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

into love-making, only to be coldly rejected. She had assumed it was his fault. He might say that it was hers – that she failed to stimulate desire in him, because she had grown too old and unattractive. She stayed where she was, trying not to cry.

When he drove south the following day, nothing had been resolved.

In the beginning, you think everyone will guess what you have done. You imagine that the guilty knowledge will shine out from your face, but it doesn’t happen like that. Lives are full of secrets, invisible burdens weighing each one of us down, some heavier than others.

ELEVEN

May 1981

When Bruce and the children had driven away for the Easter weekend the previous month, Wendy told herself it would be a wonderful opportunity for some peace and quiet, but Katie and Jamie had scarcely been gone a few hours before she began to miss them. She had equally anticipated spending some quality time with Tara, but when not dutifully engaged in her revision – even insisting that Wendy plate up her meals so that she could eat them up in her den – Tara would slip out to spend a couple of hours with her friends. One way or another, it was a huge relief when Bruce’s car finally pulled back on to the drive and the house was filled with childish noise and untidiness again.

After the Easter break, life fell into a regular pattern. Bruce came home at the weekends, and though he did not resort to the spare bedroom again, nor did he make any physical overtures in her direction. Fearful of outright rejection, Wendy accepted the invisible wall between them, and they lay chastely in their shared bed like siblings forced to share in an overcrowded house. All couples go through difficult patches, she reasoned. It would be different when they were not living under this strain of constant departures, engaging in stilted telephone conversations with the spectre of his mother listening in the background. At weekends they never seemed to be alone together. Bruce insisted on letting the children stay up much later than usual, because he said he didn’t get enough time with them anymore, and Wendy felt she could not argue with this, though she feared for the reinstatement of proper bedtime routines when the move to Leicestershire was finally made.

That particular horizon seemed no nearer. Certainly they were no closer to selling The Ashes. Viewings had effectively dried up. The agent said it was all the uncertainty over interest rates. However, when Wendy attempted to raise the possibility of a part-exchange deal on a new-build, Bruce seemed far less keen on the idea than he had been before. ‘You lose quite a bit doing it that way,’ he said. ‘And anyway, I thought you didn’t like any of the new-builds. We should leave things for the time being and see if a buyer for The Ashes comes along.’

His reaction made her wonder if he was being contrary on purpose. Hadn’t he been positively urging that they take this route only a matter of weeks before? She said nothing. She didn’t want to quarrel with him, because rocking the boat with Bruce would only upset things even further.

In the middle of May the agent rang to say that there were some people who wanted to see over the house – a Mr and Mrs Taylor. They were moving up from the London area and had already sold their property. Wendy said she was happy to show them around herself and an appointment was arranged for the same afternoon. She spent the next couple of hours getting the house to look its best, plumping cushions, tidying Katie’s bedroom, wiping down every surface in the kitchen in case of imaginary smears.

She watched the couple arrive from the window in the kitchen which looked up the drive. They paused partway along, looking up at the front façade while he said something to her and she nodded approvingly. That was good, Wendy thought. A positive first impression. The Ashes was living up to the photograph on the particulars. Just one couple who really liked the house – that was all they needed. And she wanted them to like it, of course she did. There was no future in carrying on the way they were.

She conducted them round the ground floor, not saying too much. ‘Never try to oversell the house to anyone,’ the agent had warned her. ‘Buyers are very wary of people who keep pointing things out. It makes them feel you might be trying to distract them from things you don’t want them to see. Just smile, answer any questions they have and let the house sell itself.’

‘The agent told us you haven’t lived here very long?’ Mrs Taylor sought confirmation as they crossed the hall from sitting room to dining room.

‘That’s right. We’ve owned the house for over a year, but we only moved in last July, when all the work was finished. We intended to stay long term, but my husband’s job has taken him unexpectedly south, so we have to sell.’

Mrs Taylor laughed. ‘That’s a bit like us. We’d no sooner finished doing up our place and Dennis’s job meant a move to the barren north. Not that our house was anything like this. You can get so much more for your money up here, can’t you?’

The Taylors nodded approvingly over the dining room and Mrs Taylor exclaimed in pleasure when they reached the kitchen.

They’re the ones, Wendy thought. At last, we’ve found our buyers. As she conducted them through the study, the utility room and out into the little courtyard, she imagined phoning Bruce that night to tell him they’d got a buyer. He would be so pleased.

‘You know,’ Mrs Taylor said, when they were standing in Jamie’s bedroom. ‘We wouldn’t need all these bedrooms. You could knock two of these upstairs rooms into one and have that full-sized snooker table you’ve always wanted.’

A cloud moved across