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

When the children came home from school she gave them fishfingers and chips for tea by way of a treat (their meals usually involved proper vegetables, which canned baked beans were not). They weren’t showing any particular signs of missing their daddy, she thought. And tonight she would allow herself no licence to indulge in silly fantasies about hatchet-wielding maniacs lurking in the garden. Just to show herself that she wasn’t scared, Wendy made a point of using the study as a shortcut when she went to check that the back door was locked.

She had thought that Bruce would ring and tell her how his day had gone, but he didn’t. Perhaps he was waiting for her to call and ask. After all, he knew she wasn’t really reconciled to the move. She decided it would be a nice gesture to take the initiative. It wasn’t quite ten; he wouldn’t have gone to bed yet.

Bruce’s mother answered. ‘Wendy? Is everything all right?’

‘Yes, perfectly, thank you. Can I speak to Bruce, please?’

‘He’s not in, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh.’ She tried to smother her disappointment. She could hardly have been expected to know that he wasn’t there, but she felt, foolishly, as if she had been caught out in not knowing.

‘He went out at about eight for a drink with some of his colleagues.’

Wendy noted the use of ‘colleagues’. It was the sort of word Bruce’s mother liked. It gave her son status to be consorting with ‘colleagues’, rather than just the chaps he worked with.

‘Was it anything important? Something Digby and I could help you with?’

Digby. Wendy thought for perhaps the millionth time what a good thing it was that Bruce’s parents hadn’t been tempted to name their son after his father. ‘No. Everything’s fine. I just thought I’d have a quick chat, that’s all.’

‘Are you and the children all right?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Good, good. Well, I’ll tell Bruce you rang, shall I?’

‘Thank you, yes. Are you and Digby OK?’

‘Mustn’t grumble. Give our love to the children, won’t you? Tell them how much we’re looking forward to seeing them.’

But not to seeing me, Wendy thought, as she exchanged farewells and rang off. She had never quite forgiven Bruce’s mother after overhearing her telling Digby, ‘Of course they don’t realize that Wendy isn’t really common. It’s just that everyone talks like that up there.’

Bruce telephoned her on Tuesday evening. He was in a call box and their conversation was preceded and then punctuated by the sound of him shovelling more coins into the box at the prompting of the pips.

‘Why are you ringing from a payphone? Aren’t you at your mother’s?’ Wendy asked.

‘I’m at a pub. I bumped into some old friends last night and they invited me to come out for a drink.’

‘Well, I’m so glad you’re enjoying yourself.’

‘There’s no need for sarcasm, darling. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be allowed to go out and enjoy myself? It’s only a sociable drink with some people I haven’t seen in quite a few years. Is there something wrong up there? Has something upset you?’

‘Oh, not at all. I suppose I should count myself lucky that you’ve bothered to ring. You didn’t find time last night.’

‘For goodness’ sake! I’ve barely been down here two days, what on earth do you think I had to say? And I have to think of Mum and Dad’s phone bill. Long-distance calls are expensive, you know.’

‘I’m sure you could offer to pay them for the cost of the calls.’

‘You know they’ve refused to accept anything for having me here, which means I can’t start freeloading by spending half the night on their phone.’

‘Well, that’s typical of your mother. She refuses to take any money but will make an issue of the phone bill. Don’t you see what a clever way that is of limiting your calls home?’

‘Don’t be so silly. The way you talk about my mother, anyone would think she was an ogre. Anyway, I didn’t think I was expected to ring you every night.’

‘Naturally, I don’t expect you to think of us when you are so busy enjoying yourself.’

‘Oh really, Wen—’ Bruce’s voice was drowned again by the incessant mechanical demand for further payment. He had either run out of patience or run out of change because this time the pips ended in the distinctive burr of a dead line.

On Wednesday evening he called from his parents’ house, and after a perfunctory exchange he had Wendy call the children to the phone, one at a time, to talk to him. On Thursday they merely confirmed the arrangements for his weekend visit home. By then she was regretting their spat. It couldn’t be easy for him, settling into a new job while moving back in with his parents, where there would be a thousand and one pinpricks and irritations for an adult accustomed to having their own place and ordering their life in the way they wanted it.

She planned his Friday evening homecoming carefully. Supper for two at the kitchen table, with candles lit and a bottle of wine, to be finished in front of a log fire in the sitting room. She would put fresh sheets on the bed. Everything would be made just right for his weary arrival home after the long drive, and on Saturday they would do something nice together, the whole family. A walk perhaps, or a visit to the cinema.

She had already made most of her preparations for supper when he called her late on Friday afternoon to say that the car had developed a fault and the garage could not get the part they needed until the following morning. On Saturday he phoned again, hours after she had thought him already on the road, to say that the garage had been let down over the delivery of the part and, as a result of this further delay, he was only just setting off. An accident blocking two lanes of the motorway created yet another hold-up, so that by the time