Laura leaves home just after eight in the morning, to do her supermarket shopping. You have to get there early these days to be sure of a parking space. Her dinner party is up in the air, she has no idea any more how many she’s cooking for, it could be six, it could be ten, but what can you do? She can’t ask Maggie to make up her mind when she’s in mid-crisis. Carrie won’t answer her questions. She’d call the whole thing off except Roddy and Diana are coming anyway, and what reason could she give Liz and Alan? You can’t say you need to know exact numbers to proceed. That would be ridiculous. What sort of person can’t cope with a few last-minute adjustments to her plans?
A person like me. So much for being a leaf in the wind.
Waitrose is oddly comforting. She glides with her smoothly rolling trolley down the bright aisles and thinks, “This is grace abounding.” The words come into her mind unbidden. From where? Some hymn? Searching the shelves for Maldon salt and redcurrant jelly, she remembers that John Bunyan’s spiritual autobiography is called Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. First printed in 1668, twelve years before Pilgrim’s Progress, she handled the sale of a fine 1672 edition to Wheaton College, Illinois, for just over $50,000. Bunyan’s self-confessed sins were profanity, dancing and bell-ringing. It was one of her jokes at the time. What would Bunyan make of Waitrose? The grace of God transmuted into the promise of everlasting plenty on ever-refilled shelves.
It’s all very well letting yourself be blown like a leaf in the wind, but what if the wind’s blowing you nowhere? We’re all put on earth for a purpose. Who said that? Some long-ago Sunday-school teacher. Funny how you go on believing something like that long after you stop believing in God. There’s no reason why it should be true. It’s much more likely we all show up by accident, and lead random lives. But you go on believing, there has to be a purpose.
She finds the redcurrant jelly. There’s a purpose, of a very small kind. You seek for a jar of redcurrant jelly, and you find it. Maybe it’s just vanity that drives us to look for something grander.
Then there’s the children. You make them your purpose for so many years, then you have to stand by and do nothing when their lives are going wrong. If Carrie’s not happy, that has to be my fault, doesn’t it? It means I’ve made too many demands on her, or too few. She doesn’t have a high enough opinion of herself, which is why Toby can walk all over her. He’s like a cat, that boy, you can stroke him but he’ll never love you.
All the time operating with half her attention on her shopping list, Laura is filling her trolley. At the deli counter she meets Belinda Redknapp. She’s deeply tanned, and wearing skinny jeans.
“Belinda, you’ve got even slimmer! How do you do it?”
“We’ve been in Syria,” says Belinda. “Everyone who goes to Syria gets the runs. Diarrhea, the diet. And we’ve been in Jordan, so Tom could see Petra. I said anywhere so long as it’s hot. How about you? Have you been away?”
“We’re going in September. Steering clear of the school holidays, after all these years.”
“Yes, I think so. Carrie may come, but I doubt it.”
“Everyone keeps telling me they can’t get rid of their kids, there aren’t any jobs, just wait till they graduate and they’ll be home again. But we don’t see Alex for months on end. And Chloe’s actually got a job! Can you believe it? She claims she’s told me what it is but I’ve still got no idea, so I expect she’s a lap-dancer or something. They say there’s good money to be made in lap-dancing, but I can’t think why. They’re not allowed to touch, you know? I really don’t understand men.”
All this in her usual ringing tones. Belinda doesn’t do embarrassment.
“Let’s have lunch one day soon,” she says. “I want to tell you about my new discovery. It’s the answer to everything.” She lowers her voice to whisper in Laura’s ear. “Lubrication.”
They go their separate ways down the shining aisles. Laura marvels at the life force that is Belinda. Trust her to find a way to be young again where it counts.
She moves on to the dairy shelves and picks up two tubs of double cream. Roddy is coming this evening, he doesn’t want feeding, but it would be friendly to offer him something. She remembers that he likes Florentines, and heads up the biscuit aisle. Funny old Roddy, going in search of silence. He must drive Diana up the wall. “I’m a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth,” he says, just like Bunyan. Perhaps he’s a chief of sinners, drawn to profanity and dancing and bell-ringing. And yet even as she smiles at Roddy she admires him. He’s setting out on his own adventure.
Maybe that’s what happens after the children leave home and the long empty years loom before you. You stop servicing other people and begin your own adventure. But where do you go?
She wheels her trolley along the checkout counters, looking for the one with the shortest queue. She sees one with only two trolleys in it and is about to join it when she gets a clear view of the waiting trolley. It’s the big kind, and it’s full to the top. Better to join a longer line of less full trolleys.
Hell. I’ve forgotten my Bag for Life again.
She’s always doing this, rushing out of the house in too much of a spin and leaving behind her now extensive collection of Bags for Life. She refuses to buy yet more. I’ll just have to have carrier bags and be a polluter of the environment. And it is useful to have a stash of old plastic bags to wrap up the remains of meat or fish left uneaten after a meal. They can’t go on the compost, and if you don’t wrap them in plastic they stink. But the plastic bags end up somewhere in the Atlantic, choking marine creatures to death. Every little thing you do causes some damage further down the line.
