The Skeleton Tree by Diane Janes (reading women TXT) 📕

sprung it on you like this. We’ll find another house which you’ll like even better than this one, and you’ll soon make lots of new friends. There will be all the usual things, I expect. PTA and coffee mornings and such like. It’s not as if it’s a completely new area to both of us. We can look up some of my old friends. Most of them are married now. Then there will be the other wives from work. We’ll be doing a bit of entertaining. That will help you get to know people.’

‘What sort of entertaining?’

‘Oh, the odd buffet supper, things on sticks. Just the usual. The type of stuff that Ray and Jan lay on when we go there.’

‘But Jan’s a brilliant cook!’

‘You don’t need to be brilliant to put cheese and pineapple on sticks.’

‘Jan has never given us cheese and pineapple on sticks. What was that thing she gave us last time? Something Maringo?’

‘It was chicken, wasn’t it? Sweetheart, the sauce probably came out of a packet. You should be flattered. It was partly because of you that I got the job at all.’

‘Why? What do you mean?’

‘Well, John Crimmond approves of you tremendously. Ideal company wife, capable of putting on a bit of a spread, chatting to the other wives, being supportive and keeping the home fires burning. Now Keith Tulley’s wife Marianne, you see, she’s a career girl, might cut up rough about moving in case it affected her job.’

‘But everyone just assumes that I will move without any fuss.’ Her tone was bitter.

‘Well, you haven’t got a job, so obviously we’re mobile. Good Lord, Wendy, lots of families have to move about the country – the world, even – at regular intervals. It’s not as though it’s going to cost us anything. The firm will cover all our relocation expenses.’

‘It’s going to cost me my home.’

‘Is that all you can think about? This precious bloody house? You can be very selfish at times.’

‘And I suppose you’re not being selfish at all? Uprooting the whole family just because it suits your work.’

‘Can I remind you that it’s my work that keeps this whole show on the road?’

She paused then, thinking guiltily of her status as a non-working wife, the expensive gift at Christmas, a day spent at the county archives while the dust in the study built up, and the bumper crop of carrots from her father-in-law’s allotment sat waiting to be made into something for the freezer. ‘I expect you’re right,’ she conceded. ‘It will all be for the best in the end.’

‘Of course it will.’ He leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

She accepted the kiss then turned to face the sink, not wanting him to see the deceit in her eyes.

We live in a scary world. People go missing every day. Some of them turn up, some of them are never seen again. But they can’t pin it on you without a body. That’s always been my assumption. My hope.

TEN

February–April 1981

Wendy was surprised at how well the children took the news of the impending move. It was probably because of the way Bruce had sold the whole scheme to them – in the guise of a great big adventure, she thought. He wasted no time in putting The Ashes on the market, and booked a week’s holiday from work to coincide with the children’s half term, with the intention of devoting the time to house-hunting. To Wendy’s considerable annoyance, Tara decided at the last minute that instead of accompanying the rest of the family to Leicestershire, she preferred to go and stay with Robert in Solihull.

‘But I want you to be part of choosing the new house.’

‘What’s the point? I’m going to uni soon and in future I’ll be spending half my holidays with Bob and Mel. Anyway, I didn’t help choose this house. You just said we were buying it and that was that.’

Nor did Wendy relish the prospect of a week with her in-laws in Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Her fears were well founded. By Wednesday night she and Bruce were exchanging sharp, if muted words, in the privacy of their bedroom.

‘Can you please ask your mother to stop feeding the kids a constant diet of sweets and chocolate?’

‘It’s only for a week. It’s not doing them any harm.’

‘She’s only doing it to undermine me.’

‘Don’t be so silly.’

‘Yes, she is. True to her usual fashion, your mother is indulging the children to a ridiculous degree, with the result that Jamie in particular is playing us all off one against another and generally behaving atrociously.’

‘Jamie has picked up on the atmosphere you have helped to create and is taking advantage of it.’

‘What do you mean “the atmosphere I’ve helped to create”?’

‘Well, you aren’t exactly being cooperative, are you?’

‘I am being extremely cooperative. I have spent the last fortnight keeping The Ashes spotless and showing people all over it like some kind of tour guide, followed by the last three days being driven from one new development to another, looking around house after house.’

‘You might at least pretend to be enthusiastic.’

‘I am doing my best, Bruce, truly I am. But after the first half-dozen developments, one Laurels or Westmoreland starts to look very much like another. The children have lost interest completely, and today they just ended up racing around, squabbling about who’s having which bedroom.’ She faced him in a direct appeal. ‘The houses are all starting to look the same. This afternoon we found we were looking at a design we’d seen yesterday on another estate. Honestly, I’ve got to the stage where I’m not even sure we aren’t looking at the same houses we walked round the day before.’

‘And none of them are right,’ he said, with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice. ‘In one the kitchen’s too small, in the next one the kitchen space is adequate but the bedrooms don’t suit, and so it goes on.’

‘I’m trying to be constructive. You said we didn’t have to make