The little dog runs free at the top of the hill, yapping delightedly as he chases butterflies. There are no sheep around and certainly no other people. Lu flops down onto the ground out of breath and wraps her arms around her raised knees. She leans her chin on them and wonders where to begin, but Des beats her to it.
‘How’ve you been?’ he asks. ‘I mean, tell me honestly. I know I did the wrong thing taking off like that.’
‘Yes, you did,’ she agrees. ‘It was cruel. Brutal.’
‘I’m so sorry, Lu.’
The sadness in his voice brings a lump to Lucia’s throat. They watch Nigel following a brightly coloured moth and failing spectacularly to get anywhere near it. The sun is warm on Lu’s neck and she can smell the familiar scent of oily wool that always rises from Des’s ancient fisherman’s sweater. There’s a long, awkward silence. An aeroplane cuts across the sky above them and Lu wishes she was on it, far from this difficult situation that doesn’t seem to have a hope of sorting itself out.
‘Maybe we need to go back a bit,’ she says, after a while.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Back to when we started to get on each other’s nerves. When we retired?’
Des heaves a huge sigh. ‘You regret it, don’t you? Finishing at the school?’
‘No, not at all. Is that what you think?’
‘It’s obvious. You still can’t tear yourself away from the place.’
Lu turns to face him. ‘I’ve taken a long holiday from the volunteering,’ she says, ‘but now I’ve made the break, I can’t see why I carried on so long. I think it was all tied up with my feelings about letting Eddie down. What about you though? There doesn’t seem to be anything you want to do with all the spare time you’ve got now.’
‘Hang on a minute before we get on to my problems, although now you mention it, I have got plans. You’ve actually finished at the school?’
‘Yes. I’ll tell them when I get home that they need to find someone else.’
‘Ah. In that case, you’ll be stuck there forever while they try.’ Des sounds defeated.
‘No, I mean I’m not going back. They’ll cope. But tell me how you’re feeling.’
There’s a long pause. ‘The redundancy hit me hard, Lu. All those hours with no routine to fall back on. It was terrifying at the start,’ she hears Des mumble, eventually. ‘I was miserable.’
The words hang between them, a bitter accusation. Lu feels fury take over. ‘You could have said something. You should have talked to me.’
‘I tried, but you didn’t want to hear. You were so intent on not breaking the ties with the children at school, and you just carried on with what you’d decided to do in your own sweet way.’
There’s long, uncomfortable silence. Lu is the first to speak. She’s come all this way. It can’t end in a pointless row. Perhaps they’re getting somewhere at last. ‘So, you left because you thought I was too busy to want to be with you?’ she asks, meeting his eyes steadily for the first time today.
‘That’s the simple version. The more complicated one is that I felt useless. At work, I was somebody. And then there was … the other issue.’
There’s a pause, and Lu sees that Des is crying. The only other times she’s seen tears in his eyes have been momentous occasions – his parents’ funerals, the moment he first held Isaac and the school appointment where the words mild autism were first uttered in relation to his son. Now his face is wet, and he’s fighting sobs. He buries his face in his hands as if he can’t bear to look at her.
‘Des, don’t,’ Lu says, anguished. ‘Come here.’ She kneels up in the heather and puts her arms around his heaving shoulders, holding him tightly as the tension of the last few weeks finally finds a way of expressing itself. They cling together, Des moving to hug her close as he cries out his pain. The dog whimpers as the storm abates, snuffling at Lucia’s arm, and Des gradually begins to breath more calmly. He rubs his face angrily. Lu hands him a tissue.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says again.
‘Don’t keep saying that. And what do you mean by the other issue?’
Lu lets go of her husband and sits back down. She knows their next words are going to be game changers. Des’s face is white now and he seems to be having trouble speaking. Lu decides it’s high time she took the lead.
‘Okay, this is the hardest part,’ she says, putting a hand on Des’s arm. ‘We’re going to have to be really honest with each other now. Our marriage has been going downhill for a long time, hasn’t it, love?’
Des blinks and looks at the floor. ‘What do you mean? We’re just like any other couple. We have bad patches, and getting made redundant was just one of them, wasn’t it?’
‘You’re closing your eyes again to what’s really going on. You always do that.’
‘I don’t! That’s just not true, Lucia.’
‘Yes, you do. You try not to see things that’ll upset you. I should have tackled it before now but I’m the same in a lot of ways.’
They look at each other properly now, both wide-eyed. This sort of conversation has never figured in their marriage. Des shrugs.
