Same Time Next Week

Chapter 18

Mel and Steve bickered in the car on the way home. They never really argued, they always managed to sort things out before they got to that stage, but still, by their marital standards, this was as close to a proper row as they’d ever come.

‘I didn’t really want to go out, that’s why I’m off as you keep saying,’ he’d thrown at her. ‘I’m knackered.’

‘I thought it would be nice.’

‘You said that already.’

‘And you said that already.’

‘What do you want me to say? Okay, it was all right tonight. Fantastic steak, amazing chips, magnificent eggs.’

‘Then you should have told your face.’ You sarcastic arse, she didn’t add.

‘Oh please, Mel, let’s not… I’ve got stuff on my mind, okay?’

She turned her head to look at him. ‘Like what? Tell me, then.’

‘Just stuff I need to sort out for myself.’

She slid from being annoyed with him back to worrying, but she forced herself to keep a rein on it because fussing would drive him underground. They had no money worries, he had plenty of work on; she really hoped it wasn’t something to do with his health, but she’d just have to wait it out until he was ready to tell her. And worry herself stupid in the meantime. She slipped into fifth gear and they cruised home in silence.

In bed, he kissed her goodnight as usual and turned over. She was just trying to close off her thoughts when he said, without the heated sarcasm of earlier, ‘It was a nice place tonight. Nice meal.’ And she knew he’d been thinking about what a crank he’d been and this was his way of apologising without actually saying the words.

‘Good. I’m glad you enjoyed it, Steve. We’ll have to go back again and try something else on the menu.’

He didn’t say that they would or wouldn’t, but she felt better for him making the effort to end the evening on a conciliatory note and it allowed her brain to shut down and she slept.

In the morning, she was half-asleep when he left at six and she stirred when he kissed her on the cheek and said, ‘Goodbye, Mel.’ And just before she fell back into her deeper sleep, she thought that he never usually did that when he had an early.

Sky had taken to always having a chair lodged up against her bedroom door handle. Every little noise and creak would lift her from sleep, and there were plenty of those since Wilton had moved in. He had the tread of a dinosaur on the floorboards and put the telly on too loud and she was sure it was to provoke a reaction, so she didn’t rise to the bait.

He was a very strange character. He’d once hinted to Katy that if she ever needed some extra money, he knew of a way and she hadn’t asked him for details but had extricated herself quickly from his company. They’d both joked that he probably still lived with his mother and dressed up in her clothes. Sky couldn’t imagine that if it had been she and Katy who had both left and it was Jordan who now lived here alone, he would have moved in then. But until her remaining five months were up or she won the Lottery, she was stuck without a way out. The sale of those ten bears was a welcome injection of cash into her bank account but it wasn’t enough to allow her to walk out and write off all that rent she’d paid Wilton and the bond he owed her. Maybe she’d have to get a different job, something banal, nine to five that paid more and just do the bears in her spare time. It was a beyond sobering thought.