3. Molly
Chapter 3
Molly
M olly pulls off the sticky tape, folds another empty cardboard box flat and stretches her aching back. She’s sorted out everything in the kitchen and the bedroom now, plates and cutlery, a toaster, a kettle, far too many glasses, assorted towels and duvet sets, some of it still in its original wrappings and untouched since the wedding, having been stored in her parents’ attic while it waited for a home to be absorbed into. And now she’s made a start on the less important stuff. The old CDs, the paperback books, the ornaments she doesn’t really like all that much but can’t bear to part with. She takes a long look at the big glossy wedding photo in its ornate silver frame, the one where she and Jack are shrouded in a fluttering cloud of multicoloured confetti and the only one that managed to capture them both laughing at the same time, and places it on the small shelf above the fireplace, edging it along just a fraction to make sure it’s exactly in the middle, and wiping it over with a duster.
‘Time for a break,’ she says out loud, although there’s nobody listening.
They have been here precisely six days and there hasn’t been time yet to do a big shop but they’ve already had three takeaways, and there’s a little shop called Rick’s on the corner that never seems to close. She wonders when Rick actually gets to sleep as it’s always him there by himself behind the counter. He sells a small selection of food and booze and sends his son out to deliver the newspapers every morning, and so far he’s managed to provide most of whatever they’ve needed. Right now, what Molly needs are biscuits.
She opens a packet of chocolate digestives and nibbles at one, before she’s even finished making the coffee to dunk it in. It’s boredom, she tells herself. All this nibbling is her way of passing the time, comfort eating to help fill the void that leaving home, and her job at the little bakery-cum-café in the next village, and everything she knows, has created. So far, she’s been living in jogging bottoms with elasticated waistbands and floppy oversized T-shirts, her long hair scrunched up into a messy ponytail. Not much need to dress up when all you’re doing is pulling stuff out of crumpled boxes, scrubbing the bathroom, wiping dusty surfaces and running down to the corner shop to top up on snacks and pick out something for dinner. Good old Rick. What would she do without him? Still, she can tell the weight is starting to pile on. Perhaps, once she’s had her coffee, she’ll venture further afield, find a proper greengrocer or a butcher so they don’t have to keep living out of packets and tins and polystyrene cartons.
They haven’t brought a car with them, mainly as there is no parking near enough that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg and Jack has assured her that everywhere either of them is likely to want to go – his office, restaurants, pubs, theatres, perhaps an occasional bit of sightseeing – is easily accessible by public transport. And no drinking and driving to worry about either. Jack’s brother, Richard, has bought their old banger from them. A car like that won’t mind getting muddy, he says, so it will be useful around the country lanes. And Jack laughs, saying that the old car is still doing its bit and helping get him to work every day, as the money he got for it will pay for his travel card for a couple of months at least. To him, this is all one big adventure.
Still, Molly knows that if she’s going to explore what’s right here in their new neighbourhood, the real day-to-day stuff, she will have no real option but to walk. The exercise will do her good anyway. And the fresh air, if she can find any in London, where the air always feels so much more clogged with traffic fumes than she’s used to. Oh, for a whiff of cow dung or a freshly cut field of hay!
Molly eats four biscuits before forcing herself to stop, tipping the rest of the packet into a tin and hiding it away in a cupboard. She pulls her hair loose and runs a comb through it, changing into a pair of jeans and struggling to do up the zip. The biscuits really will have to go. And if she does as Jack suggests and gets back into cake-making, God knows what all that recipe-testing and spoon-licking and picking at stray raisins will do to her waistline. No, if this move really is to be their brand-new start, then things will have to change. She will have to change. She can’t allow herself to just sit here doing nothing but knit and bake, watch TV and get fat while Jack is out there meeting new people, making a career for himself. He is already slipping further and further away from her. She can feel it. He’s moving in a different world, his ambition soaring, changing him in ways she can hardly understand, while she stays exactly the same. Go-getter and home-body, that’s what they are. Town mouse and country mouse. Chalk and cheese. She knows she could lose him. Is probably already losing him.
She closes her eyes to try to stop a tear escaping. When did they last actually make love? Properly make love, not just go through the motions before rolling over and going to sleep, back to back? When did he last look into her eyes and tell her he loves her?
Leave him too long among all those career women in their pencil skirts and high heels and made-up faces and he will stop looking at her altogether, she’s sure of it. He thrives on challenges and excitement and power, and she has none of those things. She no longer knows how to reach him, how to give him what he needs, how to hold on to him.
But they are here together, aren’t they? He didn’t come alone, didn’t leave her behind. They are married and they come as a pair. Equal partners. A team. Team Doherty.
For the last few months everything has been about what Jack needs. A change of job, a new home in a new town, a change of scene. He had so badly needed something to stop him exploding with frustration, the chance to grab at something that had been out of reach for too long. He couldn’t turn it down when it came. And she couldn’t be the one to ask him to. So, here they are. Not quite so equal right now, but she can change that, can’t she? He has what he wants and now she can concentrate on what she wants, what she needs, for a change. But what does Molly need? Has either of them even stopped to wonder?
She locks the door of the flat, its crumbling blue paint a stark reminder that this is not really a proper theirs-forever home. It’s just a rented place, where someone else is responsible for the maintenance, for sweeping the communal stairs, for replacing the lightbulbs in the hall.
She walks down to the ground floor, steps out into the noisy street and looks both ways. Left or right? It hardly matters, as it’s all new territory and she has no idea what she’s going to find either way. She plasters a smile on her face and strides out, in the opposite direction to Rick’s for a change, her shoulder bag swinging against her side. It’s a sunny morning and after only five minutes she comes across a little park, tucked back from the main road. It has benches and rose bushes and is edged by trees. She sits for a while and lets the traffic noise subside, concentrating solely on the sound of the birds tweeting on a branch above her head. She can smell the grass, recently mown, and for a moment she can almost convince herself she is back home, in the countryside, where her heart belongs.
This is London and everything feels just a little bit scary and alien right now, but the truth is that it can’t actually be so bad here. It’s the same sun shining above her, after all, and the same birdsong she can hear, the same earthy smell oozing out from the grass. And the village is still there, just a few hours away. Home. It’s not as if they’ve come halfway round the world. They haven’t emigrated, crossed oceans, cut all ties. They can still visit, call, pop back for a weekend, anytime. The old life is not going anywhere. It’s all still there. But the new life is here, and she has to give it a chance.
They will make a go of things. They have to. Jack’s job will go well, they will settle and save, and then they will move onwards, upwards, own their own home one day. A proper home. Probably not the roses-round-the-door country cottage of her dreams, but at least they will be together. She has to let herself become a part of this new place, embrace this new life. Open her arms and her eyes to it. Move with him, not against him.
All Molly needs now is a purpose, something to restore her confidence in herself, something to do .