The House We Called Home

by Jenny Oliver

  Amy hadn’t at any point thought about how that might feel for him. ‘Oh right, yeah. Sorry about that.’

  Gus shook his head. ‘I didn’t mean it like it needed an apology, just— It’s a relief it’s out in the open.’

  She nodded. It was a relief. Less a huge weight of secret pressure. Less a mass of anticipated reactions. Just less big. She felt her shoulders relax a touch as she exhaled. ‘Night,’ she said.

  He paused. ‘Yeah. Night.’

  CHAPTER 15

  In Jack and Stella’s bedroom it was all dramatic whispers and gesticulations as she told him about Amy being pregnant. Jack was in his dressing gown, having just got out of the bath, sitting on the side of the bed, expression astounded. ‘I could safely say that is the last possible thing I thought was going on between the two of them.’

  Stella had the satisfied glow of having told someone an awesome piece of gossip. She sat on the other side of the bed to pull off her jeans. ‘I know, right.’

  Jack shook his head. Then he twisted round, hand on the slightly crumpled sheet, and said, ‘It was nice, earlier, to see you with Sonny.’

  Stella unclipped her necklace and earrings so she was just in a white vest and knickers. ‘I felt sorry for him,’ she said, remembering the feel of his head against her chest, the smell of his hair.

  Jack looked at her, examining her expression. ‘It’s not a weakness, Stel – to love your son.’

  ‘I know!’ she said. ‘I know that.’ She walked towards the bathroom. At the door she paused and added, ‘But loving someone doesn’t mean you let them slump around the house with a massive attitude problem. Jack, he’s so sullen, quite often Rosie and I go out to escape him.’

  Jack nodded. ‘He’s a teenager.’

  ‘Yeah, well that only counts so much.’

  Stella started brushing her teeth. From where she stood at the sink, she watched Jack go and peer out of the window at the dark sky. Saw him sigh like he was trying but failing to fix things. She rinsed her mouth and walked over to join him. Put her hand on his back.

  ‘There are loads of stars,’ he said, opening the window further so they could both get their heads out to see.

  She had grown up with those stars, the jet-black sky splattered with a billion dots of white. This was no London sky. This was infinity. A view that in the past had told her it was OK – the world stretched beyond this bedroom, this village, these expectations. That there was more.

  Right now, however, the vastness of the universe made her feel uneasy. Small and insignificant. Perhaps she was just unnerved by her mother’s confession that she was leaving. At how easily things set in stone could be unset. But as she turned to look at Jack’s profile, lit by the bedroom sidelights, she felt compelled to say something.

  Stella had never been very good at saying how she felt. At saying good things – maybe it was a side effect of the hard-won praise of Pete and her father, or maybe she was more like Potty-Mouth than she realised. But she swallowed and said, ‘I never told you what I appreciate about you.’

  She watched Jack smile in profile. ‘That’s OK, Stel.’

  She looked out over the shadowy garden, the moon highlighting the giant gunnera leaves, the cliff edge, frosting the tips of the waves. ‘I appreciate the stability you bring to our family.’

  Jack glanced across at her.

  She caught his eye and half-smiled. ‘I appreciate that today you could step in and do all that with those rods and gross stuff. That you just did it. I suppose I appreciate that you’re the proper one. But in a good way.’ She ran her finger across the back of his hand where it rested on the window frame. ‘I appreciate that you’re one of the goodies’ —she turned so she was leaning against the sill, eyes smiling— ‘like in a Western. Like THE goodie. You’re John Wayne.’

  Jack’s cheeks flushed, he looked embarrassed.

  ‘You’re blushing,’ she laughed, touching his skin where it had pinked.

  He put his hand over hers. ‘Well—’ He coughed, lost for anything to say. ‘I er—’

  ‘There’s other stuff,’ she cut in, ‘that I appreciate. That you’re considerate, and you don’t lie and you don’t get angry. And you put up with my family. But that’s the stuff right now. That’s what today made me feel.’

  Jack nodded. Then he moved away from the window. ‘That’s all very nice to hear.’

