The Other Woman’s House (20 page)

‘I suppose we'd be able to ask the Beth Dutton people to turn down the volume of the bell, if it was a problem.'

‘The bell won't be a problem.' Kit sighed. ‘Your fear is the only problem.'

I knew he was right, and that there was only one way to solve it: I had to do what I was afraid of doing, and prove to myself that the world wouldn't end. Mum and Dad would come round, given time; I could visit them regularly. Them coming to stay with us in Cambridge was less feasible. Three years previously, Mum had been to Guildford to visit a friend. She'd had a panic attack on her second day there, and Dad had been summoned to fetch her home. Since then, Silsford town centre was the furthest she'd travelled.

‘So, what are we doing?' Kit asked me. We were sitting in his car outside Cambridge Property Shop's offices on Hills Road. ‘Are we buying this house or not?'

‘Definitely,' I said.

We cancelled the rest of the viewings we'd arranged for that day. Kit made an offer for 17 Pardoner Lane, and the estate agent told him she'd get back to him as soon as she'd had a chance to speak to the vendor.

The next morning I woke up to find that I couldn't move one side of my face. My right eye wouldn't squeeze closed – the most I could do was draw the top eyelid down like a blind and leave it resting there – and when I stuck out my tongue, it went to the left instead of straight ahead. Kit was worried I'd had a stroke, but I assured him it wasn't that. ‘It's what you said yesterday,' I told him. ‘Stress. Fear. Just ignore it – that's what I'm planning to do.' Fortunately, it wasn't immediately obvious to anyone who saw my face. Kit was far more worried about it than I was. I promised him that as soon as we'd moved and settled in to what we were both now calling ‘our' house, my symptoms would disappear. ‘You don't understand me like I do,' I kept telling him.
‘This is my brainwashed subconscious's desperate last-ditch attempt to make sure I spend the rest of my life worshipping the Fear God. I have to resist it. I don't care if my leg falls off, if I go blind, if I turn into a dung beetle – we're buying that house.'

The estate agent took a while to get back to Kit. When she finally did, after avoiding his calls and ignoring his messages for four days, she told him that another buyer was interested in 17 Pardoner Lane, and had offered more money than we had, more even than the asking price. ‘We can go higher,' Kit told me, pacing up and down the lounge of our Rawndesley flat. ‘What we can't do is go higher,
and
still be able to go out for meals, go on holiday…'

‘Then let's not buy it,' I said. After the initial plunge of disappointment, I felt a knot start to loosen inside me.

‘I'm willing to make sacrifices and tighten belts if you are,' said Kit. ‘We eat out a lot, and half the time the food's disappointing.'

‘That's because the restaurants we go to are in Rawndesley. In Cambridge the food will be better. Everything'll be better.'

‘So we can eat out once every couple of months, instead of once a week,' said Kit. ‘Any sacrifices we have to make, it'll be worth it, Con. We won't fall in love with another house, not in the same way. I'm going to ring and offer another five grand.' Five grand more than the other interested party had offered, he meant, which would be an extra twenty grand on top of our original offer.

‘No.' I intercepted him on his way to the phone. ‘I don't want this move to be any scarier than it already is. Let's look for a cheaper house, one we're sure we can afford.'

‘What are you talking about?' Kit was angry. ‘You'd give up on 17 Pardoner Lane that easily? I thought you loved it.'

‘I do, but…' I stopped when Kit pointed at me.

‘Your face,' he said. ‘It's gone back to normal.'

He was right. I hadn't even noticed. Tentatively, I touched my eyebrow, then my cheek. I stuck out my tongue. ‘Perfectly straight,' said Kit. ‘Whatever it was, it's gone. Two seconds of you thinking you're off the hook, and it went.' He shook his head. ‘Unbelievable.'

‘It can't be that,' I protested. ‘Even if we don't buy that house, we're still moving to Cambridge.'

‘In theory,' said Kit. ‘You can handle the theory. The reality – offering on a house, having that offer accepted, so that this move might actually happen – that has you paralysed with terror, literally.'

