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‘THAT SHOULD DO IT.’ Dan stood back to inspect his work and wiped his hands on a rag. The tiles slotted into each other perfectly. He nodded in satisfaction. Cutting the corner ones had been tricky, but it was worth the extra hassle to get them right. He’d been meaning to replace the chipped ones for months but never seemed to have the time.
It was strange, he hadn’t managed to see Michelle that often, not even once a week, but now it was over, there were huge voids of time he couldn’t fill. In the last seven days, he’d managed to work forty hours, fix the leak under the kitchen sink, paint the garden fence, re-silicone the windows and put up a blackout blind in the bathroom. Where had all this time come from?
At work, Jan was forever popping her head around the office door to ask if there was anything for her to type. Tracy kept her head down whenever he was around. Dan had no idea what was wrong with everyone. Even Penny had been acting strangely. She’d been uncharacteristically attentive for some reason. He kept catching her watching him. It was unnerving.
‘Looks good.’ Dan jumped and turned to find Penny, standing in the bathroom doorway. She handed him a mug of coffee and a Double Decker.
‘I thought you were going shopping this morning,’ he said.
‘We’ve been looking at holidays instead.’
Dan pulled at the neck of his T-shirt. ‘Have you shrunk this in the wash? It’s strangling me.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Penny snapped, visibly shaken by such treacherous criticism. She quickly recomposed herself. ‘Anyway,’ she said with a sweet smile, ‘I thought that, since you aren’t going on the cadet field trip in July, we could go somewhere instead.’
‘No.’ Dan swatted the idea away with his hand. ‘We couldn’t.’
‘What?’ Penny looked puzzled. ‘Why on earth not? We always go in July or August. What’s the problem?’
He didn’t know what to say. He could hardly admit that the thought of going on holiday with his wife was more than he could bear, because his mistress had dumped him and now life wasn’t worth living.
‘We were thinking Tenerife might be nice. There’s a fantastic five-star spa hotel there.’
‘Tenerife in July?’ Dan pointed to his hair.
Penny looked from his white hair to his pale face and rolled her eyes. ‘You can sit in the shade. Tamara, Joel and I will love it.’
‘Joel?’ This was sounding worse by the minute. ‘How will we sleep at night, knowing he’s next door, having sex with our daughter?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll share a room with Tamara. Might have to subsidize Joel.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Not only was he going to have to go on the holiday from hell, he also had to pay for all and sundry to accompany him. ‘Let’s talk about it later, when I’ve finished here.’ He bit into the Double Decker. It didn’t taste right. ‘Is this in date?’
Penny looked away and shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. ‘The thing is, there was only one superior suite left. I thought I’d better book it.’
‘Suite? We’ll all be together?’ Dan said, spraying bits of half-chewed nougat and biscuit.
‘Eugh...’ she wiped her cheek. ‘No, you and Joel will be in another room. I didn’t want to lose the suite.’ She smiled again and fluttered her eyelashes as she touched his arm. ‘We’ll all have a lovely time.’
Penny skipped off downstairs to surf the internet for bikinis.
Dan sat on the side of the bath, staring into space. Is this it? Things weren’t great before Michelle, but now... He struggled to imagine how he could carry on with the façade. He reached for his mobile and scrolled onto the only photograph he had of her. It had been risky having any at all. He memorised every tiny detail, as he gently touched the image of her beautiful face one last time. Then he pressed the delete button, and she was gone.
Dan closed his eyes and allowed his mind to drift down to the safe place in the depths of his core. He closed the lid on the box, locked it, and then tucked the key away in his heart.
