‘You know darling, just too much on at work and I’m feeling it is all getting on top of me,’ Mike lied. He instantly felt terrible. He hated himself for not sharing with his wife. After he had lost Andrea he had tried hard to rekindle what relationship Victoria and he had had. He had never actually slept with anyone else, he told himself. Holding hands hardly constitutes adultery in court! But somehow the dream had thrust him back into a time of deception and now seemed an extension of his relationship with Andrea.
The alarm went again – their ten minute treat of a lie-in was over.
‘Will you do the cats before you leave? And any chance of the rubbish?’ Victoria asked as she threw the duvet off with an air of one who is resigned that the day has arrived and would need to be met head on, even if she didn’t feel at that moment equipped to cope.
‘Sure, no probs. I am on the later train, thank God it is the 7.06. I’m starting to hate the 6.26.’ Mike moved his tired limbs to the edge of the bed to swing his legs out into the waiting wheelchair. Somehow in bed he could move around just as anybody else could, or at least that’s what he thought. It was hard for him to remember now what it had been like to walk normally. His accident at 21 was such a distant memory, he had spent now more of his life getting around in a wheelchair than he had walking.
Somehow he always still managed to walk in his dreams. He stood, occasionally he ran, and yes, he always walked. His disability had not altered his life much. He could walk with the aid of two sticks, stand and manoeuvre himself in and out of his chair remarkably quickly. When it came to driving himself he could always open the boot, pack the wheelchair up and then walk around to the car door with his two sticks, get in and drive himself off. The wheelchair gave him speed and an ability to carry his case and laptop without the risk of falling over if he tried to move too fast for a commuter train.
After his shower and shave, Mike dressed in his customary blue suit and pink shirt and tie and slipped on his black oxford shoes, leaning over in his wheelchair to tie them up.
God, he must get round to polishing his shoes this weekend, they looked scruffy. He would have been given a detention at school if he had turned up with shoes in that condition, but after all these years that was one school habit that had been lost.
Mike pushed himself down the corridor and through the kitchen to the utility room where the cats were eagerly waiting for the back door to be opened and their food to be placed outside for breakfast.
That done, Mike pushed himself back into the kitchen where he collected the bin bags from under the sink and made his way back through the utility room, out of the same back door and down the ramp to deposit the bags in the two bins.
General waste black and recycling brown, Mike said to himself as he lifted the lids. He looked up at the sky and the crescent moon was still there, moved of course through the night but it was the same moon that had greeted him at quarter to three that morning just after he had met Andrea again.
‘I’m off darling,’ Mike shouted from the front door as he turned the key in the lock.
‘Well you could at least give me a kiss goodbye!’ Victoria called from their bedroom. She had just finished making the bed and was moving into the en-suite to shower.
‘Of course!’ Mike pushed himself down the corridor. In a way, he did adore his wife, but did he feel blessed that she was in his life? Well, perhaps he had been getting back to that point before his dream.
‘Love you,’ he said as he kissed her tenderly on the lips. She had bent down and snuggled his neck
‘Early night, I think this evening,’ she whispered in his ear. She straightened up and turned to the basin to start her morning routine of eye cream, teeth, shower and then moisturising, always in the same order.
Mike always liked those whispers in his ear. Not because they always meant instant gratification in a way that if they were ever heard by a third party they may be so portrayed, but more because they represented a closeness and companionship that Mike was once again learning to appreciate. It was not always about sex, although when that occurred, Mike was as grateful as any husband after twenty or so years.
Mike pushed himself to the car and, after the short drive to the station, he was on the platform, cappuccino in hand, waiting for the 7.06 to Waterloo.
Despite commuting into London from Winchester for the best part of a decade, Mike knew few people on the platform by name. He nodded a greeting to a couple of faces he recognised and got ready to stand up and get on the train on his sticks. The guard was on hand as usual to fold his chair up and pop it on the train at the end of the carriage where he climbed into a seat.
After finishing his coffee he closed his eyes. He often dozed off on the train, but on this morning he wondered if he would be able to recreate his dream and speak with Andrea.
CHAPTER 2
IT WAS another hard but uneventful week at work for Mike. He had commuted into London to the solicitor’s practice where he was a partner every day for most of the last two decades, the last eight of which from Winchester. He found it easier to endure during the summer months and perhaps he was feeling his age in the cold January. Usually he tried to either have one day out in his car visiting clients or working from home, but that week he had not been able to arrange his diary for either.
As the end of January approached and the frosty starts each day continued, Mike worried about February. February should have meant a gradual improvement in the weather and a thought of spring around the corner. Mike often struggled with the dark winter months and the idea of cheerful daffodils heralding the start of spring should have cheered up the heart. However, for Mike he first had to address the annual stress of Valentine’s Day. For most men who had been married, happily or not, for around twenty years, the day held some dread. Would flowers be enough? Would chocolates be viewed as a kick in the teeth by the unthinking husband who was not supporting his wife on the way towards those precious few pounds lost at Weight Watchers each week? Or what of the risk of that black lacy underwear purchase, sexy but not slutty? The sort of buy that most middle-aged men like Mike wanted to risk because, if received in the right spirit by the other half, led towards that lovely rekindling of passion.
