Monday and Tuesday I was away seeing clients. I stayed away on the Monday night, after all there was nothing to go home for. I stayed away on the Tuesday night as well, but that was a little more unplanned.
I had phoned Greg Dickens of ITP, with the intention of meeting him and beginning to build some relationship with him which I thought was vital to the project. I reminded him that he had intended to buy me lunch, how about it now? His idea was that he would buy me dinner, but only if I could promise to make it late enough and alcoholic enough to warrant him staying in a hotel. OK, I said, somewhat dubiously, but he was the customer.
I needn't have worried. It turned out that he was a happily married man with two young children. But his wife was away visiting her father in Scotland, as he had just come out of hospital. Her mother had taken the opportunity to come and stay with Greg to look after the children. Unfortunately, his wife's mother and father were divorced, and this ex-wife took every opportunity to tell Greg all that was wrong with his father-in-law, and how her daughter shouldn't be visiting. Greg was in need of a break, an excuse to be away for the night.
So we went out to an excellent, and expensive, dinner at ITP's expense. Followed by an evening drinking and ending up in a lap-dancing and pole dancing club. Neither of us bought any lap dances, but Greg and myself got very drunk and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. I do remember Greg and myself pledging our life-long friendship to each other somewhere between the club and the taxi rank at about two o'clock in the morning.
I woke up with a horrible hangover, but feeling relaxed. That boys' night out was as good a stress buster as a visit to the gym. It just killed more brain cells.
I got back to the office mid-morning on Wednesday. I sat at my desk drinking a cup of coffee when Dave came in. He looked at me "Good night last night?" he asked, smiling.
Why do guys always enjoy their friend's hangovers? "Yes. Educational." I responded.
"What did you learn, other than alcoholic beverages give you a hangover?"
"I don't think I wish you to pursue this line of enquiry. But I have one of my own. Are you busy at the weekend?"
"Might be. Why?" he looked at me suspiciously.
"Because I need your body." I smiled "Mainly to help me carry crates and boxes and some furniture. I'm going to move into a flat down on River Mead."
"Class! Sure, I'm not doing anything particular. Maddy and me have had a parting of the ways. When?"
"I'd heard. Sunday?"
"Sure. What time? Who told you?"
"How about eleven o'clock. Then we can shift one load and take a pub lunch as a well deserved break. It should only take two runs in all." I chose to ignore his other question.
I phoned Rose to tell her I was ready to sign the lease for Blindside. Apparently it was in her office, waiting for me. So I went along at lunchtime and signed. So simple, so quick, a new phase of my life opens up.
Later in the day I went to find Mr Jameson, the office superintendent. I explained to him my problem, and within half an hour he was back in my office asking for my car keys, so that he could put a set of crates into it.
Then I phoned a van hire company, and booked a van for the weekend. It was a lot cheaper than I was expecting, which made a change.
Back home that evening, I started the job of packing up my clothes and the things that were obviously mine. I was surprised at how easy it was. Not a single heart string was plucked, it was a job to be done and I got on with it.
Thursday came and went in the office. I worked a bit late, but got back to the house by seven-thirty. As I came in the front door I was aware of a different atmosphere. The odd picture missing from the walls, the crates packed with clothes lined up in the hall. It was becoming just a house, slightly denuded of personal history.
I shut the front door. Then I thought, it would be more welcoming to Beth if I left it open. But then again, if it was shut she would have to knock or use her key. I wondered which, so I shut it. Beth pressed the bell at two minutes to eight, with her hands full of bags and holding a casserole dish. "Sorry I knocked, I couldn't get my keys out. Take this, there's more in the car."
Once in the hall, she looked round at the crates, at the bare patches on the walls, her face fell to sadness. She looked at me and her eyes filled with tears, she sniffed and straightened, "I've brought coq-au-vin, it just needs heating through." And she headed for the kitchen.
She busied herself in the kitchen, determinedly not looking at me. I watched her for a while. She may not be the most beautiful woman in the world, but she pressed my buttons. I was aware how graceful, she was, how her breasts moved softly under her summer dress, how her neck looked soft and vulnerable as she filled saucepans with water at the sink. But I was also aware that she was a total mystery to me.