  Stella felt suddenly embarrassed. Schoolgirlish. Like she’d exposed too much of herself. ‘Good,’ she said.

  He smiled.

  She smiled. Then as Jack started to pull back the sheet on the bed, Stella said, ‘Maybe we should get on with having some of this sex we’re supposed to be having.’

  ‘Remind me how much sex we’re meant to be having,’ Jack said, hands on his dressing-gowned hips.

  She tipped her head. ‘It’s meant to be every day.’

  ‘Every day!’ Jack whistled.

  Stella grinned.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Well, good job I’m the real-life equivalent of John Wayne then, isn’t it?’ And he yanked her towards him like a cowboy hero. She stumbled on the edge of the curtain. ‘Oh sorry, are you OK?’ he asked, immediately letting her go and bending to check where she was rubbing her stubbed toe.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

  Jack made a face. ‘That wasn’t very John Wayne, was it?’

  Stella shook her head and laughed. ‘It’s OK, I don’t fancy John Wayne.’

  ‘OK good. Good.’ He took hold of her hand, gentle and polite. ‘Let’s get into bed before there’s any more injuries.’

  It was good sex. Good in-the-bed sex. They had always had good sex – when they had it. This had been a bit odd though – like they were doing it for a scene in a movie. Jack uncharacteristically attentive and tender, whispering to her which made her want to laugh but he seemed really serious so she didn’t. It was like learnt-from-the-TV sex. Like he was trying to live up to the person she’d just praised him for being. But even so, despite her stifled giggles, it was good. Made her think they should do it more often. It was always less of a hassle than she remembered.

  CHAPTER 16

  ‘Ow! What are you doing?’ Stella opened her eyes, disorientated. Jack was poking her shoulder to wake her up. It felt like the middle of the night. ‘What’s going on? Is it the kids?’

  ‘No, it’s not the kids. Don’t worry, nothing’s going on.’ Jack was sitting up next to her, T-shirt rumpled.

  ‘What time is it?’ Stella reached for her watch. ‘Jack, it’s four o’clock in the morning. What are you doing?’

  ‘I have to talk to you,’ he said, face set, like he’d been sitting waiting for a while.

  Stella squinted at him. Struggled to sit up. She could taste exhaustion. She could even vaguely remember her dream.

  ‘I do lie,’ he said, turning to look at her, swallowing.

  Stella was confused, still half-suspended in sleep she felt caught on the back foot. ‘Let me put some clothes on,’ she said, pulling on a T-shirt and pants from her case on the floor. Then, tying up her hair and sitting back next to him, she said, ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You said I didn’t lie and that I was the proper one. But I do lie and I’m not the proper one. I’m a fraud.’

  Stella rubbed her eyes. She was awake now. ‘Why are you a fraud?’ she asked, bracing herself. Preparing for him to ask for a divorce, to admit to an affair, to say he liked wearing her underwear, to say anything. Something that was about to upturn the preceding calm – that wasn’t calm at all but now felt calmer in light of this moment.

  Jack was looking down, pleating the sheet between his fingers.

  She thought about the adoring, whispering sex. It suddenly seemed such an obvious precursor to an admittance of guilt, the joke on her now.

  Maybe he knew where her dad was. Maybe they had chatted on the phone, discussed a plan. Maybe it was just that Jack had finally cracked under the weight of subterfuge.

  That didn’t seem so ba
d. She could handle that. Yes. That seemed the obvious answer.

  ‘I got made redundant,’ he said, letting go of the perfect neat sheet folds.

  ‘When?’ she frowned.

  ‘A couple of months ago.’

  ‘Months!’ Stella couldn’t believe it.

  Jack nodded.

  ‘Shit, Jack. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  He didn’t say anything.

  Stella rubbed her forehead. ‘I don’t understand – I don’t see why you’d— A couple of months. What have you been doing every day?’ She was flabbergasted. All she could see was him making his cheese and pickle sandwiches, packing his apple and Hula Hoops, and heading out of the door at 7.45 every morning. ‘Shit. Why didn’t I know? How much money do we have? Do we have enough money?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s tight,’ he said.