I had nothing but contempt for the woman he was describing. The idea that she was me made me so angry I wanted to gouge my own eyes out. ‘Ring the estate agent,' I said. ‘Go
ten
grand higher, and I swear to you, I'll be fine – absolutely fine. I won't have morning sickness, my face won't freeze…'

‘How do you know?' Kit asked.

‘Because I've decided. All that's over. I'm sick of being…defective. From now on, my will is reinforced steel, and it's going to spend every minute of every day kicking the shit out of my scared-child alter ego. Trust me – I'll be fine.'

Kit stared at me for a long time. ‘All right,' he said. ‘But I'm not upping the ante by ten grand when there's no need to. For all we know, five might do the trick.' He phoned the estate agent, who said she would get back to him.

The next day I was in the office at Monk & Sons when Kit turned up unexpectedly. ‘Why aren't you at work?' I asked him, then gasped. ‘Have we got it? Have we got the house?' I wasn't aware of any fear this time; there was no ‘but' in my
mind; I wanted 17 Pardoner Lane, pure and simple. I was excited, more excited than I've ever been.

‘The vendor accepted our offer,' said Kit. I tried to throw my arms round his neck, but he stopped me. ‘And then I withdrew it,' he said.

‘Withdrew what?' I didn't understand.

‘The offer. We're not moving, Con. I'm sorry, but…we can't.'

‘Why not?' Tears pricked my eyes.
No. This couldn't happen, not now
. ‘Have Deloitte…'

‘It's nothing to do with Deloitte. I'm worried that if we go ahead with this, you'll…I don't know, have some kind of breakdown.'

‘Kit, I'm absolutely—'

‘You're
not
fine, Con. Last night you were shouting in your sleep.'

‘No, I wasn't. What was I saying?'

He avoided looking at me. ‘Your hair's been falling out and you've been trying to hide it,' he said. ‘And…knowing the way your parents feel about us moving, I don't think we'd enjoy it. It's hard to live with the knowledge that you've made someone else miserable, especially when those someones are your mum and dad.'

‘That is such bollocks!' I hissed at him, leaning over to slam the office door so that no customers overheard. ‘
I
wouldn't be making them miserable – they'd be making themselves miserable because they're too
stupid
to realise that having a daughter move a hundred and fifty miles away isn't a terrible disaster! I'd rather they were happy about it, of course I would, but there's no way I'm taking responsibility for them not being!'

‘I agree, you shouldn't,' said Kit. ‘I also know you would.
You'd feel bad. It'd ruin things. We'd always have this…shadow hanging over us.'

I was sobbing by this point, horrified by what I was hearing, yet afraid it was the truth. If I moved, would there always be a voice in my head whispering that I had deserted my family?

‘I've been thinking,' said Kit. ‘There are ways of achieving what we want that don't involve moving away.'

I wondered if he'd lost his mind. Moving away was what we wanted, wasn't it? It was the only thing we wanted: to live in Cambridge. How could we achieve that from our flat in Rawndesley?

‘We could buy a house instead of renting – not in ugly Rawndesley, but in Spilling, or Hamblesford, or—'

‘
Spilling?
' I wanted to pull his head off his neck and kick it across the room. Did someone slit his skull open in the night and steal his brain? ‘Old ladies who play bridge and join the Rotary Club live in Spilling! I'm young, Kit – I want to have a proper life in a place that's got something going for it. I can't believe you're saying this!'

Kit's eyes hardened. ‘All kinds of people live everywhere, Connie. You can't generalise. Do you think there won't be bridge-playing old ladies in Cambridge?'

‘Yes, maybe – among the masses of students and…other exciting people.' I knew I sounded like a naïve country bumpkin; that was precisely the problem I was attempting to address with this move. ‘In Cambridge the stuffy old people can do their worst, and they still won't be able to stifle the place with their boringness, because there's a constant influx of new, interesting people, because of the university. I thought you wanted me to do a degree?'

Kit fell silent, turned away. After a few seconds, he said
quietly, ‘I'd
love
you to do a degree, but…God, this is so hard.'

‘But what? You don't think I'm clever enough? You don't think Cambridge University would have me?'

