on taking me to Bristol. But I wasn’t to know about your plans beforehand, was I?’
‘I didn’t mean that, and you know it.’
‘No?’ Marjorie was lost. ‘Well, what do you mean, then? I don’t get it.’
But as she glared into his face she saw, to her astonishment, that he’d adopted the taut, pitying expression that she recognised all too well. It was the one that came upon him only rarely, at such times as he could not avoid the usually unmentioned subject of her parents’ demise.
Marjorie’s mother and father had died from carbon monoxide poisoning fifteen years previously. A faulty water heater had been responsible, although Marjorie had never been able to look at it that way. She saw it as largely her fault and constantly blamed herself for not being in the right place at the right time.
To add to the horror of it all it had been Marjorie’s misfortune to discover them. She had called round to see them one Saturday morning with some school photographs of Becky and Em. Fortunately the girls had not been with her – they were out doing ‘ballet and tap’.
Certain that her parents would be at home she hadn’t even taken a key. She had knocked and rung with no result and eventually spotted them through a window at the side of the house. The tableau was one that would for ever be printed on her mind: the pattern the sun was making on the black and white tiled floor, the day’s post half-opened on one of the work-tops, two untouched cups of coffee on a wooden-handled tray, and the horribly familiar clothes that the two inert figures were wearing as they slumped together by the back door.
Later it was realised that the key had been removed from the keyhole, probably for safety reasons following a spate of burglaries in the area, and hidden under the biscuit tin. If Marjorie’s parents had ever been conscious of their possible fate, the locked door and the missing key had effectively sealed it.
But, Marjorie now wondered, if this is what Phil was thinking about, what had it to do with her ability to run the shops? Unless … was he alluding to the fact that she had had a breakdown after the event? A perfectly understandable breakdown, surely, under the circumstances? And if so did he really think it had any bearing on her present-day capabilities?
It proved to be the case as his next remarks showed.
‘The responsibility. The stress. The long hours …’ he was saying.
‘But I’ve been doing most of the work for months!’ Oh, how exasperating he could be at times! He stifled her with his over-protectiveness. It was like being a child not allowed to grow up. A prisoner driven mad for escape. ‘Phil, I really don’t need molly-coddling like this. That was fifteen years ago. Just because I cracked up a little then, doesn’t mean I can’t handle a bit of stress. A certain amount of stress is
