A Rural Affair Read Free Page B

tumbling on them like rubble, which had me cringing on the bed. We sat there side
     by side, Jennie hunched in her old camel coat and hugging her knees, me in my baggy Gap T-shirt, crouched under the duvet.
     Through the wall, we could hear Toad, or Dan as I preferred to call him, gently snoring. Not so gently, in fact; he was gaining
     momentum. She turned to me, appalled.
    ‘I didn’t know you could hear him!’
    ‘Only occasionally.’
    ‘I’ll put a pillow over his head!’
    ‘Do not. I don’t mind. Quite like it, actually. Sounds … masculine.’ And automatically I thought how Phil had been quite feminine.
     Fastidious. Clean. Two showers a day. Nail brushes. And slept like a mouse.
    ‘Well, at least there’s no danger of you hearing anything else,’ she remarked darkly.
    I didn’t reply. Jennie’s increasing lack of interest in the physical side of her marriage could wait for another night. And
     anyway, this wasn’t entirely true. On the odd occasion I had employed ear plugs.
    ‘Go, Jennie,’ I said quietly, at length.
    ‘Sure?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’
    I nodded; gave her a weak smile. Then she hugged me and slipped away. I listened to her footsteps going down the stairs, the
     door closing behind her. I knew she would be back,
first thing. Knew I was blessed with friends like this; knew that moving to this village was the best thing I’d ever done.
     That it had been a huge compensation for my marriage, and would now stand me in very good stead. And although my heart was
     heavy as I went to the loo and then crawled back to bed – I dreaded my next hurdle, which was telling Clemmie in the morning
     – as I lay down and shut my eyes, a part of me was already thinking about how I’d clear the medals from the mantle above the
     fire, take down the Tour de France pictures in the loo, sell the rowing machine on e-Bay. Not have to wake up to him doing
     press-ups by the bed in the morning. Not have to go downstairs and find a note in the kitchen headed ‘Poppy – Things to Do’.
     And part of me was also thinking: no longer, Poppy Shilling. No longer can you say nothing ever happens to you. Finally, something
     has gone on in your life.

2
    He hadn’t always been like that, of course. Phil. Boring, meticulous, health-conscious, dedicated to his own physical well-being
     – the supreme vanity, in my book. Hadn’t always wanted a blood-pressure kit for Christmas or a treadmill for his birthday,
     hadn’t always been so inward-looking. Once upon a time he’d been quite – I was going to say fun, but I’ll qualify that with
     normal. He’d always been around, part of the crowd I’d hung out with in London when I lived in Clapham, but on the edges,
     the periphery. Somebody’s brother had known him at university, not Jennie’s because her brother went around with quite a fast
     lot, but it could have been Tess’s brother at Durham. Anyway, there he was, at parties, in pubs with us, probably not on the
     raucous beery table I was on, but next door with others I vaguely knew but not well. A nice guy. Nice Phil, if you asked.
     Oh, yeah, Ben would say, Phil’s a nice guy. Don’t know him that well.
    Ben was my boyfriend. Had been for years. Ridiculously, on and off since we were fifteen. In fact it was a bit of a joke.
     We’d met at school, gone out for a year, split up for a year, got together in the sixth form, got a bit more serious, split
     up for our gap years, and ended up going to the same university together. We hadn’t intended to, but I had to go through clearing
     because I hadn’t got my grades and the only place I could read history was at York, where Ben was. I’d worried slightly that
     he might think I was following him up there, but he was very cool, totally relaxed, and after the first year we
were back together again, and then for the next three. There were the inevitable jokes about us being a little married couple
     and joined at the hip, and