He spun round. ‘You think that's what this is about? Con, they'd have you in a hearbeat. I'd move to Cambridge with you in a heartbeat if I thought you'd be able to hack it, but…' He shook his head.

‘What did I say last night?' I asked him.

‘What?'

‘Last night – you said I was shouting in my sleep. That's what's made you change your mind, isn't it? Yesterday we were fine – we were buying 17 Pardoner Lane, at whatever price, outbidding the other buyer even if it meant eating nothing but cold porridge for two years. Remember? What did I yell in my sleep last night that made you want to forget all that and give up? Kit?'

He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb. ‘You said, “Don't make me go.”' He emphasised the word ‘make'. I understood why, and that it was his emphasis, not mine. Deep down, I wanted to stay put, he thought, and if we moved and I was unhappy I would hold him responsible, because he'd started the whole thing, with his too-good-to-refuse job offer from Deloitte. ‘You kept repeating it,' he told me. ‘You were begging me, Connie. Your eyes were open, but you didn't respond when I…You don't remember?'

I shook my head. Something inside me switched off. Kit and my subconscious were colluding against me. There was nothing I could do in the face of that sort of opposition. ‘What about Deloitte?' I said dully. ‘Your promotion.'

‘I'm going to leave Deloitte,' said Kit. He smiled. ‘I told you:
I've been thinking, readjusting. We both need to get out of a rut – we need something to get excited about, even if that thing's not Cambridge. So we're going to set up our own business. You can still work part-time for your parents if you want, but mainly you'll be working with me. You need more independence from your family – being there eight hours a day five days a week is too much. Your mum and dad need to see that you're capable of doing something that wasn't originally their idea, or your dad's dad's dad's idea. That'll help them to see you for what you are: a bright, capable, independent woman.'

I opened my mouth to tell him he couldn't decide all this without consulting me, but he was too quick, and was already describing the next strand of his plan. ‘We'll find a house we love –
really
love, even more than 17 Pardoner Lane. That won't be hard. That's one thing places like Spilling and Silsford have got over Cambridge – more unusual houses, more variety. In Cambridge almost everything's a brick-built terrace.'

‘I love 17 Pardoner Lane,' I said pointlessly. Now, for the first time and with startling clarity, it hit me that it was the perfect house, the only house I wanted, now that I was being told I couldn't have it.

‘You'll love the house we buy in the Culver Valley, I promise you,' said Kit. ‘If you don't, we won't buy it. But you will. And then, once our business is a runaway success, and we've got pots of money, and you've shown your parents that you can manage on your own, without the almost non-existent salary they pay you…'

‘I thought I'd still be working for them part-time,' I said. My leaving Monk & Sons altogether would bother Mum as much as the move to Cambridge would have.

‘At first, if you want to.' Kit nodded. ‘But once our business
really takes off, once we're clearing so much from it that, really, it'd be ridiculous for you to still be earning seven hundred quid a month or whatever it'd be as Monk & Sons' part-time book-keeper, then you'll just have to tell your parents you've got better things to do – say, “I'm sorry, Dad, but if I wanted to do voluntary work, I'd sign up with the Red Cross.”'

I couldn't help laughing. ‘So what's this hugely profitable business of ours going to be?' I asked.

‘Haven't a clue,' Kit said cheerfully, relieved that I was looking and sounding happier. ‘I'll think of something, though, and it'll be good, whatever it is. And, in five years' time, we can talk about moving to Cambridge again, maybe, or somewhere else – London, Oxford, Brighton – and you'll find you won't be half as scared then as you are now, because you'll already be well on the way to' – he mimed peeling something away from something else – ‘extricating yourself.'

‘That's why Melrose Cottage is so beautiful,' I tell Sam Kombothekra, whose eyes look glassy from listening to me for so long. He's probably drawing the conclusion round about now that no sane person would make such a melodrama of a simple plan to relocate to another part of the country.
Therefore I must be insane, and likely to hallucinate dead women in pools of blood on my computer screen
. ‘Melrose Cottage is the name of our house in Little Holling,' I add, in case he didn't notice the sign on the door.

‘It's certainly chocolate-box perfect,' he agrees.