a brand-new baby inside it. Now I want to fold it up and put it away. How can I have changed my mind like that?
‘What about the duckling sleepsuit?’ I press Dan, just to make sure he’s not concealing some deep, buried desire, which he’ll then reveal in some torrent of resentment when it’s all too late and we’re a faded, elderly couple staying by a lake in Italy, wondering where our lives went wrong. (We just did an Anita Brookner novel in our book club.)
‘It’s a sleepsuit.’ He shrugs. ‘End of.’
‘And what about the next sixty-eight years?’ I remind him. ‘What about the empty interminable decades ahead of us?’
There’s silence – then Dan looks up at me with a wry smile.
‘Well, like the doctor said … There are always box sets.’
Box sets. I think we can do better than bloody box sets.
As I arrive at the Bell for the quiz that evening, I feel fired up on all cylinders. I’m pumping with adrenaline; almost seething. Which, to be fair, is due to all sorts of things, not just dealing with how to be married to Dan forever (and then some).
Mostly, it’s my day at work which has got me agitated. I don’t know what’s happened at Willoughby House. No, scratch that, I know exactly what’s happened: the evil nephew has happened. I suppose what I mean is: I don’t know what he’s said to Mrs Kendrick, because she’s transformed overnight, and not for the better.
Mrs Kendrick used to be the standard-bearer. She was the fixed measure for what was Right, according to her. She just knew. She had her Way, and she never doubted it, ever, and we all abided by it.
But now her iron rod is wavering. She seems jumpy and nervy. Unsure of all her principles. For about half an hour this morning, she went wandering around the office as though seeing it through fresh eyes. She picked up the Box and looked at it, as though suddenly dissatisfied with it. She put some old editions of Country Life in recycling. (She got them back out again later; I saw her.) She gazed longingly at the fax machine for a bit. Then she turned away, approached the computer and said in hopeful tones, ‘A computer is very like a fax machine, isn’t it, Sylvie?’
I reassured her that yes, a computer was in many ways like a fax machine, in that it was a great way to communicate with people. But that was a huge mistake, because she sat down and said, ‘I think I’ll do some emails,’ with an air of bravado, and tried to swipe the screen like an iPad.
So I broke off what I was doing and went to help her. And after a few minutes, when Mrs Kendrick tetchily said, ‘Sylvie, dear, you’re not making any sense,’ Clarissa joined in too.
Oh my God. It eventually turned out – after a lot of frustration and bewilderment on everyone’s part – that Mrs Kendrick had been under the impression that the subject line was the email. I had to explain that you open each email up and read the contents. Whereupon she gazed in astonishment and said, ‘Oh, I see.’ Then when I closed each email down she gasped and said, ‘Where’s it gone?’
About twenty times.
She was getting a bit hassled by then, so I made her a nice cup of tea and showed her a letter of appreciation that had come in from a supporter. (On paper, written in ink pen.) That made her happy. And I know her nephew’s probably said to her, ‘Get with the programme, Aunt Margaret, and start using email,’ but what I would retort is: ‘For God’s sake, let her send faxes to all her friends, what’s wrong with that?’
He’ll be coming in again to ‘assess things’ apparently. Well, two can play at ‘assessing’. And if I ‘assess’ that he’s freaking his aunt out for no good reason, I’ll be letting him know, believe me.
(Probably in a nice polite email after he’s left. I’m not brilliant at confrontation, truth be told.)
I give my hair a quick smooth-down, then venture into the pub, already deciding that this was a terrible idea but there’s not much I can do about it now.
The place has been transformed for the evening, with a glittery banner reading ‘ROYAL TRINITY HOSPICE QUIZ’, and a little stage in the corner with a PA system. Groups of people are already sitting with glasses of wine and pints, peering