Harvest (26 page)

Craig shifted under her
observation and tentatively met her gaze before snapping away
self-consciously. “What?” His face melted into a puzzled laugh.

“
Well, I have heard all
about your yo-yo childhood of living in Bath, your family’s
decision to move here, then their decision to move back to Bath
when they didn’t settle and they missed the rest of the family.
Then your return to London for university… I know how well you did
at your exams and you have talked about work…”

“
Work didn’t take long
did it? Jobs are few and far between at the moment,” he grunted
grimly, gulping a mouthful of wine.

“
Don’t get all maudlin. I
just wondered what happens after university. After you get home
from work. What you do with your spare time.”

“
Is
this the police side of your aspect coming out? Well,
officer.
If I have a full day of work I
might get home at 1700 hours, I shower at 1705, start preparing a
meal at 1725,
it takes about half-an-hour.
None of that five-minute microwave
stuff.
”

Loosened by alcohol Kelly
jabbed his good arm. “Cheeky Bastard.” She blurted round a mouthful
of wine.

Craig rubbed his arm. “I’m sorry, do
you know me well enough to slap me around? You aren’t a screw you
know? I’m not your bitch.”

“
Sorry.” Kelly’s face
flushed as he recognised her familiarity. “I just wondered about
you, what you do in your spare time and…” she felt so out of touch
with being with someone socially. “Stuff.”

“
Just pulling your leg.
Truth is there isn’t much to say.”

“
What do you
mean?”

He shrugged. “What with all the
moving around I kind of didn’t make any lifelong mates. When I left
university all the really good friends I made went back to their
own homes and stuff. I keep in touch with a few on email; always
promising to meet up. We haven’t yet. Like I said, work is a bit
short so money can be tight, it’s enough work balancing paying my
bills and buying food; if I travelled across the country to meet up
with my mates I would be in need of a UN food parcel to
survive.”

“
Could you go home? To
live I mean. Until your finances are better.”

“
Yeah…” Craig stared down
into his wine and swirled it around the large bell of his glass.
“Bath feels like my home town to me, but London feels like my grown
up life. Mum would love me home I think; where she could look out
for me. I just don’t want to go back. I want to be independent. I
chose this career, kind of against school and family advice, going
back home would make it look like its not going to work or they
would see me struggling. The fact I had tried it my way, and am
either struggling or failing would lead them back into trying to
get me into the family business.”

“
The print business? I
thought that would be in the right area for you.”

“
It’s
the equivalent of working in a factory. Not much of a creative
outlet. Plus my parent’s world extends as far as the front door or
a trip to the social club or bingo…Bless them. After being at uni,
moving out and having my freedom and a different set of friends and
my own life and views, going home and facing a morning with mum and
dad over the tabloid and a killer fry-up with their opinion of how
well my brother was doing, and how the country should be run and
what the youth of today should be doing, and how the refugee’s
should be going to another country.
Ugh!
That road just leads to the dark
side.
Now I sound like a spoilt kid don’t
I?”

“
No. We all grow away
from our parents. It would be hard to move back in with your
parents when you have been living independently.” This was the kind
of conversation she wanted to have with Craig, she wanted to get to
know him. “Do you get lonely then?”

“
That was leading!” Craig
laughed easily. “No. I like my own company. I get on very well with
myself. Are you looking for emotional baggage?”

Kelly swallowed her sip of wine
quickly so she could answer and it went down her throat
uncomfortably like a marble. “No! It’s nice to hear someone happy
with their life.”

“
Happy might be pushing
it, but I think I travel light concerning emotional baggage. I was
with a girl for a little over a year, on and off, while I was at
university, but she ditched me in our final year. Probably just as
well as our homes were quite far apart. I haven’t really had a
relationship or anything since then, just a few sad attempts: not
met the right person so far.”

“
That doesn’t bother
you?”

Craig shook his head. “Nah. Mrs
Right is out there somewhere. She’ll get tired of running from me
one day and then we will see what happens.”

She smiled. “You’re a
joker?”

“
Humour is the best
defence… If you can’t solve a problem, avoid it and mock it from a
distance.”

“
What about if the
problem can’t be avoided?”

“
That’s easy –,” he
adopted a squeaky Monty Python tone. “RUNAWAY!”

They both descended into
laughter.

“
So what about you? What
brings you so far from the suburbs of the seaside of Essex? What
about you before the uniform?” Craig countered.

The fun of the moment ground to
a halt like a fairground carousel making an emergency stop. She
hadn’t talked about her life in Southend since she had started her
new life in Camden. Ordinarily her defences would slam into place
at the prospect of self-disclosure or the risk of emotional
exposure with a man, yet with Craig her defences had relaxed, and
she was drawn in to taking a leap of faith.

“
I was very different back
then,” she tested the statement as someone might test a limb of a
tree before climbing on it.

“
This sounds interesting,”
Craig arched an eyebrow. “Were you a nun or an international drug
runner?”

“
No, I was
married.”

“
Oh right,” Craig gawped,
his response of surprise delivered unchecked. “Wasn’t expecting
that,” he covered.

“
Well, us divorcees don’t
tend to get branded and dragged through town these days,” she joked
incredulously.

“
I didn’t mean anything by
it. Just when you first meet someone you kind of fill in the blanks
yourself a bit.”

“
Hence, the nun and the
international drug running?”

“
Exactly,” Craig nodded
sagely.

“
I was a local government
worker. Probation services.”

“
So is your marriage the
skeleton in your closet then?”

