DON WAS STANDING with his back to the window looking at the man with fascinated astonishment, some distaste and well-concealed (he hoped) hostility. The man had turned up ten minutes ago, announced who he was and Don had shown him into the sitting room and offered him a seat. Don hadn't taken a seat himself since the man had immediately made the purpose of his visit clear.
He had started mildly enough, trotting out what he referred to as a number of supremely irritating idiosyncrasies on the part of Grace such as writing shopping lists on their sides instead of up and down like normal people. He was now assailing Don with many supposed facts about his wife Grace. Don knew that this man was Grace’s husband from photographs Grace had brought with her of her sons, some featuring the husband as well. He’d also had a glimpse of Greg very occasionally collecting Grace from church months ago, remaining in the car and roaring off at high speed before Grace had hardly had a chance to shut the car passenger door.
Don had been told so far that Grace hated cooking and housework, that she was a hypocrite for attending church when she was an atheist, that she hadn't been a particularly good mother and that he, Greg, had had to do much of the child-care despite working full-time. She was also a slob around the house, wearing old tatty clothes and he had mentioned flatulence from both ends.
Don had laughed at this and Greg had said yes Don could laugh but that he, Greg, had had to put up with all that.
“And she swears like a trooper,” Greg continued.
At you no doubt, Don thought. But he had indeed noticed Grace muttering under her breath if something she was doing wasn't going right, and Don smiled to himself to think that his angel may at these times have been uttering profanities. However she had never turned the air blue in his presence.
“What exactly is it that you want Greg?”
“Obviously I want my wife back. She’s my wife. She should be at home with me and our son.”
Still amused at that point, Don had asked: “But if she’s as awful as you say, I’m surprised you want her back.”
“She’s my wife. This is all nonsense, her leaving. It won't help in the long run her staying here. It’ll all go wrong and then she’ll come running back to me anyway. She’s done it before.”
“Really!”
Greg started the tirade again. Now Don was learning that Grace was in fact delusional, that she had convinced herself that Greg had affairs with his PAs. She had turned up at the last PA’s home one day demanding to be let in and look for Greg. Greg assured Don that he hadn't in fact been there, having delivered some documents to Cindy earlier on and having left in a taxi after finding that his car wouldn't start so that the car was still parked outside.
“It was embarrassing!” Greg was saying in an offended manner. “Then she sat in her own car outside for hours on end. She was still there when I came back with a mechanic.”
“So what was wrong with the car?” Don asked mildly. He’d already been told of the incident by Grace and that the car had started first time but he wanted to see what Greg would say.
“Oh, not much. It used to do that sometimes. I’ve had it looked at properly since then. But the point is that she imagines things. Cindy isn't even working for me anymore. Grace’ll probably start the same thing with you. I’m just trying to warn you.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” said Don.
“There’s other things too!” Don didn't reply but Greg hurried on listing two terminations of pregnancy and a bout of gonorrhoea, both of course before he had met Grace; drug-taking, again a past bad habit that she’d kicked before he met her; heavy smoking which he’d had to make her give up before they had the two boys; sometimes, quite often actually, drinking to excess; some cosmetic surgery.
Don felt himself becoming angry, very angry indeed. He was about to ask the man to leave but Greg was saying:
“And she was prosecuted for shop-lifting too a couple of years ago.”
Don was stony-faced.
“You didn't know that did you!”
“I think you’d better leave now,” Don said at last. He wished he hadn't let the man in or allowed this procession of Grace’s worst features, if there was any truth in them at all, to be verbally paraded in front of him.”
“You need to let her come back home where she belongs. I know what she’s like. I understand her and know how to handle her. She’s round the bend. She imagines things,” Greg said again.
“Please would you leave.” Don walked to the sitting room door and opened it wide, standing back holding the door open and looking at Greg. Greg didn't move. He started to draw breath no doubt to continue the catalogue.
“I’m asking you to leave. Now,” Don said loudly and at last Greg got up. With a superior air he walked through the door saying: “You’ll regret ever meeting her. She’ll make your life a misery. You won't know whether you’re coming or going in the end. She’ll make things up. Half the time she’ll be lying to you.”
Don was ushering him out of the front door by this time.
“Goodbye Greg,” he said and shut the door without waiting for any reply. He lent back against the door, shut his eyes and breathed out hard.
DON WAS HAVING difficulty concentrating on the website he was currently working on for a small recently established accountancy practice, trying to build as much SEO into the site as possible for the fee the firm as prepared to pay. What people didn't understand was that these sites subsequently required frequent tweaking but people didn't want to pay a regular maintenance fee for that or their Facebook page or anything else he could have done to help them attract more business. For heaven’s sake, parish magazines were now charging relatively huge amounts to include picture adverts so that if businesses advertised in, say, four or five of them, it could easily cost them five hundred pounds or so a year just for modest local coverage, but they balked at paying him a reasonable thousand pounds to concoct a website that would attract business from a wide area.
