Like the morning coffee, golf was a relatively new thing too. He had mooted the idea in late spring and, before she knew it, he was off to the course every Saturday. Della could understand the appeal of certain aspects: being outdoors on a bright, breezy morning in the company of friends. But the actual game seemed lacking in action, in her opinion. The ones she enjoyed were of the fast, shouty type: quizzes and board games played at Christmas, with dishes of nuts and crisps, and a glass of chilled white wine to hand. The kind of games that didn’t require a whacking great bag of clubs to be dragged around on wet grass for four hours. Fifteen clubs, Mark had amassed, at the last count. Couldn’t he make do with three or four? (Although Della knew she could hardly quiz him about this, now that she owned 962 cookbooks.) He had also bought golf shoes, a visor, a peaked cap, an umbrella and a special towel for cleaning his clubs. Where hobbies were concerned, Mark was an accessories person.
She swung out of bed and caught him glancing at her body as if it were somehow inappropriate for her to stroll naked across their bedroom. When had he started looking at her that way? At some point, without her really noticing at the time, he seemed to have started regarding her like a mildly irritating housemate. She couldn’t remember the last time they had been out to dinner together – or kissed properly, like lovers – and now, with Sophie about to leave home, this was something she had to address. Of course it was possible to feel close again; they would soon be undisturbed, completely free to do whatever they wanted. She pulled on her towelling dressing gown and belted it tightly, lest it should flap open and, God forbid, some flesh should be exposed.
Mark’s newest acquisition – a gleaming putter, for practising his shots on their bedroom carpet – was propped up beside the door. It was wearing a little black leather hat. ‘Very saucy,’ Della had remarked when she’d first seen it.
‘It’s to protect the head,’ Mark replied, deliberately missing her attempt at a joke. She padded to the bathroom. Of course he needed an outlet, she decided under the shower’s invigorating blast, being faced with gnarly old feet every day of his working life. All those verrucas, calluses and fungal toenails: no one consulted Mark Sturgess if they had perfectly pretty, well-functioning feet. And never mind the visual aspect: the smell, she imagined, must bother him sometimes. ‘You get used to it,’ he’d said, soon after they’d met when, rather immaturely, she’d asked whether particularly stinky feet ever made him feel ill.
Della glanced down at her own feet in the shower. They were well tended, although by her and not Mark. If anything, he seemed averse to hers – although perhaps that wasn’t so surprising. Expecting him to lavish attention upon her recurring corn would be like being married to a chef and demanding that he rustle up dinner for her after a gruelling shift at his restaurant. When she’d experienced a more serious problem – plantar faciitis, a painful inflammation of the sole and heel – he’d merely told her to rest it, adding, ‘For God’s sake, Dell, don’t go running anymore. It’s not for you. You’re not built for speed.’
Ouch, that terrible phrase! As if she were an ageing carthorse ready to be shunted off to a sanctuary to spend the rest of her days munching oats. She surveyed her pillowy stomach as water cascaded down it, and told herself she was merely voluptuous, like those luscious ladies in Renaissance paintings – not fat. A few months ago she had taken up running with Freda, who was enviably lithe and supple and only accompanying Della for moral support. Della had been determined to lose weight, to fit into the dress she had in mind for her fiftieth birthday party: foxy, drapey, in a brilliant cobalt blue. She had already bought it, confident that by the time she shed a few pounds, it would fit her perfectly.
Buying a dress to slim into: by her age, she should have known better. The plantar issue had soon put paid to running and the dress had still been too tight; now, three months after her raucous party in the King’s Arms, Della was a generous size 16. She turned off the shower. ‘I’m off in a minute, okay?’ Mark called out from the landing.
‘Okay, love.’ By the time she had briskly dried herself and stepped back into their bedroom, the shiny new putter – and Mark – had gone.
The sky was pale grey, and it was drizzling, but poor weather never put him off a Saturday game. With Sophie still to emerge from her room, the house felt still and quiet as Della dressed in the semi-uniform of cream shirt and knee-length black skirt that she was encouraged to wear for work. Four days since Kitty’s funeral, it was her first day back at the shop. She was ready for it, for catching up with her colleagues and putting on her public face, and while she wasn’t too keen on her rather staid outfit, Della strongly believed in the transformative power of make-up. At seventeen, she had discovered how a little colour could bring her rather nondescript face to life, and even now she still experienced a glow of pleasure on applying her customary flicks of black eyeliner, plus two coats of mascara to give her naturally lavish lashes an extra boost. Della’s eyes were startling – a deep chocolatey-brown, like Sophie’s. She twisted up her favourite lipstick – Estee Lauder, a gorgeous red. Della loved its name: Impassioned. Ha, she thought, carefully outlining her lips with pencil before slicking it on: that was a joke. She pictured Mark glancing at her naked body just twenty minutes ago, as if he dearly wished she still wore her fleecy PJs, buttoned up to the neck.
Anyway, Impassioned was now perfectly in place and Della was ready, if not for passion, certainly for selling plastic jewel-encrusted swords to excitable children in the castle shop.
‘You awake, darling?’ she called through Sophie’s closed bedroom door.
‘Mmmuh,’ came the muttered reply.
Della gave the door a polite knock and pushed it open. Sophie was in bed, dark hair fanned across her pale cheek. ‘I’m off to work, love. Back just after five.’ Della paused. ‘Actually, no, I think I’ll pop down to Gran’s after work, just check everything’s okay.’
‘Mmm, all right …’ Sophie said sleepily.
‘Dad’s golfing, but he should be home early afternoon. There’s fresh pasta and a pot of sauce in the fridge. Could the two of you have that for dinner?’
‘Yeah, no problem.’ A pause, then Sophie turned slowly towards her, as if the movement required gargantuan effort. ‘Are those books still there?’
Della frowned. ‘You mean Gran’s cookbooks?’
‘Yeah.’
‘They are, love, unless we’ve been burgled during the night, and Dad probably would’ve mentioned that on his way out.’
Sophie chuckled. ‘’Cause obviously, they’re the first thing a burglar would take.’
‘You might be surprised. We could be sitting on a goldmine, you know.’
‘Yeah, well, better keep them for me then, for when I’m living in a garret with nothing but bread and … what was that stuff again?’
‘Margarine?’
‘No, the meat grease.’
‘Oh, you mean dripping.’ Della laughed.
‘Yeah, dripping in a garret. I’m really looking forward to that.’ Della glanced once more at her sleepy daughter, then around the messy bedroom with its bold magenta walls. Mark had conceded that Sophie could choose her own paint colour, probably as he was so rarely in the room. In fact, most of the magenta was concealed by wonkily Blu-tacked posters depicting bands Della knew only vaguely, plus an arty one (a scratchy illustration of a girl’s head with crosses for eyes).
‘Mum?’
Della turned back to her daughter. ‘What, love?’
‘Stop pulling that face. I know what you’re thinking. Evie says her mum’s the same.’ She smiled cheekily, and Della felt something twisting inside her.
‘What