A Spot Of Bother

54

At four o’clock the following day Katie made the mistake of saying to Jacob, “Well, buddy, half an hour and we’ll head back to London.”

Cue tears and high-volume wailing.

“I hate you.”

“Jacob…”

She tried talking him down but he was winding up for a big one. So she put him in the living room and closed the door and said he could come out when he’d calmed down.

Mum caved almost immediately and went in, saying, “Don’t be mean to him.” Two minutes later he was eating Maltesers in the kitchen.

What was it with grandparents? Thirty years ago it was smacking and bed with no tea. Now it was second helpings of pudding and toys on the dining table.

She packed the car and said goodbye to Dad. When she told him Mum was going to the doctor he looked petrified but she’d run out of sympathy several hours back. She kissed him on the forehead and closed the bedroom door quietly behind her.

She manhandled a thrashing Jacob into the car and Hey presto, as soon as he knew resistance was futile he slumped backward, silent and exhausted.

Two and a half hours later they pulled up outside the house. The hall light was on and the curtains were closed. Ray was there. Or had been.

Jacob was in a coma, so she lifted him out of his seat and carried him to the front door. The hallway was silent. She hefted him upstairs and laid him down on his bed. Maybe he’d sleep through. If Ray was lurking she didn’t want an argument while ministering to a waking child. She slipped his shoes and trousers off and put the duvet over him.

She heard a noise and went back downstairs.

Ray appeared in the hallway carrying the blue holdall and Jacob’s Spider-Man rucksack from the car. He paused, briefly, looked up, said, “Sorry,” then took everything through to the kitchen.

He meant it. She could see. There was something broken about him. She realized how rarely she ever heard someone say sorry and mean it.

She followed him and sat down on the opposite side of the table.

“I shouldn’t have done that.” He was nudging a ballpoint pen round in little circles with his finger. “Running off. It was stupid. You should be able to go out for coffee with who you like. It’s none of my business.”

“It is your business,” said Katie. “And I would have told you-”

“But I would have been jealous. I know. Look…I’m not blaming you for anything…”

Her anger had vanished. She realized that he was more honest and more self-aware than any member of her own family. How had she not seen this before?

She touched his hand. He didn’t respond.

“You said you couldn’t marry someone who treated you like that.”

“I was angry,” said Katie.

“Yeh, but you were right,” said Ray. “You can’t marry someone who treats you like that.”

“Ray-”

“Listen. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the last few days.” He paused, briefly. “You shouldn’t be marrying me.”

She tried to interrupt but he held up his hand.

“I’m not the right person for you. Your parents don’t like me. Your brother doesn’t like me-”

“They don’t know you.” Those three days alone in the house she’d been glad of the space and the quiet. Now she could see him walking out for a second time and it terrified her. “Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with them.”

He narrowed his eyes a little while she was talking, letting it wash over him like the pain from a headache. “I’m not as clever as you. I’m not good with people. We don’t like the same music. We don’t like the same books. We don’t like the same films.”

It was true. But it was all wrong.

“You get angry and I don’t know what to say. And, sure, we get along OK. And I like looking after Jacob. But…I don’t know…In a year’s time, in two years’ time, in three years’ time-”

“Ray, this is ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” she said.

He looked directly at her. “You don’t really love me, do you?”

Katie said nothing.

He carried on looking at her. “Go on, say it. Say, ‘I love you.’”

She couldn’t do it.

“You see, I love you. And that’s the problem.”

The central heating clicked on.

Ray got to his feet. “I need to go to bed.”

“It’s only eight o’clock.”

“I haven’t slept for the past few days. Not properly…Sorry.”

He went upstairs.

She looked around the room. For the first time since she and Jacob had moved in she could see it for what it was. Someone else’s kitchen with a few of their belongings pasted onto it. The microwave. The enamel bread bin. Jacob’s alphabet train.

Ray was right. She couldn’t say it. She hadn’t said it for a long time now.

Except that it was wrong, putting it like that.

There was an answer, somewhere. An answer to everything Ray had said which didn’t make her feel selfish and stupid and mean-spirited. It was out there. If only she could see it.

She took hold of the ballpoint pen Ray had been playing with and lined it up with the grain of the tabletop. Maybe if she could place it with absolute accuracy her life wouldn’t fall apart.

She had to do something. But what? Unpack the bags? Eat supper? It all seemed suddenly pointless.

She went to the sideboard. Three plane tickets for Barcelona were sitting in the toast rack. She opened the drawer and took out the invitations and the envelopes, the guest list and the list of presents. She took out the photocopied maps and hotel recommendations and the books of stamps. She carried it all to the table. She wrote names at the top of all the invitations and put them into the envelopes with the folded sheets of A4. She sealed them and stamped them and arranged them in three neat white pagodas.

When they were done she grabbed the house keys and took the envelopes to the end of the road and posted them, not knowing whether she was trying to make everything come out right by positive thinking, or whether she was punishing herself for not loving Ray enough.