Don didn't do what many web designers did which was to look at business’s websites and bombard with emails those whose sites could have done with more work. Neither did he make cold calls. Of course he used his own methods to promote his own business online but a great deal of his work still came from personal recommendations. That was far preferable to him than finding himself in a bidding war against other designers as the prospective client who had found him on the internet tried to play one designer off against another for the cheapest price. He’d stopped taking part in these unseemly scrambles some years ago. Now he just stated his price and what he could do within that price with the best explanations he could provide to those without much clue what went into website building. If they came back and contracted him to write their sites then all well and good. If they didn't or tried the bartering approach it was good riddance to them.
He was thinking about Greg; his appearance - medium height, dark hair almost grey, well dressed - his noticeable West Midlands accent, his confident actually rather unattractive swaggering manner. Greg was a chemist turned sales manager in a large pharmaceuticals company. He negotiated contracts for the company and had a large sales team working under him and Don could see that he obviously applied his tough negotiating skills to his personal life. The overall attitude he purveyed was that he would get what he wanted and that resistance was futile and would soon dissolve away in the face of his determination.
He was as nearly as possibly could be the case the absolute opposite of Don. Don wasn't lacking in confidence but he didn't walk over people and tried to offer courtesy and accord respect towards everyone with whom he came into contact. And he certainly wasn't pompous. The man who had been in his sitting room earlier hadn't been exactly rude but the things he said were extremely offensive and it surprised Don that he would relate such things to a complete stranger on first meeting. He had applied no delicacy at all to his descriptions of Grace’s alleged faults. He had clearly expected that Don would succumb to his demands which was odd in the circumstances since Grace had left him at least two months ago. Most reasonable people would conclude that she wanted to be where she was and that there was precious little prospect of her returning in the foreseeable future at least.
Perhaps in fact it was Greg who was the deluded party in all this. Grace, while being economical with information about her troubles and past home life, which he had understood to mean that it upset her to talk about it, had certainly painted a picture of an unreasonable man with an iron will prone to bouts of violent temper when crossed. Of course Don accepted that one of the possible responses to marriage breakdown might be to become more aggressive than usual, but it did sound as though this wasn't a temporary departure from normal behaviour for Greg.
Greg’s work had taken him away a lot, often abroad hence possibly leading to the philandering. Both Greg and Grace were about five years younger than Don, though in today’s corporate world of early retirement, redundancies, outsourcing, cutting back etc, Greg couldn't be far off retirement himself. However perhaps he was driven and wanted to carry on. Or maybe he was very good at his job.
Don understood Greg to be well paid and had worried to begin with that Grace wouldn’t be satisfied with his own modest income but she seemed wholeheartedly to prefer their simple lifestyle built on shared pleasures and local pursuits which didn't cost a lot of money. Anyway their joint income was actually quite a decent amount since she worked full time. The money coming into the household had more or less doubled overnight on her coming to live with Don.
Previously his income had been low enough that Emma was able to receive a full grant and maintenance loan and, with bursaries, she had said she was able to live quite comfortably with no contribution from him. This had been at the back of his mind actually; he was going to have to broach the subject with both Emma and Grace soon that the higher income would mean that possibly the whole of the grant and some of the maintenance loan would disappear and so might some of the bursaries too or at least those reliant on parental income and not the degree subject and A’ level results. He was putting this off a little longer for the time being given Emma’s current hostile attitude.
Don was self-taught as a web designer. When Carol had become so ill, he had abandoned a promising career at the bar to be able to stay at home and look after her. Incredibly to him at the time, he had been able to find out most of what he needed to know for his new career online and using a number of basic books he was able to buy.
With that in mind, Don had momentarily considered entering Grace’s name into google to see if there was any mention of the supposed prosecution, perhaps newspaper reports, but it seemed like spying to him. Just because such things were freely available and accessible now, that didn't mean you had to take advantage of them. Years ago, it would have been impossible to pry into what someone might have done in the past from the comfort of one’s small home office. Hacking at least had been proved beyond doubt to be illegal and so it should be. Public interest be damned. If Grace had done anything she regretted and wanted to tell him about it, then she would do so. It was pernicious to parade it on the internet in front of potentially millions of people to haunt the subject for many years to come.
Actually he wouldn't have minded knowing something about her having left Greg previously and then gone back again if that was true. Had she gone to live with another man as now? Had she in fact had several lovers? Was he just the latest in a long line? Was she actually as bad as Greg? Was this some game they played to entertain themselves every so often when their relationship started to become stale? Would she leave him in due course? But he quickly cast such thoughts aside. To think such things was simply to surrender to the purpose of Greg’s visit which was transparently to plant doubts, to corrosively break down Don’s wall of certainty about his and Grace’s life together, to attempt to inject poison into the relationship; by whatever means to bring about a situation that would make it more likely that Grace would return to him, Greg.
