Wendy Perriam by Wendy Perriam Read Free Book Online Page B

plastic duck caged safely in its sponge-bag. Miss Lineham disapproved of toys.
    She met him at the front door. His quiet grey raincoat was neatly belted, his nails were scrubbed with coal tar; his trousers (never tight) were slightly damp around the turn-ups, where they had slipped from their hook on to the bath-house floor. “Good evening, Miss Lineham. It looks like a storm.”
    “Good evening, Mr Chivers. I’m afraid you’re wrong. The barometer is rising. Set Fair it says and Set Fair it’s going to be. Now, will you kindly go upstairs and wash your hands. I am serving supper early. Mr Gordon has most kindly invited me to see his exhibition and I have no wish to be late.”
    Mr Chivers paused by the fish-tank. The golden angel was spiralling lazily towards him, flaunting its outrageous tail, gills throbbing, mouth insolently open. He could see its topaz eyes smiling at him, smiling.... He turned away.
    “Yes, Miss Lineham,” he whispered. And went upstairs.

 
Moving
    SOLD.
    Elaine pushed open the kitchen window and stared up at the sign. The O became a howling mouth, shrieking out her grief. O for void, for loss. FOR SALE hurt so much less. FOR SALE meant time and hope - hope of a reprieve: a slump in the housing market, no buyers, no interest, Colin changing his mind, even.
    “God! I’m so relieved,” he said, suddenly coming up behind her and putting his arm round her waist. “Now I can sleep at nights.”
    And I can’t , she thought, banging the window shut. She detested the new place - its meanness, smallness, the vomit-coloured carpets, the roar of traffic from the road outside. The roar was swelling now in her head, even fifty miles away, threatening and discordant, and overlaid with the still insistent howls.
    “‘OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO….”
    “With any luck, we’ll exchange contracts within a month. The Lloyds are as keen as we are to get cracking,”
    “As you are,” she corrected silently. Not that he could hear. There was too much turmoil in the room.
    “Well, I’d better make a start on clearing up the cellar.”
    She had no intention of helping him with that . Even a glimpse of the cellar steps made her want to weep. She had fallen down them, thirty years ago, and not only broken her leg but lost her unborn twins. She had never managed to conceive again, despite endless tests and drugs. Since then, she kept her distance from the cellar, which had become Colin’s territory, along with the loft and out-house.
    “It’ll take me ages to sort it out. It’s stuffed to the gills with clutter.” He flexed his muscles, as if limbering up, before making for the door.
    She tried to imagine the clutter - piles of junk, broken tools, old boxes, all festooned with spiders’ webs, and the odd wasps’ nest in a corner. And patches of grey-green mould on the walls, and a smell of damp and decay. ‘While you’re doing that, I’ll go through all the china and glass and decide what to keep and what to chuck.’ If only she could leave everything exactly as it was - all the cups on their cup-hooks on the dresser; all the tumblers safe in the cabinet; the three china teapots (one in the shape of a house) stacked neatly in the cupboard, along with the soup tureen, the carving platter and the cereal bowls with the cockerels round the rim. She longed to shrink them all to doll’s-house size, so they would fit in the new flat; shrink the three-piece suite, the double bed, her generous desk with its six capacious drawers.
    She fetched a pair of steps and started on the highest cupboard, first taking down the avocado dishes, with their matching green-bordered plates.
    “Careful!” warned Colin, puffing back into the kitchen with a large cardboard box clutched against his chest. ‘Those steps don’t look too safe.’
    “‘What’s that?” she asked, peering down to look.
    “My coin collection.”
    “Coin collection?” Thirty-four years they’d been married, this November, and he had never, ever,