What a risk though, get it wrong and the gates of hell would break loose: ‘What do you think I am, some sort of slutty secretary? I’m your fucking wife, in case you had forgotten!’ Mike ran through the possibilities and the possible outcomes.
‘What would I have purchased for Andrea?’ He mused to himself one day as he slumbered on the train home. Probably a quiet lunch, a small bistro he knew around the corner from Carnaby Street, and some flowers, traditional but discreet, not too ostentatious. Only there would be no such lunch, she was dead.
Mike turned his thoughts to Victoria. He really must try harder to connect with his wife. However for Valentine’s Day Mike faced one particular problem that most men did not…
Victoria was a florist.
She had owned her own shop now for nearly five years. It was in a side street in Winchester and, although not a natural entrepreneur, she was enthusiastic in running her business but tended to panic when things did not go smoothly. The first two weeks of February brought that annual pressure. With their considerable range of friends locally, VF’s, as the shop Victoria’s Flowers was affectionately referred to by the regular clientele, was inundated.
Mike found the first two weeks in February almost unbearable. It was the same questions, the same lack of confidence, the same inability to make a decision, the same impact upon their smooth well-ordered lives. Or so he thought.
‘Why do I do this? It cannot be worth this level of aggravation?’ Victoria began the annual rant on time as if responding to a pistol at the start of a running race. She had been in the blocks, under starters orders and taut with anticipation of the adrenaline rush that was about to engulf her… it was the 5th February.
‘Should I get in extra staff? I could see if Sophie has some spare time from unive
rsity, Jules said she was likely to be back home studying for a couple of weeks.’ Jules was Victoria’s best friend, confident and an all-round pain in the arse as far as Mike was concerned. Sophie was her daughter and usually away at university where she was studying law. Mike was like most middle-aged men, acutely aware that he should not lust after 19-year-old blonde-haired students who played netball for their university, but somehow he could not help himself. He did not hate himself for his lustful thoughts about Sophie, but rather tried to accept them as some sort of primeval instinct that he could not control. He may not have altogether understood them, but inevitably had to accept them as nature, while knowing he should keep them under control. Caged tiger sounded a little too primeval for Mike’s tastes but it kind of summed it up.
‘For God’s sake,’ he thought as he allowed his mind to wander to Sophie, ‘Victoria is always banging on about Tom Cruise in that bloody awful film.’
‘Well, give her a call sweetie,’ he said aloud. It was hard for Mike not to sound irritable, it did seem a pretty logical step and one that had been followed for the last two years, so he wondered why his views over such a simple decision were being sought.
‘Should I order more red roses? Or will people want a variety of flowers such as red tulips?’ Victoria asked.
The questions were now going to come thick and fast and with the monotony of a goods train, lumbering towards its final destination: the inevitable row at platform 1!
‘Well how many did you order in last year, darling?’ Mike tried to keep his voice calm and helpful.
‘You have that managing me voice on,’ Victoria retorted. ‘Your know how this time of year stresses me out, you know I value your input and yet you patronise me with that tone. You are meant to love and support me you know… or did that slip your mind as you were away in your head. What were you thinking about anyway, because it sure as hell was not me!’
‘Bloody hell that goods train is gathering speed faster than most years,’ thought Mike.
‘Well actually I was thinking about Sophie’s long legs and how she looks great bending over the flower buckets on the floor of your shop!’ Was what he was so tempted to say. Or was he? His head was often filled with so many different thoughts. Yes, of course, the fit Sophie, but was that simply just a distraction for a man who should know better?
Probably of greater personal pressure in his head had been his contact, his lunches, his coffees with Andrea. Until her death, she had become more and more of a part of his life. Since he had lost her last autumn, he had allowed his mind to wander to Sophie during the couple of times he had come into contact with her: over Christmas at drinks with Jules and her husband Gerald and then again at New Year. But somehow it was just a passing infatuation, a lust after a younger model. With Andrea it had been so much more: a connection, a comfort and always a feeling that his position in his chair had not mattered. He had always found Andrea very attractive, and yet there was so much more to the feelings inside him than simply the physical arousal when they were in close proximity to each other, sharing their personal space.
‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be unhelpful and I should be more considerate, I have a lot on my plate at work and I know that should not be an excuse, but it kind of fills my head.’ Mike knew that Victoria would believe him as she always blamed his work for taking up too much head space.
‘Well my business fills my head as well, only it is just for two weeks a year and not 52!’ Victoria was starting to calm down a little, perhaps the goods train was approaching an amber light.
Mike did not want to point out he did not work 52 weeks a year and that when they had a break he only checked his emails for an hour or so a day; that approach would merely stoke the boilers of discontent on the train.
When was their last holiday together? Oh yes, how could he forget that fateful trip to France in the car? Paris and then a wander south had sounded so lovely as they had planned it some six years ago. No need to worry about the chair and airports they had agreed. And then the disaster had unfolded.