He, Don, should think logically. If he found Grace to be the ultimate, the last word in womanliness, more desirable than any woman he had ever encountered or ever expected to, then so would Greg have found the same qualities in her. And it was not outlandishly surprising that he should want her back and be prepared to pitch up at her new home and say such appalling things about her.
Whether true or not, Don should ignore what Greg had said and kick these destructive thoughts into touch. Much of what Greg had said could be accounted for by the unhappy state of the marriage. There would have been precious little point in Grace acting the part of the perfect wife and housekeeper if she thought her husband was “playing away”. Of course Grace would have sworn at a husband who constantly shamelessly paraded his relationship with his PA in front of her. He should do his best to forget it all and carry on as happily before.
And anyway, various sounds were intruding into his thoughts and attempts to work; thumping and bumping, scraping noises, crashes and bangs. He followed his ears to where they were coming from at the back of the house where the old toilet and storeroom, as he thought of it, were situated. He seldom ventured there normally, apart from the occasional sweeping and hoovering.
Seeing Emma’s back disappear out of the second back door apparently lugging a box of stuff, he waited until she must presumably return. While waiting he peered into the storeroom and saw that it had been half emptied of its contents. Emma reappeared after what seemed far too long and, with her head down, marched through the open back door not seeing her dad immediately and starting when she did. She stopped dead looking rather guilty but soon recovered and carried on towards the room giving him a brief smile and proceeded to add more items to her now empty plastic tub.
Puzzled Don said, “Emma. What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
He sighed. “Come on Emma. What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?”
“Well from where I’m standing, trying to wreck your mother’s things!”
Emma gave a small dry laugh. As though you care, the laugh said.
“Why are you doing this?” Don said frowning. “And where are you putting your mother’s things?”
“Just in the tool shed for the time being. Perhaps when I have time I’ll put them up in the loft. I just thought I’d move down here. That’s all. It’s no big deal is it?”
“I don't know. Why do you want to move rooms at all?”
“I’d really rather not spell it out. Not very subtle and all that.”
“Well you’re going to have to. You’ve been in your bedroom upstairs since you were a baby. There hasn’t been anything wrong with it up until now.”
Emma didn't say anything as she stacked pictures into a heap and put ornaments and old clothes into the tub until she couldn't get any more in. She started to walk out of the room again with the overloaded tub but her father stood there looking troubled, though not quite barring her way.
“Look,” said Emma. “It’s quite obvious you don't want me around.”
“Actually I rather think it’s the other way round,” said Don.
“Oh, yeah, of course!”
“I don't know where all this is coming from apart from your own imagination. I was looking forward to you coming back for the summer. Grace was looking forward to meeting you. I thought we’d all be….happy together.”
Emma shuffled her feet not quite knowing what to say. When he put it like that, it made her into the guilty party when she was sure she wasn't at all.
“You’re twisting everything,” she said.
“Sorry? I don't understand,” said her father.
She wanted to say that she’d come back to her own home and found it an alien place, all different. And having to put up with a strange woman in her house. Only a fool wouldn't understand her position. Or someone who just didn't want to. Her mouth drew into a straight line.
“I think it’s better if I try to be as independent of you as possible. I’ve….er….got used to looking after myself at uni and….you’ve obviously got your own life and interests now.” She hunted for a way to put it that wouldn't be confrontational and in particular wouldn't confront headlong the real problem as she saw it. “It’ll be better this way. And there’s a loo next door to the room. I’m going to turn the room into a bedsit. Then I can use this backdoor here to come and go and we won't need to….get in each other’s way.”
Don stood aside. “Well I must say I’m disappointed. I hoped….we hoped….” Here it comes again, the wretch “we”, thought Emma….“that we’d be a family unit once you came home. Have fun together. Anyway,” he turned away looking back briefly, “don't damage your mother’s things too much.”
He had to be making it up, thought Emma, to keep up his side of things and avoid having to stand down, to lose the argument, to be in the wrong. A family unit! Him, her and a woman she’d never met before!
Emma worked away for the rest of the morning with a clear conscience, no doubts about her decision, clearing, cleaning, sweeping and mopping the room and the loo next door, unaware that the woman’s husband had been here earlier attempting to undermine her father’s life and that she was just adding to his turmoil.
The old toilet, while initially awash with live spiders and dead flies, still seemed to work OK. The washbasin was equally dirty and insect strewn. When she turned the taps on they glugged a bit but soon ran smoothly. Tomorrow she would move in the spare single bed, a throw and some cushions, some rugs and hangings, the spare TV. She would Blu Tack some posters to the walls (she’d found some very nice large Aubrey Beardsley ones of her mum’s rolled up in the room), create a makeshift wardrobe out of a broom handle and a long brightly coloured curtain, oil the lock on the old second backdoor and tomorrow night she’d move in.
Satisfied with her morning’s efforts, she ran upstairs to shower and get ready for work.