door after him. I could see his expression, knew his face would be grim, his mouth narrow.
My stomach tightened at the thought, and I quickly left the car park. I needed to get home.
* * *
? ? ?
Our house looked dim and unwelcoming under the cloudy sky. Automatically, I parked in my regular spot on the road outside the house and quickly looked around. There was no sign of anyone. I’d made sure I was home before my neighbor Oliver arrived. Usually, he and I got back from work just after six and we’d have a chat there on the path between our houses before Tom came home. I was glad he wasn’t there that afternoon, but worried he might turn up at any time. I didn’t want anyone to witness this.
I reversed my car up the driveway to the garage, then went through the garden gate at the back of the house. I opened the kitchen door and listened, but the air was still and all was quiet. I took the key to the shed from its hook and went back outside.
For just a second, when I was unlocking the shed, I held my breath, my stomach tilting at the thought of what I was about to do.
Two large suitcases stood there, just where I’d put them at eight o’clock that morning. Quickly I moved them into the trunk of my car, checking the driveway each time in case I was disturbed. Another bag followed: my cabin bag that I’d bought for my last trip abroad. I hadn’t thought then that I’d use it for this journey, too. Then there were other bags that I’d put in the shed that morning containing towels, bed linen, my hair dryer and toiletries. My laptop. None of my books were there; I didn’t have room in my car to take them. I’d pick them up another day. Last to go into the trunk was a box file with all my documents: my birth certificate, our marriage certificate. Deeds to the house. Insurance. Bank statements. My passport. It had surprised me how much I’d had to take and how much I’d been able to leave. Each time I put a bag into the trunk, I closed it afterward, just in case. I was being paranoid, I knew. Tom wouldn’t be here just yet. I had more than an hour to go.
When everything was in my car, I rearranged the shed so that it didn’t look as though the bags had been there and quickly swept the tiled floor, in case there were tracks in the dust. Then I moved my car. There was space for a couple of vehicles on our driveway, but one had to park behind the other and it could be a nuisance trying to get out in the morning. Long ago I’d gotten used to Tom’s having priority. Now when I parked back on the road outside our house, I noted the irony that by doing something that he’d told me to do, I was able to easily escape.
Back in the house, I put the shed key on the hook by the back door, and stilled it with my hand. I didn’t want anything to give me away.
The kitchen was clean and tidy. It was a large room with French doors that looked out onto the garden. The patio was a sun-trap and a riot of color with all the flowering plants I’d put into pots and hanging baskets. When we first moved in, this room and the garden had been my pride and joy. Back then I’d had fantasies of long lazy Sunday lunches with children running around on the lawn afterward, of Saturday-night dinners with friends, of late weekend breakfasts reading the newspapers in our dressing gowns and planning our day. Things hadn’t exactly worked out like that.
Gradually, insidiously, the kitchen had become the only room in the house that was truly mine. Even my books had been relegated to the spare room. But here I could do what I wanted, decorate it however I liked. Over the years, though, cooking changed from a pleasure to a chore, something I really enjoyed only when Josh, my teenage stepson, came to stay.
Standing in the kitchen for what might be the last time, I panicked and