Same Time Next Week

Chapter 24

Amanda had taken half a day off to take her mum to an MOT appointment with her GP, Dr Clitheroe. Ingrid put the doctor on an adjacent pedestal to Bradley. Just being in his presence had the power to heal any ailment she had, like Jesus. Ooh yes, doctor, I’m feeling fine. Yes, fit as a flea. Yes, I’m managing to feed myself well and get about. When they were leaving, Amanda did a sly turnabout, pretending she’d left her phone in the consulting room, and grabbed the doctor to tell him about her mum saying more and more strange things. He told her to keep her eye on it and if it got any worse, then to make an appointment where they’d have a chat with her, an informal test to see if it highlighted that she might need a referral to the memory clinic.

For the whole of the journey home, Amanda was subjected to the many attributes of Dr Clitheroe. Then somehow the subject slipped to Bradley, as it usually did, and how well he’d done for himself, and Amanda wondered if she ever talked to Bradley like this about her. Oooh our Amanda’s done brilliantly. She’s got a really good job and a lovely little house that she’s paid off. She knew, of course, that it didn’t happen.

She picked them up some sandwiches from the bakery and a cream doughnut for Ingrid and left her watching her afternoon soap while she started a deep clean on the house. She emptied the cupboards in the kitchen and scrubbed the fridge out, feeling ashamed that she hadn’t noticed how bad things had got. There was some cheese tucked in a slot in the door that was covered in mould and tins in the cupboards that were well over a year past their sell-by dates. That her mother’s cleanliness standards had slipped was a massive indicator of a decline; she’d always taken such pride in having a floor you could eat your dinner off.

Upstairs, Amanda moved the bed as far as she could to clean up the dust underneath. She noticed in her mum’s wardrobe that some of the clothes in there had dribbles of food on them, as if they’d been hung up after wearing and not put in the washbasket, which was empty apart from some tights and pants. She took all the ornaments off the cabinet next to the window so she could shift it to get behind it. There must have been a rotting floorboard because as she was vacuuming, she found that the carpet sank in the corner. Maybe that’s why her mum put the unit there, to cover it up. She thought no more about it as she put everything, now wiped down, back as it was, before moving on to tackle the bathroom. There was a smell in there that she associated with old people, of mustiness and wee, which she hadn’t detected before. She traced the second to the bathmat and the former to the towels hanging over the radiator that she guessed hadn’t been changed in a while.

Before she left, she asked her mum if there was anything else she could do for her. Did she want her bills checking?

‘They’re all on direct debit. There’s nothing for anyone to do,’ said Ingrid. ‘I’m not that infirm that I can’t keep my house in order.’

It was heartening to hear. Maybe her recent confusion was a blip; Amanda hoped so. Just because she was physically weakening, it didn’t mean she was losing her mental abilities at the same rate. She didn’t want to think of her mother starting to slip away from her. A mother she’d never really had as much as she’d wanted to in the first place.

There was a Chloe Cardinale with a Facebook page but it was set to private, so Mel couldn’t see what she looked like and she could hardly drive back to Saran Sykes’s salon and ask. Even ringing her was out of the question, because she just wanted to bury the whole encounter and pretend they’d never met. Chloe Cardinale . She sounded as if she’d looked like Sophia Loren, with thick dark hair, eyes like cocoa beans and generous, kissable lips. She looked on Saran’s page again at the reunion photos but couldn’t see anyone that fitted that description. She couldn’t find anything else, no Insta, no Twitter or whatever it was called these days, no LinkedIn. It probably wasn’t even her name any more, if she was married. Or maybe she had blocked Mel in advance just in case she went snooping for her.

She rang Steve again, but it went through to voicemail. She’d seen enough lady-psycho films to realise that if she kept phoning she’d end up looking unhinged and give him all the ammunition he needed to stay away. So she texted; a reasonable message, she thought.

I know about Chloe Cardinale. I think we need to sit down and talk.

She added:

You fucking cruel nasty twat bastard

Then she deleted that last line and pressed send. Should she have put a kiss on the end? She wished she had. She always put a kiss on; not having one was significant. Why was she having to think this deeply? Would Steve be sitting there thinking, Should I answer my wife? What will be going through her head if I don’t ? What does that lack of a ‘x’ mean on her message?

