The Dream House (11 page)

The chicks and ducklings were next. Holly had stood quivering in silent, round-eyed joy as Debbie tipped a tiny yellow chick into her cupped hands. Then they had watched a dozen piglets running around in the sunshine whilst the huge sow lay snoring in a corner.

‘I bet she needs a glass or two of wine after getting that lot to bed at night,’ Kate said.

After visiting the gentle great shire horses, their manes and tails gaily plaited to show off to the holiday crowds, and the goats, who ate Holly’s bag of goat food, paper and all, the women had herded the children into the café for lunch. Now, four kids’ meals, two jars of baby food, two coffees and two packs of sandwiches later, Holly was out for the count and Debbie and Kate could finally have a proper conversation. Debbie and her husband Jonny, a freelance journalist, had moved to Suffolk five years before, so Kate had no hesitation in being honest about her own experiences of being a newcomer.

‘You know, I always thought it must be a myth, country people being kinder, but they genuinely seem to be, here,’ Kate mused.

Debbie threw back her curly head and laughed. ‘I think that’s self-preservation, actually. They’re probably no nicer or no meaner than anywhere else. It’s because everyone knows everyone. They daren’t say anything unkind in case it gets back to their victim that they said it. I hated that when we first came,’ she remembered. ‘How people talked about you behind your back. You’d meet a complete stranger, in the post office, say, and they’d know lots about you and seemed to think it was their right to find out more. Everyone kept asking about Johnny like he was a celebrity or something, just ’cos he writes for the papers. Things are changing, though,’ she added. ‘The locals are getting used to newcomers’ funny ways. Even in the last five years you can see there are more and more people like us moving here from London, demanding fast service and designer this and that. The shops are going upmarket, and you can’t get a plumber or a carpenter for love or money, there are so many incomers buying up property and throwing money around doing it up. It’s awful for local people, what it’s doing to house prices.’

‘Well, here we both are, adding to the problem. And on that selfish note, I just wish we had a property to throw money around on,’ Kate said sadly.

‘Have you seen nothing you like recently?’

‘Not really.’ Kate felt embarrassed to say that she had a vision of the house she wanted. The dream she’d had only twice sounded rather silly nine months later and in daylight. Since the Victorian rectory there had been hardly anything that they had both liked, and Simon had lost the energy for going round properties at weekends unless Kate was so keen on something that she forced him.

‘There must be somewhere you both like, Kate,’ ventured Debbie. ‘Shouldn’t you just take the plunge and go for something?’

Kate thought about it then said carefully, ‘You’re probably right. We’ve just reached a bit of a boggy patch about it. Simon’s so busy at the moment and I think the estate agents are getting fed up with us. But so much of the nice stuff is going to sealed bids. You have to be really motivated to get it.’ She would have liked to say more of what was on her mind to Debbie, but they were still new friends and she felt it would be disloyal to talk about Simon behind his back. She cast her mind back to last Saturday night’s argument and sighed.

She and Simon had just been to a potluck supper at the Samsons’ house in Fernley village. There had been another set of parents from Daisy and Sam’s school there, the Beatons, who farmed locally, and Louise Beaton, part of the swimming coterie, a thoroughly nice woman with thick-lensed glasses, had asked Simon whether the children were enjoying the school project they were currently finishing.

Simon had looked blank for a moment and Kate had been about to break in and remind him that it was about different modes of transport, when he had said with one of his charming smiles, ‘You’ll have to ask Kate, I’m afraid. That’s her department.’

Her department. He meant anything to do with the children. How patronizing! She was furious.

‘Well, I’m sorry, I can’t keep up with it all,’ he said as they walked the twenty minutes home, her arm through his, their flashlight showing up the potholes on the footpath. ‘I don’t know what they’re up to all day at school.’

‘That’s because you’re never there, are you? And you don’t seem very interested when I tell you on the phone.’

‘That’s not true. Of course I’m interested in what my kids do. It’s just . . . well, I’m up in Town working to pay for everything, aren’t I? And when we speak in the evenings I’m usually knackered. I can’t remember everything you say, can’t take it all on board.’