  Stella retied her hair, pulling it right on top of her head in a bun. She thought of their lovely South London house, their nice tidy little life slipping away. She took a deep breath. ‘It’s OK. It’ll be OK. We’ll just have to sell the house. That’s OK. Did you get a payoff? Have you been looking for other work? Did anyone else go? Was it just you?’

  ‘Stella. Stop.’ He held his hands up.

  Stella stopped. She closed her mouth. She looked at him, really looked at him. His brown hair – usually perfectly combed and parted – was messy, his eyes looked the kind of tired that she’d only seen before when the kids were newborn, in his T-shirt and boxers he looked under-dressed – without armour, without the turned-out trappings she expected to see him in. He didn’t look like the proper one. He looked like the exhausted one.

  It was Stella’s turn to pick at the sheet. ‘Just tell me if we need to sell the house.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Not just yet.’ He put his hands on top of his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  Stella nodded. She knew she needed to ask again why he hadn’t told her but she didn’t want to. All the clues were there that she wouldn’t like the answer. That while this was about him, it was definitely about to reflect badly on her.

  After a silence she said, ‘Jack, why didn’t you tell me?’

  His hands flopped down from his head to rest on his bent-up knees. ‘I don’t know.’

  It was sort of easier, for now, to pretend that was true. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘We need to come up with a plan.’

  Jack nodded.

  She looked at her hand and realised it was shaking.

  Then Jack said, ‘I think that’s why I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Why – because I’d make a plan?’

  He nodded. ‘Because I knew you would make me act on it. Do something. And I didn’t want to do anything.’ He stared at her, resigned. ‘I think I understand why your dad’s gone. It’s just for—’ He exhaled, confused like he couldn’t quite explain. ‘For the break. For the break from life. From expectation. Stella, you like me because I’m responsible.’

  ‘I don’t.’ She could feel panic fluttering inside her.

  He shrugged like there was no point arguing but he knew it was true.

  She looked at her hands and the concertinaed sheet. There was a safety in knowing Jack was the rock of their family. She’d even said it herself. He brought the stability, a regularity of income – she did well but the steadiness of her cash flow was less reliable. He made sure their monetary base was solid. He gave good ‘dad-time’, he played squash on a Wednesday, he emptied the dishwasher and took the rubbish out, he knew about wine. He was the all-round good guy.

  ‘And you like control,’ he said, arms wide, his expression like he’d started this so he may as well go the whole hog. ‘You’d have tried to fix it.’

  Stella gasped. ‘I do not like control.’

  ‘Oh come on, Stella.’

  ‘What do I control? My life’s a shambles. I have a whole column dedicated to the fact my life is a shambles.’

  ‘Yeah, and you make half of it up!’ he said, voice raised in exasperation. ‘Stella, the fact you have a column in the first place proves that it isn’t a shambles at all.’

  Stella crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Name me a time that I like being in control,’ she said, eyebrows raised, expression challenging.

  ‘OK, fine,’ Jack snapped. ‘With Sonny. You’re controlling with Sonny. You completely take over as the parent. So it’s basically your way or no way. And sometimes your expectations of people are too high because your expectation of yourself is too high.’ He was doing the emphatic hand movements he’d been taught on an away-day presentation course, Stella rolled her eyes, more so she could shy away from his accusation. ‘Maybe I don’t want to parent the way you parent,’ Jack went on, pointing to himself, ‘but I get no choice. And to be honest, yes, I’m fine with you as the main parent, but you have to accept the responsibility of fault. Sonny did not need to be sent away – it was too much. We could have sorted it at home as a family. You just jumped in and you couldn’t back down.’

  When he finished all the words seemed to hang in the air like washing on a line.

  ‘Wow.’ Stella blinked. ‘So this is all my fault?’

  ‘No, I’m not saying that.’ He sighed, looking across at the curtains and then back again. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying.’

  He looked a bit scared. Stella felt a bit scared.

  Outside was a dusky darkness, sunrise waiting in the wings.

  ‘I didn’t mean all that,’ Jack said, immediately backtracking.