She thought about ringing Finn or Andy who worked for him, but that wouldn’t have been fair, putting them on the spot. They may not even have known. There was no one she could call. The team at work were great but they certainly weren’t close enough to talk to about this and besides, she didn’t want them to know in case it all blew over. They talked about the weather and the odd awkward customer, or how their teenage kids’ heads were stuck in their phones; they didn’t talk about cheating lousy painter-and-decorator husbands dipping their paintbrushes in other women’s tins.

She picked up a book and tried to read to give her head a break, but the words rebounded off her brain and wouldn’t be taken in. She made herself some scrambled eggs and toast and ended up throwing them in the bin. She felt as raw as if someone had ripped the top layer of her skin off and she had to move around in air that was full of salt. Everything hurt. She sat down at the kitchen table and sobbed. Great gulping weighty tears, with streams of snot that she just let run down her chin unchecked. She was just sitting there like a melted candle when the front door opened, closed and seconds later Steve strolled into the kitchen. He looked at her and then looked immediately away and Mel moved quickly to do a repair job on her face with her hands wiping and flicking wildly. Of all the states to catch her in!

She rose to her feet and then froze. ‘Steve,’ she said, unable to think of anything else because she had no idea what his appearance meant. He had his smart black jeans and a polo shirt on, so he hadn’t been working. She hadn’t seen that top before. It had the Armani logo on it; had he bought it to impress her ? Who cares, he was back; nothing else mattered. A smile of hope flickered on her lips, to be quickly extinguished by his next words.

‘Look, I’m not stopping,’ he said, unable to meet her eyes. ‘I know you… know . I think we both need some space.’

She didn’t need any space. She’d had less than twenty-four hours of it and it had nearly killed her.

‘I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. I didn’t know whether to ring the hospitals or if you’d been mugged or crashed…’

He rolled his eyes as if she was being dramatic for effect; he clearly hadn’t thought about it from her point of view at all. He turned and left the room.

‘Steve, what’s going on?’ She followed him up the stairs and into the bedroom where he took out a case from under the bed and starting loading underwear from his drawer into it.

‘ Steve ,’ she pleaded. ‘Stop, just stop a minute. You have to tell me what’s going on, I’m in pain.’

It sounded histrionic, manipulative even, though she hadn’t planned to say it, it just came from the place that was whirling with confusion, like a tornado, ripping up her insides.

‘I can’t talk now,’ he said, moving to the wardrobe and throwing tops and jeans, trousers, shoes into the case. She tried to stand in front of him to stop him and he puffed out his cheeks impatiently.

‘I’ll talk soon, but not now, okay. Just…’ He flapped his hands about in a ‘back off’ gesture.

‘Steve, this isn’t you. Please, just give me a couple of minutes…’

He carried on scooping, pressing down on the clothes so he could get more in. Then he zipped up the case and heaved it off the bed.

‘Don’t leave me this way,’ she said, sounding like a really shit version of the Motown hit. She had to go at half the pace he did down the stairs because her knee was throbbing: stress could cause a flare-up, she knew, and the last time she’d had stress this bad was when her mum died. By the time she’d hobbled to the bottom, he was opening the door. She threw her whole weight against it to shut it.

‘No, you don’t, not until you tell me what’s going on,’ she said, sounding deranged, even to herself. ‘Whatever it is, we can sort it.’

‘Please, Mel, just let me go.’

‘Is it a mid-life crisis? Is it a daft fling and you don’t know how to undo it, is that it?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. The hardness had left his voice. She thought he was softening.

‘Steve, I love you.’

‘Don’t, Mel.’

He reached round her, pulled the handle and she was jerked away from the door as it opened.

‘I’ll be in touch, I promise,’ he said, skirting past her. Then, just as the door closed, he said, ‘I’m sorry.’ She couldn’t read what sort of sorry it was, even though she played it back over and over again in the hours that followed. Sometimes she imagined it was I’m really sorry I’m doing this to you, forgive me. Other times, I’m sorry I pulled the door a bit hard there and sent you flying. But mostly it was just something that had come out of his mouth that had no more content than a mere full stop.