‘I’m sorry you’re up in Town working so hard.’ Kate’s tone was weary. ‘And that you feel you’re paying for everything. I’d work more if I could, it’s just it’s not easy. And there’s too much to do with the kids.’

‘Well, precisely. So the kids
are
your department now.’

‘Simon?’ She stopped and dropped his arm. ‘You make it sound like I’m second string. That we don’t share anything, that I’m not your equal. I hate that.’

‘I’m sorry, darling.’ Simon hugged her sheepishly, though she stood stiffly, her arms folded over her chest. ‘I don’t mean that at all. But it’s difficult to see how else the division of labour can be at the moment.’

‘Does it have to be like that?’ She relaxed and they resumed their walk. ‘Can’t you come home more often during the week? Get a job round here? It’s ridiculous. I miss you, and the kids miss you when you’re away all week. I don’t get to know all the little things about your day, and you don’t know all the things about mine. There just doesn’t seem to be enough time to catch up at weekends, and you’re always tired. I thought we had all these plans to do things together locally.’

‘I came tonight, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, and you enjoyed it, didn’t you?’

‘It was OK, yes. I wouldn’t say I had much in common with the Beatons, though. There’s a limit to what I have to say about sugarbeet subsidies.’

Kate couldn’t understand why Simon was being grumpy. He had been like this for the last couple of months and she had put it down to exhaustion. But now she thought there was something else. Simon obviously felt on the fringes of her life here. Debbie and Jonny and the Beatons were her friends and he did not share their world whereas she was beginning to do so. He just hadn’t settled down here yet – hardly surprising as he was so rarely around. He was always very good with the children at weekends. He would take them out to the beach in all weathers, to the little cinema in Southwold, was even happy to take a turn with the bedtime regime. But it was rare for him to meet the people she saw every day, and he’d had no time or energy to become involved in anything locally. It wasn’t exactly his fault, it was just a fact of life. She remembered with a shock what Claire had clumsily warned her about all those months ago. It was coming true. She and Simon were starting to inhabit different worlds.

Now, as Kate watched Debbie cuddling James, who had fallen and hurt his hand, she turned her situation over in her mind. It was partly the fact that one of them was working and one of them wasn’t. In London, both of them were contributing to the pot; now, she was Simon’s dependent. She had to ask him for housekeeping money and, although he never asked her to account for what she spent, from time to time he would frown when she asked for some extra and, she hated this most when the extra was for something for herself – shoes or a new coat, for instance. It made her feel she had to justify her existence, her right to have nice things, although at the same time, Simon seemed very keen that she wore stylish clothes, especially on the rare occasion when she was invited to something that involved his colleagues. Not only was she dependent on his money, she was living in her mother-in-law’s house, relying on her kindness. Not that Joyce would ever see it that way, she hastily told herself.

Her world and Simon’s were different geographically and culturally, too, with Simon in the City and herself in the country, and this meant that, daily, they were having completely different experiences. Of course, large numbers of couples lived like this and thought it normal, coped with the stresses. But it didn’t feel normal to Kate; it felt as though everything had changed, was falling apart. Suddenly, their marriage, previously a relationship of equals, was becoming a partnership between strangers. Simon was just never there, and when he was, they couldn’t seem to pick up with each other where they’d left off.

Suddenly, Kate felt quite panicky. Perhaps they had done the wrong thing in moving; perhaps they should go back to London before it was too late. Was the fact that they hadn’t found a house they liked a sign that, deep down inside, they both knew this move wasn’t to be permanent?

But I don’t want to go back
, a part of her said with great clarity.
I like it here
. She loved seeing so much of the children. She loved living in the country, watching the changing seasons, even if, as she joked to Liz on the phone, one of the things she missed most was having a lamp-post outside the front door plus the air smelled of pig manure and the nearest cappuccino was five miles away. She was starting to bed down here, to make friends locally. But she really must sort out something else to do, workwise. One of the mums ran a mail-order business for children’s clothing, another was making her own soap and selling it through local giftshops and craft fairs. Although neither of these things appealed to Kate, there must be something out there for her, if she thought about it for long enough.