‘You’re right, of course. That’s why I was afraid to challenge you about who was going to take over the ownership of the compass.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well it was obvious it was meant for you, but I had a horrible feeling that if I had the chance to ask it where I should be, it would tell me to stay put. I like an easy life. A boring life. But I knew deep down it was time to go.’
Lu takes a moment to understand what her husband is saying. ‘Charming. You’re saying our marriage is boring?’ she mutters, when his meaning sinks in.
There’s a long silence which neither of them seems to be able to break. Eventually, Des turns to face Lucia. ‘Yes, it is. How long is it since we even had a cuddle, let alone sex? We sleep in the same bed but we might as well be in separate rooms.’
‘Oh, so that’s it. You’re annoyed because we don’t have sex anymore?’
The fierce anger in Lu’s voice surprises them both but there’s no going back now.
‘No, I’m not annoyed,’ Des says wearily. ‘That’s the sort of word you use when someone keeps leaving the top off the toothpaste or forgetting take the bins out. Not for the end of a marriage.’
There, it’s said. There’s a distinct possibility that this is it for the two of them. Fear grips Lucia. She knew this was probably coming but it’s another matter facing a life without Des, however stale things have been between them.
‘The end? Why does it have to be so dramatic? Can’t you just come home and we’ll work at it?’
Des sighs, and the grief in his eyes makes Lu feel physically sick. It really is over, and she’s not even going to have a say in her future. He’s dumping her. How dare he? If their marriage really is done for, Lu very strongly feels that she should be the one to do the dumping.
‘It’s gone too far for talking things through. I’ve … well, I’m going to have to tell you sometime. I’ve fallen in love with someone else.’
Lu stares at him. So that’s it. Another woman? A kind of late mid-life crisis then, maybe brought on by the redundancy. She’s been trying not to think about this option. A younger woman, probably skinny? She hates her already. How dare he?
Des clears his throat and looks her straight in the eye. ‘And … and it’s Bob.’
The words lie between them, heavy as Lucia’s heart.
‘What did you say?’
‘It’s Bob. I’m in a relationship with him. We’ve always been close, but with not having seen him for a while, I’d forgotten how good it could be. To talk to him. To … love him.’
Lucia’s head is spinning and she wonders if she might faint. She never has before but this is … this is crazy.
‘But Des … you’re not gay, are you? What about us? Isaac? We’ve been together for years and years and you’ve never … have you?’
‘No. I’ve been faithful to you, Lu. I love you. But I’ve always been scared to admit I had awful yearnings for something different. That’s partly why I didn’t hanker to go away from home. There’s only one place I’d have wanted to go. Here. Bob and me, we go back a long way. We had a bit of a thing many years ago but neither of us was brave enough to keep it going. And then you came along and it all got more complicated.’
Lucia tries to think of something to say but the mixture of fury and grief that’s poleaxing her makes speech impossible. Des ploughs on, and her world crumbles a little bit more with each word.
‘Bob got married before I did, but it didn’t last very long. Since then he’s had a few flings, but it wasn’t until now that he was prepared to be truthful with himself. His mum and dad are elderly now. He thought the shock would be too much for them.’
‘And wasn’t it?’ Lucia isn’t even nearly elderly but she’s still trying to get her breath back and cope with the wave of rage that’s threatening to swamp her.
‘No, they’ve admitted that they secretly suspected it and they’re happy for him to tell the whole world if he wants to. You can never tell, can you? I’m going to live with Bob permanently, Lu. I’ll come home and pack up my stuff, see Isaac, that kind of thing, but then I’m moving up here for good. I’m sorry.’
‘Will you stop saying that?’ Lucia is shouting now, and it feels good. ‘You bastard. You waltz off leaving me high and dry and then drop this bombshell on me. Sorry? You don’t know the meaning of the word.’
She leaps to her feet and begins to stride away down the hill, and Des follows her, with the little dog galloping along beside him.
When Lu reaches the car park, she pauses, out of breath. She can feel the tears starting, but why shouldn’t she cry? It all seems such a waste. Years of marriage, putting up with Des’s grumpy moods, his lack of understanding of Isaac’s complex needs, his … yes, his dullness. She finally admits it to herself. She has been bored out of her mind. The reason she’s spent so many hours volunteering at the school and all the other stuff is that she’d rather be there than stuck in the house with Des.
He’s caught up with her now. ‘What are you going to do?’ he says.
‘Do you mean at this moment, or for the rest of my life?’ she says, calm enough not to yell now.
‘I guess I was meaning at this moment. You can’t drive home when you’re so upset.’
‘Upset? That’s a bit of a feeble word for how I’m feeling. But I think you’ll find that from now on I can do any bloody thing I like, Des. And trust me, I’m going to start right now.’