Kelly shifted uncomfortably.
“Yes.”

“
Didn’t go too well
then?”

“
The divorce bit gave me
away didn’t it?” Her mood sobered. “Well, things were good at the
start. I guess they always are though. I met Ian about nine years
ago. We fell in love. Started sharing our life together. Wanted all
the same things together, marriage, house, travelling, babies.
Pretty typical stuff. Things were perfect for quite a while.” It
was surprisingly easy to talk; she eyed her glass of wine,
suspicious of its influence on her tongue. “Have you ever been in
love?”

“
Yes, the uni girl but on
reflection I am pretty sure it was unrequited.”

“
Unrequited
,” Kelly mulled the word over in her
mind. “I can understand how that feels!”

“
But, you were married?”
Craig questioned, as if love and marriage were symbiotic. She
wasn’t sure that that was her experience.

“
I know. I don’t know
whether my feelings were unrequited, or he just got lazy, he just
seemed to give up on ‘us’ as a couple. He lost interest in building
our home together; I practically decorated the home all by myself.
All the aspirations he had for work, the promotion he had worked
towards (the whole reason we had moved away from our home-town of
Southend to Romford was for his career) – he just gave up on it all
and didn’t go for the positions when they came up. All without any
explanation or discussion. He didn’t want to travel, go on holiday
or even want to get away for a day trip even. He had stopped
telling me how he felt…”

“
What changed?”

“
Oh, I’m not sure I know.”
Kelly threw a hand up in dismay. The confusion and despair was
still emotive in her memory. “I never got any answers. We got on
well, were able to have a laugh when the issues in our relationship
weren’t choking us. We were still good mates right up until the
end. But that seemed like all we were: mates. He even stopped
demonstrating how he felt…”

“
Oh.” Craig exclaimed as
they both stepped around the insinuated conversational landmine of
sex.

“
Yeah,” Kelly played with
the base of her glass, uncomfortably considering how to phrase the
continuation of her sentence without straying onto a subject too
intimate to be comfortable. She remembered the shame of wanting a
satisfying love-life. “We had been passionate for each other at the
beginning. Enthusiastic companions – really connected, then we got
married and it was like he just switched off emotionally.” Kelly
felt her face colour with her disclosure.

“
People change, people
grow apart.”

She agreed but it was too
simplistic a truth to explain something so heart-breaking. Kelly
breezed on with a flippancy she hoped would ease any awkwardness.
“I know about ruts, I know you can expect relationships to lose
their intensity over time, but we had always wanted a family of our
own – and let’s just say – that was not going to happen without
some kind of miracle,” Kelly arched her eyebrows theatrically,
masking her discomfort.

“
Did he still want
kids?”

“
He said he still did, but
he avoided talking about the details, eventually he admitted he had
changed his mind and wanted to leave it until we were older and
make the most of our time alone together. I’m not sure what we
would have done with that time as we didn’t exactly have any plans
left at that point. We had always wanted a young family and he had
changed his mind without even telling me!”

“
Harsh.”

“
Yeah. I
can accept people changing, I guess, but he made a decision
about
our
life –
my
life without even telling me.” It had felt
like a betrayal. “That was a catalyst for my decision to leave
him.”

“
But it wasn’t what ended
it?”

“
No
he
said
he still wanted a
family, so I hung on in there. I convinced myself that in a way I
understood his decision even though I did not like the way he had
made it without talking it through with me. Yet with his lack of
affection and the complete absence of any intimacy I couldn’t see
it happening at all…” Ian’s abstinence had already defused the
spark and the tingling thrill from his touch. “I didn’t want to
wait until we decided to start our family before
we…
you
know
?”

“
Exactly. It’s not a means
to an end!”

Kelly nodded in agreement, she
hadn’t wanted biology she had wanted passion. “I just got more and
more unhappy; one night I had prepared a big night in for our
anniversary. Three course meal…”

“
How
did
your
microwave cope?”

Kelly winced a smile at him.
“Made from scratch. I bought a killer dress.” Although Ian didn’t
see the point of Christmas, birthdays or anniversaries as they
could afford to buy the things they wanted throughout the year, she
had clung to celebrations as confirmation of his love for her. She
had hoped that a bottle of champagne and his favourite wine might
aide in him opening up to her about who he was now and what he
wanted – to seducing him; even though such attempts had failed in
the past. She needn’t have worried because when he eventually
stumbled in from work she could smell the cloud of alcohol and
smoke that clung to him from the bar he had been in since he had
finished his shift. A residual atmosphere of good times he had had
while she had been waiting; waiting and sinking into a
depression.

“
He had completely
forgotten about our anniversary. I know most couples moan about
things like that,” she laughed but her humour hung weakly on her
lips. “He was apologetic enough,” she remembered how his slurring
words had washed over her in potent waves of alcohol as he held
her. She had been the only one working to maintain their
relationship, and she didn’t have the strength to do it any longer.
“I just knew then that I couldn’t be with him anymore.” Kelly often
wondered if Ian had read her resignation in her face and the
reluctance in her share of their embrace, for he changed in that
moment and held her at arms length studying her face.

“
I told him I wanted
out.”

“
How did he take
that?”

“
Oh, swimmingly. He rushed
up stairs, dragged our suitcases out from under the bed, threw our
clothes at them told me to go and book a last minute deal on the
internet for a holiday, charged into the third bedroom, which I had
been decorating, cracked open a pot of paint and threw it up the
wall, said that he was decorating now, and was I happy?”