Irritation started to buzz round his head. He swatted it away and checked the clock. It was half-past eight now. Surely Adele wasn’t still sleeping? Perhaps he’d better go and check she was OK.
He raced up the stairs, but slowed his pace as he neared their bedroom door. He smiled as he remembered the way she snored softly sometimes. It was so sweet. And it was strangely gratifying to know that perfect Adele had one tiny flaw.
But there was no snoring now. In fact, there was no sound at all.
He nudged the door open and blinked as he saw the room was unusually bright. The curtains were drawn and cold February sunshine lit up the empty bed. The covers were neatly in place and the elaborate arrangement of scatter cushions at the head of the bed was undisturbed.
His stomach bottomed out, just the way it had when he’d walked into the bedroom almost a year ago and seen the empty wardrobe, doors flung wide, hangers bare like autumn twigs.
Then he’d found the crisp, polite note saying she was staying at Mona’s and didn’t want to see him. He’d turned around and gone back to America, appalled his wife had bailed out on him so easily. At least he’d managed to persuade Mona to get her to move back into the house after he’d left.
He marched over to the wardrobe and wrenched the door open. Breath whooshed out of his lungs as he found the neat row of jackets, blouses and dresses—grouped by function and then by colour. If Adele found a pair of cargo trousers among her summer dresses, she’d get all itchy about it.
Now he was just plain confused. Adele’s clothes were here, but Adele wasn’t.
He turned and headed back downstairs and was just at the bottom step when he heard the front door open.
Adele jumped back, startled.
What the heck was going on?
Adele’s face turned a fiery red and she was unusually flustered.
A horrible thought scratched at the back of his mind to be let in.
‘Have you been out all night, Adele?’
She fumbled with the Sunday paper tucked under her arm. ‘I think that falls into the category of none of your business, don’t you?’
None of his…? The woman was priceless!
‘You’re still my wife!’
She refolded the newspaper and gave him a long, hard look. ‘Well, we can always do something about that.’
Nick saw an uncharacteristic flash of red behind his eyes. Seismic activity he was surprised she could still provoke after all this time. He stormed through the house, down the garden path and into his workshop, slamming the door behind him.
None of his business!
He should have stayed to have it out with her, but his feet had been moving before his brain had engaged. He didn’t feel much like going back into the house now, anyway.
Ethel, the shop mannequin he’d rescued from a skip, was still holding a pose in the corner of his workshop. At least she was predictable. Once upon a time, he’d have sworn Adele was too, but her refusal to compromise about his job had shattered that illusion. Like the dummy, he’d discovered she could be hard and cold in a way that had taken him totally by surprise.
‘What do you think my chances are, Ethel? I need a woman’s perspective.’
Ethel stared out of the window, her bright blue eyelids unblinking.
Nick sighed and fiddled with the soldering iron sitting on the bench.
‘Yeah. Thanks for nothing, babe.’
Adele was working on her laptop when Nick came to find her. She was still all jittery after their confrontation in the hall. She’d almost faltered—almost. But in the end she’d managed to pull herself together and Nick would never know how close she’d come to soothing his anger away with a kiss.
She tried to pretend she wasn’t aware of him standing in the doorway of the little box room they used as a study.
‘I’m busy, Nick,’ she said eventually, without looking round.
‘We’ve got to talk some time.’
She shrugged and tried to concentrate on the words on the screen. None of them seemed to be recognisable as English any more. She read a sentence for the third time then gave up.
‘OK. We’ll talk.’ She swivelled round in her chair and folded her arms. ‘Fire away.’
Nick shook his head. ‘Not like this. Let’s get onto neutral territory. How about I take you out to lunch?’
Once upon a time, she’d loved spending long, lazy Sunday lunches with Nick. They’d sit outside in the pub garden in summer and huddle up to the fire inside in winter. She didn’t want to be reminded of happier days, but he was right. They had to talk at some point and she might as well get it out of the way.
‘OK, but you’re paying.’
‘Of course.’
Nick flashed his dimples and Adele had the feeling she was agreeing to a whole heap of trouble.
‘What’s this all about, then, Nick?’
They’d sat through most of the main course talking about nothing. Whether that was a good thing or not, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that the small talk was getting to her and she had to know one way or the other. Her heart broke into a trot at the thought of the ‘D’ word that might come out of his mouth. Bizarrely, it was the last word she wanted to hear, despite the fact it had been the one at the forefront of her mind since last summer.
Nick played with a roast potato on his plate.
‘It’s Mum’s sixty-fifth birthday this year.’
Adele nodded. ‘I know.’ Then she frowned.
What was he up to? She leaned forward and tried to catch his gaze. He seemed to be absorbed in shepherding all his peas into a little pile with his knife.
‘How is Maggie?’
She’d been a bit of a coward on that front after Nick had left. Everyone knew she was useless at keeping up with correspondence and she’d hidden behind that as an excuse to keep contact with Nick’s family to a minimum. Yes, she’d dashed off the odd email and sent a Christmas card, but she’d avoided the messages on the answering machine, pretending to herself she was too busy with her work. In the last few months, everything had gone a little quiet.
The truth was, she was just plain scared. Scared, now she and Nick were no longer a couple, that maybe his mother and sisters would go cold on her. Just as her own parents had. She’d only been part of the family by default, after all. It had been easier to avoid anything deep than risk finding out her fears had some foundation.
He poked the pile of peas with his knife and sent them scattering. ‘You know Mum…’
Adele tried not to let the shame show on her face. She’d been a coward, plain and simple.
She knew Nick’s mother better than she knew her own. Which wasn’t difficult, seeing as the last time she’d seen her parents in the flesh was a good three years ago. But that was nothing unusual. It had been that way since they’d packed her off to boarding-school so her mother could flit around the world with her father as he moved from exotic location to exotic location with his job.
Maggie Hughes was the sort of woman she’d fantasised about having as a parent in her teenage years. Her house was always full of children and grandchildren, who complained constantly that she had her nose in their business just a little