was as predictable as a Masonic handshake. One of his favourite sayings was ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it’.
Samantha emptied the last of the bottle into her glass and imagined making love to the boy on the screen. Her breasts looked better in a bra these days; they spilled everywhere when she lay down; it made her feel flabby and awful. She pictured herself, forced back against a wall, one leg propped up, a dress pushed up to her waist and that strong dark boy with his jeans round his knees, thrusting in and out of her…
With a lurch in the pit of her stomach that was almost like happiness, she heard the car turning back into the drive and the beams of the headlights swung around the dark sitting room.
She fumbled with the controls to turn over to the news, which took her much longer than it ought to have done; she shoved the empty wine bottle under the sofa and clutched her almost empty glass as a prop. The front door opened and closed. Miles entered the room behind her.
‘Why are you sitting here in the dark?’
He turned on a lamp and she glanced up at him. He was as well groomed as he had been when he left, except for the raindrops on the shoulders of his jacket.
‘How was dinner?’
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘You were missed. Aubrey and Julia were sorry you couldn’t make it.’
‘Oh, I’m sure. And I’ll bet your mother cried with disappointment.’
He sat down in an armchair at right angles to her, staring at her. She pushed her hair out of her eyes.
‘What’s this all about, Sam?’
‘If you don’t know, Miles—’
But she was not sure herself; or at least, she did not know how to condense this sprawling sense of ill-usage into a coherent accusation.
‘I can’t see how me standing for the Parish Council—’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Miles!’ she shouted, and was then slightly taken aback by how loud her voice was.
‘Explain to me, please,’ he said, ‘what possible difference it can make to you?’
She glared at him, struggling to articulate it for his pedantic legal mind, which was like a fiddling pair of tweezers in the way that it seized on poor choices of word, yet so often failed to grasp the bigger picture. What could she say that he would understand? That she found Howard and Shirley’s endless talk about the council boring as hell? That he was quite tedious enough already, with his endlessly retold anecdotes about the good old days back at the rugby club and his self-congratulatory stories about work, without adding pontifications about the Fields?
‘Well, I was under the impression,’ said Samantha, in their dimly lit sitting room, ‘that we had other plans.’
‘Like what?’ said Miles. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘We said,’ Samantha articulated carefully over the rim of her trembling glass, ‘that once the girls were out of school, we’d go travelling. We promised each other that, remember?’
The formless rage and misery that had consumed her since Miles announced his intention to stand for the council had not once led her to mourn the year’s travelling she had missed, but at this moment it seemed to her that that was the real problem; or at least, that it came closest to expressing both the antagonism and the yearning inside her.
Miles seemed completely bewildered.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘When I got pregnant with Lexie,’ Samantha said loudly, ‘and we couldn’t go travelling, and your bloody mother made us get married in double-quick time, and your father got you a job with Edward Collins, you said, we agreed, that we’d do it when the girls were grown up; we said we’d go away and do all the things we missed out on.’
He shook his head slowly.
‘This is news to me,’ he said. ‘Where the hell has this come from?’
‘Miles, we were in the Black Canon. I told you I was pregnant, and you said — for Christ’s sake, Miles — I told you I was pregnant, and you promised me, you promised—’
‘You want a holiday?’ said Miles. ‘Is that it? You want a holiday?’
‘No, Miles, I don’t want a bloody holiday, I want — don’t you remember? We said we’d take a year out and do it later, when the kids were grown up!’
‘Fine, then.’ He seemed unnerved, determined to brush her aside. ‘Fine. When Libby’s eighteen; in four years’ time, we’ll talk about it again. I don’t see how me becoming a councillor affects any of this.’
‘Well, apart from