The puncture on the A13 to Paris and the wait for the man in the van to fix something that Mike was sure Victoria could have helped with if she had been bothered… The car sickness that seemed never to end for Victoria who, only when they were 650 miles into France, announced that she would rather fly everywhere… The hotel they’d booked online that looked as if the Gestapo had only just left it the previous week, rustic charm stretching the description to breaking point… The inevitable hotel change at 3am when Victoria announced she simply could not stay a moment longer in ‘this flea pit’…
At least they had found a modern and comfortable hotel on a golf resort but then Victoria had announced she was flying home two days early so as to avoid the drive. Mike had realised that perhaps this would be their last holiday as a couple.
It could only have been a year or so after that when he had started to enjoy Andrea’s company at work. His mind had returned to Andrea yet again. How often it did, he thought to himself.
‘You are right, of course, and I did not mean that sarcastically. Why don’t you just call the suppliers and check how big your order was last year and what varieties you got in and then we can have a quick chat this evening, it will still be OK if you email them first thing tomorrow.’ Mike put on his helpful business advisor voice.
‘Finally why don’t you just pull off the computer the details of your advanced orders, no doubt Gerald will try and order the most expensive arrangement going?’
Jules’ husband, Gerald, worked for a merchant bank. He commuted daily but always caught an earlier train than Mike. They had known each other as a couple for over a decade.
‘That is a great idea, thanks darling, I am so sorry I was shitty, but you know how I hate this time of year.’ Victoria was back to her usual self.
‘She is actually lovely when not stressed,’ he thought to himself. ‘And here I am thinking of my dead friend again.’ A wave of guilt spread over him like a duvet being thrown in the air as a bed is made. It settled to cover his whole body.
‘I suspect Gerald only spends so much on flowers as he has such a guilty conscience, Jules is convinced he’s playing around again. Apparently his new secretary is a part-time swimwear model!’ Victoria was always aware of the latest news from her friends, who seemed to spend more time in her shop drinking coffee than doing anything productive.
‘God,’ thought Mike, ‘two gentlemen with guilt and yet nothing happened with Andrea, I must remember that.’
‘Wow, really? I must pop across to the city and have a beer with him one lunchtime and catch a look!’ Mike was only joking and Victoria knew it.
‘Well love, I am sure if you pushed really hard on those wheels you may even be able to keep up with her long legs as she walks down the street!’ Victoria’s response whilst accurate was a little hard to take for Mike to take as a joke.
‘True darling!’
Mike went back into his head. At least he knew the most that Victoria would throw at him was that he was thinking too much of work.
The countdown to Valentine’s Day continued. The extra flowers were ordered in, Sophie was hired for a week for cash in hand and Mike braced himself for the inevitable call at the office on the 13th.
‘If only it would fall on a Sunday, then I wouldn’t have all this aggravation the day before,’ he mused to himself as he sat on the train on Tuesday 12th February. He had been slightly delayed this morning as the cats had managed to miss their dirt box in the utility room and he had spent an extra five minutes cleaning the tiled floor. He’d had no time to grab that cappuccino.
Without the caffeine, Mike felt himself starting to doze off earlier than usual, he would be fast asleep long before Basingstoke.
‘Well it is good to see you again.’ Andrea was standing in front of him. They were in a busy street – it felt like London but Mike could not make out any landmarks. There seemed to be people all around but they were in a sort of fog, no faces s
tood out from the crowd, there seemed no definition except Andrea.
‘It’s a surprise to see you! I thought we were going to meet up again but I was not certain where or when… was I meant to see you in the caravan park place?’ Mike felt like he was conducting a business conversation over the location of a meeting, it sounded so matter of fact.
‘Caravan park, what are you wittering on about?’ Andrea seemed short with him. ‘We agreed to see each other here and you are on time.’
‘This is really very confusing for me, you’ll have to bear with me.’ Mike felt off balance in the conversation.
‘It’s very straightforward,’ Andrea continued ‘When you are here, you feel more than you see with your eyes; it’s very intuitive, the location is moveable, we are static when we are communicating. People here don’t seem to speak, we just connect. I realise this all sounds very abstract but it sort of works and is understandable when you get here. There is though a bit of a difference when you feel different sorts of people. I realise that you are only visiting, so to speak, you are not a permanent resident!’ Andrea laughed a little with embarrassment. She could not bring herself to call him alive or refer to herself as dead.
‘The difference when I am with you is quite startling. You see, you change when you visit, like the fact that you can walk and stand, but somehow that would not necessarily be the same if you were…’ Andrea’s voice trailed off. There was no way she was going to talk about him dying.
‘So how did I connect with you to be here now?’ Mike was intrigued and wanted to understand the logistics. He seemed to miss the differences that Andrea intimated at.
‘That’s a great question and to be honest I don’t really know.’ Andrea seemed as interested as he was and also pleased she was not being drawn into the whole question of differences between visitors and permanent residents as she saw them.
‘Perhaps I just felt the need to connect with you today,’ Mike continued. ‘Home is a bit stressful and work is the same old crap!’
A Dream to Die For Page 2