‘Do you feel at home here yet?’ Debbie was asking her now, James having run back to play, his injury forgotten. ‘It took me a couple of years, you know.’

Kate felt a rush of warmth at Debbie’s tactful understanding.

‘I do miss my friends in London, I can’t deny it. We all lead such busy lives, it’s not as easy to see them as I thought it would be. I can’t always be hopping on the train up to Town – it gets a bit much for Joyce, looking after both the kids for long. Oh, it’s not as though people aren’t friendly here. They are – and you’ve been so lovely, Debbie.’ She squeezed the other woman’s shoulder affectionately. ‘But there’s nothing like people who know you deep down, is there? You don’t have to pretend with them, they know where you’re coming from, what’s giving you an off day, what makes you laugh. I worry about saying the wrong thing here sometimes.’

Debbie nodded. ‘Oh, I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘It still happens to me. Actually, the worst time was when I said to Laura Simpson – you know, Frankie’s mum? – didn’t she think Jenny, the receptionist at the surgery, could be such a pain? And it turned out she was Jenny’s sister. I’ve spent the last four years telling Laura every time I see her how nice and efficient the wretched woman is, even though she’s sour enough to turn the milk.’

Kate laughed. ‘Good thing my friend Liz doesn’t live round here. There’d be civil war in no time!’

‘Have you been up to see any of your old friends recently?’

‘No, but we’ve spoken on the phone and Liz and Laurence are bringing the family up for a weekend in the summer.’ Kate had taken Sam and Daisy up to stay with the Longmans during the February break. From there they’d gone down to spend a night with Kate’s parents, an occasion fraught with anxiety, as the Carters weren’t used to overnight guests. And she’d paid a visit to her old office. ‘I felt I didn’t belong there any more,’ she told Debbie now. It had been so alienating, seeing someone else sitting at her desk with her authors’ books on the shelves. And they’d changed the furniture round. Worst of all, it looked better this way. ‘I do miss work,’ she murmured, almost to herself. ‘God, what I wouldn’t give even to go to a meeting and negotiate with adults for a change!’

‘Me too,’ Debbie said. ‘Even a budget meeting with the managing director droning on about targets I couldn’t care less about.’ Debbie had worked in market research, which she’d given up without much regret when they moved. Her real interest lay in gardening, she had told Kate. Maybe she’d take a landscape gardening course once the children were a bit older.

‘At least there are more women who stay at home round here,’ Debbie went on. ‘When I go up to Jonny’s London parties sometimes, I feel so left out. All these smartly dressed confident women ask me what I “do”. How can I really get across to them what life is like here? So I just say, “I spend Jonny’s money”, and they laugh, but at least then I’ve got over the embarrassment.’

Kate admired Debbie’s air of confidence. Of course, she was lucky that Jonny worked at home and she saw so much of him, but Debbie didn’t seem to care what other people thought of her, or to worry about whether she was doing the ‘right thing’. It was a real gift to be at home in your own life, Kate thought. Hers felt like an ill-fitting suit at the moment.

The last eight months had been very strange. For a start, she hadn’t really known how to organize all these acres of time with which she’d found herself once the children had started school. At the office, she had been used to a list of tasks that had to be achieved, that could be ticked off one by one, even if more kept popping up to take their place. Being at home with two young children seemed an alarmingly unstructured affair. She was lucky that she had lots of help from Joyce, although after eight months of living with her mother-in-law, the strain was starting to show. Joyce was as chatty as ever, but not as relentlessly cheerful. Indeed, sometimes she seemed to Kate quite grim, especially as she surveyed the mess the children created or whenever she had to separate them when they were fighting. Last week she had even lost her temper with Sam.

‘You are an extremely disobedient little boy,’ Joyce had hissed at him after he had knocked a china goat off a shelf, chipping a horn. ‘I told you to put that sword down. If your daddy had done that when he was a little boy, he would have gone straight to bed without his supper.’

Sam had looked so shocked at his grandmother’s angry tone that Kate’s heart went out to him. Yet Sam
had
been naughty and she felt she had to back up her mother-in-law when Joyce said, ‘You’re not having any chocolate pudding for tea now,’ and turned her back on Sam.