The shopper in front of her transfers her purchases from trolley to belt. Laura waits for her to reach for one of the little plastic barriers that separates one shopper’s goods from another, but she neglects to do this. Laura has to do it for herself. Surely this is wrong? She wants to tell her she’s forgotten to put down the—, but she doesn’t know what it’s called. It’ll have some specialist name that only experts use, like cam or berm.
“Hello, Laura. Out early.” It’s Joan Huxtable, a stalwart of the village, in her mid-seventies now but as well groomed and upright as ever. “Aren’t we having a glorious summer! But they do say it’s about to break.”
Laura is loading her shopping onto the moving belt. She takes one of the plastic barriers and says to Mrs. Huxtable, “What would you call that?”
“I’ve no idea. I wouldn’t call it anything.”
Laura asks the checkout girl for plastic bags, avoiding her eyes. As she pays for her shopping, pressing the numbers on the credit-card keypad, she points to one of the plastic barriers.
“What do you call those things?”
“Those?” says the checkout girl. “I call them thingies.”
At home, putting away the shopping, Laura finds that the bandage has fallen off her finger. She examines the cut. It’s far from healed, but it looks clean and healthy. She hates not wearing her ring, it’s become so much part of her. She decides not to put a new bandage on, which means she can wear her ring again.
She runs up to her bedroom and opens the Moroccan box.
The ring isn’t there.
She takes everything out of the box, lays all the beads and earrings out on her dressing table: but her engagement ring is not among them. Baffled, she looks round the carpet at her feet, and under the dressing table. No sign of the ring.
She goes downstairs to Henry’s study. He’s on the phone, but he pauses his conversation, seeing her anxious face.
“Have you seen my engagement ring anywhere? I took it off when I cut my finger the other day. I thought I’d put it on my dressing table, but it’s not there.”
“No, I’ve not seen it,” says Henry.
He goes back to his conversation.
“I could come up today, I suppose,” he says.
Laura returns to the kitchen, thinking maybe she’s misremembered and left the ring on a cup hook. She looks in all the possible places where she might have put it, but finds nothing. Can it have fallen down the sink plughole?
She revisits her memory. It’s perfectly clear. She took the ring upstairs and put it in the Moroccan box. And now it’s gone.
She feels a sense of panic. She loves that ring. It’s not just that it’s beautiful and irreplaceable. It represents her marriage. If the ring is lost, her marriage will fall apart.
This is nonsense, of course. She knows it’s nonsense. She tells herself not to be so silly. But she wants with a dreadful fearful longing to find her ring again.
Carrie comes into the kitchen, followed by Toby.
“We’re going out driving,” says Carrie.
“Have you seen my ruby ring?” says Laura. “I’ve lost it.”
“No,” says Carrie. “Okay to use the car? My test’s next week.”
“What does the ring look like?” says Toby.
“It’s antique gold, with a single uncut ruby set in gold leaves. On the inside, on the back of the setting, it’s engraved with our initials, L and H. It’s my engagement ring.”
“Pretty special,” says Toby.
“Yes. It is.”
“Come on, Toby,” says Carrie, taking the car keys from Laura’s handbag.
“I’m good at finding things,” says Toby. “I’ll take a look when we get back.”
They go out.
Laura feels sick. She tells herself it’s not an omen of disaster, but it feels as if it is. Henry’s going through a difficult time. Carrie’s about to have her heart broken. The hot summer’s about to end. Her dinner party’s in chaos. On Saturday it’s the anniversary of her engagement to Henry, and she’s lost her ring.
Henry himself appears, his phone call over.
“That was Aidan Massey,” he says. “He’s doing a new series, the history of India. I thought there might be something for me there.”
All Laura can think about is her lost ring. But she can feel the tension in Henry. He won’t have enjoyed making that call.
“You said you never wanted to work with Aidan Massey again in all the rest of your life.”
“Oh, he’s not so bad. He says he’d like to have me on the team, but it’s not up to him. Anyway, he’s going to fix for me to meet the series producer.”
“You hate working for other people.”
“I can cope with it, if I’m left alone.” He looks round for his leather satchel. “I’d better buck up. I told Aidan I’d be there by eleven. Then if all goes well, I’ll spend the rest of the day in the production office getting myself briefed.”
“You’re going to London now?”
“Yes. Now.”
He finds his bag, his phone, his car keys. And he’s gone.
Laura doesn’t understand why he isn’t more disturbed by the loss of her ring. But maybe he’s right and it’ll just turn up.
A tap on the back door. It’s Terry Sutton.
“Just come to fix that orchard gate,” he says.
“Oh, right,” says Laura. She has no idea what he’s talking about.
I put the ring in my Moroccan box. I know I did.
She returns to the bedroom. There lies the contents of the box, spread out on her dressing table; but no ring. She takes the box itself and shakes it. She tugs out its blue silk lining. There beneath the lining is a folded paper napkin. She opens it out, and sees on it writing from long ago.
Will you marry me?
She gazes at it. Then she starts to cry. She sits in front of her dressing-table mirror, weeping silently, because seeing the writing on the paper napkin pierces her heart. She never cried back then. But somehow the years in between have granted the moment retrospective weight, as if her future with Henry is laid out in a few faded ink strokes on that soft white paper. And that blue biro tick by the box labeled Yes, made by her more as an act of faith than love, was the first real step in the creation of what is now her entire life.