A Rural Affair Read Free

immediately. Drowsily, but immediately.
    ‘The children!’ I wailed. ‘My children won’t have a father!’ Tears fled down my cheeks. ‘They’ll be fatherless – orphans,
     practically!’
    She was there in the time it took to throw a coat over her nightie, fish in her fruit bowl for my spare key, run down her
     path, up mine, and leg it upstairs. She hugged and rocked me as I sobbed and grieved for my children, gasping and spluttering
     into her shoulder, choking out incoherent snatches about how their lives would be wrecked, asking her to imagine distorted
     futures, scarred psychological profiles, looming criminal tendencies, broken homes of their own and dysfunctional children.
     Eventually, when my body had stopped its painful wracking and my hyperbolic ranting had subsided, Jennie sat back and held
     me at arm’s length.
    ‘Except he wasn’t exactly a huge presence in their lives, was he?’ she said quietly. ‘Wasn’t around a lot.’
    ‘No,’ I admitted with a shaky sob, a corner of my mind rather shocked. ‘But he did love them, Jennie. There’ll still be a
     vacuum.’
    ‘Oh, sure, he
loved
them. He loved Leila too.’
    Leila was Jennie’s dog. A crazy Irish terrier who liked nothing more than to accompany Phil on his bike rides, lolloping along
     for miles beside him.
    ‘Yes, he loved Leila,’ I conceded, wiping my eyes on the duvet.
    ‘Spent a lot of time with her.’
    I knew where this was going. ‘More than he did with the children?’
    She made a non-committal not-for-me-to-say face: cheeks sucked, eyebrows raised.
    ‘Not everyone embraces fatherhood,’ I reminded her. ‘Particularly when the children are little.’
    She looked me in the eye. ‘No, but he almost resented it. Remember when you used to bundle Clemmie in the back of the car
     in the middle of the night and head for the M25 to stop her crying? So Phil could get some sleep?’
    ‘He worked so hard. Needed his sleep.’
    ‘True. But at the weekends, did he ever change a nappy? Push a pram?’
    ‘Once or twice,’ I said, wishing I could remember him doing any of those things. But Phil was dedicated to his work, his bike
     and his body in three equal parts; he didn’t like other distractions. We didn’t really see him. It was just me and the children.
     Which was how it was going to be now. No change. I shut my eyes. Prayed for courage. Wondered if I could tell her. Eventually
     I opened them and took a deep breath.
    ‘The thing is, Jennie,’ I said in a low voice, ‘I’d fantasized about it.’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘About Phil dying.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What d’you mean, yes?’
    ‘Quite normal.’
    ‘Is it?’ I was shocked.
    ‘Oh, yes. How did you do it?’
    ‘I didn’t!’ I gasped.
    ‘No, but in your dreams.’
    ‘Oh. Well. I – I had him being hit by falling masonry, at building sites.’
    ‘Ah, the old scaffolding ruse. A rogue hammer?’
    ‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘And I had him bitten by a mosquito in Spain.’
    ‘Nice,’ she said admiringly. ‘I’ve only ever got to dodgy prawns on holiday.’
    ‘And then I had him poisoned by bleach when I was getting stains off teacups.’
    ‘I’ve left the bleach
in
the teacups. Poured it out later, naturally.’
    ‘Really?’ I peered anxiously at her in the gloom. ‘You’ve thought about it too?’
    ‘Of course! Life would be so much simpler without Toad.’ This, her husband of many years, whom I adored and thought the funniest
     man alive – fall-off-your-bar-stool funny – but of whom she despaired.
    ‘But, Jennie, I’m lying here thinking: perhaps I thought it so much, I made it happen. You know? Maybe … maybe whatever it
     is that causes bad luck – a glitch in the solar system, tectonic plates shifting, an elephant stepping on an ant in the Delta
     – everything that makes stuff happen, did so because I willed it to. Maybe I actually killed him? I mean, how bizarre was
     his death? It was like one of my very own fantasies – could