  It was Stella’s turn to stare blankly. She’d been fast asleep not so long ago. ‘This is a nightmare,’ she said, looking at her pillow, knowing that it was more than likely she wouldn’t sleep again tonight. She looked at Jack, huffed a sort of laugh as she said, ‘You know the next one on the MOT list was “Air your grievances”. You jumped ahead.’

  Jack wasn’t smiling.

  Neither was Stella.

  She pulled her hair out of the band. ‘Looks like the bloody Marriage MOT finds out we’re a write off.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jack said. ‘I shouldn’t have said all that. I’m tired. Stressed.’ He rubbed his face with his hand. ‘I am glad I told you though. About the job. I wanted to. I just didn’t.’

  He felt a bit like a stranger. Not her husband and the father of her two kids.

  ‘I think maybe I need to go to sleep,’ he said.

  Stella nodded. ‘OK.’

  She wanted to say: You arsehole. This was your problem. Your lie. And somehow now it’s all my fault.

  Jack had slithered down the bed, his eyes three-quarters closed, trying but failing to stay awake. Stella watched the moment he slipped into sleep, like she had watched Sonny and Rosie as babies.

  She sat staring at him. This lump of slumbering human who had just shaken her upside down then left her there suspended.

  She too was starting to understand why her father had gone. Her every urge was to stand up and walk away. To leave this mess, these accusations. It was too heavy, too confusing, too unfixable.

  The sky lightened through the gap in the curtains. She could hear the sound of the birds alongside the waves. She sat looking at Jack a little longer, unable to believe he’d hidden this double life from her. His arm moved across and touched hers. She moved away. She tried to shut her eyes but couldn’t stand the darkness. In the end, she got up, pulled on her shorts, and left the room.

  CHAPTER 17

  The early morning sky was the pale pink of roses. Mist hovered over the water. The yellow crescent of the sun like butter on the horizon, all trace of yesterday’s rain long gone. Stella could feel damp sand squish between her toes. The tide was out, lines of flotsam left in its wake; shells, seaweed, bottle tops, sea glass. She picked up a bright blue piece as she walked, the smooth edges soft in her hand, round like a pebble, then she chucked it as far as she could throw. The cool of the morning chilled her skin, the hairs on her body tingled, the smell of the salt in the air caught her breath with memory.

  She walked and walked
out towards the water, perfect footprints in a line behind her, only stopping when she was calf-deep in the sea, tiny white horses lapping round her ankles. The cold pierced her skin, raw and sharp, then almost immediately dulled as she acclimatised, a pattern repeated every footstep deeper.

  She tried not to think of Jack as she stared out at the horizon. She brought her hands up to her face, over her eyes. It felt almost like he’d had an affair. A double life that made everything they had done the last few months a lie. How could she have tripped through it so blasé, so unsuspecting. She wondered if this would be the death of them. Imagined packing up her things, Rosie clinging to her side. Sonny would probably choose to stay with Jack. And the gulf between them would widen. It would feel less like her place to run and hold Sonny’s head to her chest when he was about to cry. Stella took her hands from her face. She felt grey. Tired. She felt like the sand slipping away beneath her feet with the ebb and flow of the tide. She tried to grab it with her toes but still it slithered away.

  She stared out at the white horizon of the sun-bleached sea. The rolling tide had brought with it the sharp memory of standing here every morning at six with her dad. Every day whatever the weather. A Tesco bag of Marmite sandwiches and a Thermos of tea on the shore. Two towels. Two dressing gowns. Standing in the surf, pulling her swimming hat on, spitting in her goggles to stop them fogging, rinsing them in sea water, adjusting them, her dad by her side doing the same. The summer sea calm and languid around their ankles, arms skating over the glassy surface, sun warm on their backs. And then the bitter menace of winter. The press of the waves, the gasp for air, the breathless dive through icy grey waves.

  Standing here now she couldn’t believe she had done it. The cold of the water on this early summer morning made her want to back away. Her teenage self would mock her – say she was old and cosseted. But Stella could see no benefit to hurling herself into what was no more than a block of melted ice.

  Her brain gave her a little test, tried to make her dive but her body stayed where it was.