I broke my own daydream to break the ice, to mention the unmentionable, "It seems like half a lifetime since we were both in this kitchen. I've come to think of that day as Fateful Friday." It was my half hearted attempt to be light about the core of our pain.
Beth looked round at me "It's a good name." she said quietly. Her eyes said so much more about hurt, remorse, and sadness.
"Have you decided what you will do? Are you going to come back here?"
"Yes, I guess so. I have no where else to go. Life with Mummy and Daddy is so full of things not being said, I think I'd rather be here by myself."
"How did they take it?" I asked
"Well, Daddy hasn't found a way to talk about it, yet. It'll take him a couple of weeks, but then we'll sit down for a heart to heart, but only when he has something to say."
"And your mother?"
"Ah. She's a bit more of a problem. She's happy to talk about it. In fact she talks about little else when we're alone. But I don't mind that, because I'm thinking of nothing else anyway. But she's promised not to interfere, but she would love to. So she sort of prowls round the edge looking for a place to jump in and help. She has a great belief that she can make it better, sort it out for me. Yet she is the one who really condemns me for what I did, she is very black and white about that. So it's a bit mixed with her." She looked at me and shrugged.
"Well, I guess that's what mothers do. I hear she's invited Phil and Denny over on Sunday." I thought I would let her know that I knew.
"Yes. I think its part of her prowling. She's just seeing if there's a way in through them. But don't worry about it, she knows that she's not allowed to really interfere, Daddy will stop her." She had plates and cutlery in her hand "Shall we eat in the dining room. This may be the last time we eat together in this house?"
"No. Let's eat in here. I'm not in the mood for formal dining." I answered.
She put the plates down on the kitchen table, and started arranging the cutlery. I went and picked up a bottle of wine from the rack and opened it. I got the wine glasses out of the cupboard, and put them on the table. She moved the salt and pepper to the table from the cabinet where they're stored. We worked in some familiar, choreographed ballet. We didn't talk.
Eventually she announced that it was ready. We sat down opposite each other.
"I thought I might take the small television, and I have to admit I'm tempted to take the hi-fi if you're sure you don't want it." I opened with the discussion we were here for.
"Oh do. Take want you want, Tim. I meant it. I know you'll leave me enough to live with. Are you going to take any furniture?"
"Well I'll take that little antique bureau that came from Mum and Dad. I was thinking about that coffee table that we lost up in the spare bedroom, it doesn't go with this house and it might go in my new living room. But, other than that, I don't think so. Oh, I might take the laundry basket from the bathroom if it doesn't worry you, and some of the lamps."
"Oh Tim, I don't understand why you have to go." She started to cry and took a sip of wine to distract herself.
"It just hurts too much to live here. On Saturday, I opened the bedroom curtains and it was a beautiful day, and it all came flooding back to me, that afternoon when I saw you and Ken. Their swimming pool was staring back at me and laughing. It was a sort of day-mare. It was horrid. Everything I look at, everything I touch reminds me and I can't go on living with that."
She sat and listened to my answer, and then considered it. "I can understand that. But, in some perverse way, I think I would like to be surrounded by things that remind me of what we had. Going back to live in my old bedroom with Mummy and Daddy was like going back to a time before you existed to me. I need to have our things around. I guess it will fade in time."
"Well, I know it is actually fading with me already" I said that to comfort her, that we would both come through the pain, but then I realised it sounded that I was moving away from her, which I was, but tonight wasn't the time to say that, so I went on "You know that picture you gave me for my birthday, the one that you smuggled home from that long weekend we had in January?"
"Yes, it's in the sitting room, or have you moved it?"
"No, It's still there. When I came back from viewing this flat, and knowing it represented something clean, that would take me away from the pain of you and Ken, well I looked at it and it seemed to represent all that had gone wrong. I still loved it as a picture, but you must have bought it way back in January, after I'd raved about it in that window. You smuggled it back in the car with me there all the time. That seemed so loving and thoughtful Then you gave it to me on my birthday, and by then you were in the middle of your affair with Ken. Well, I thought that there was no way I could take it to the flat. But, I looked at it last night, and I thought 'It's just a picture, a picture I like, I'd be a fool to lose it just because of what you did.' So I'll take it. I'm over hating it."
"You are sure that we can go on talking, trying to rebuild something even after you move, aren't you Tim?
