Taken for Granted
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Caroline Anderson
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CHAPTER ONE
‘CAN I blow out the candles, Mummy?’
‘No, stupid, it’s her birthday—she has to blow out the candles. Can I have the first bit, Mum?’
‘Maybe. And don’t call your sister stupid, Ben.’
‘Why not? She is.’
Sally set the cake down in the middle of the table, among the remains of the ham sandwiches and the apple and celery salad. A dollop of mayonnaise winked at her from her cuff as she pulled back her arm.
Great.
She would have to change.
‘She isn’t stupid, she’s just younger than you,’ Sally reasoned automatically as she dealt with the cuff. Damn, it was bound to mark.
‘I want to light the candles now,’ Molly said plaintively. It was past the eight-year-old’s bedtime and she was beginning to whine, but they had to wait…
‘When Daddy’s home,’ Sally told them.
‘He’ll be hours—he always is,’ Ben said with all the pragmatism of a ten-year-old.
Molly’s face puckered and she turned to her mother. ‘Not always—is he, Mummy?’
She couldn’t be bothered to argue with them—not tonight, on her thirty-ninth birthday. It was the last one she would celebrate for a long, long time.
Or she would if only Sam would come home.
She glanced at the clock on the oven, then at the contents. Would the casserole survive if he was much longer?
The phone rang, and she picked it up.
‘Hello? Sally Alexander.’
‘Sally, it’s Sam. I forgot to tell you, I’ve got a meeting tonight with a pharmaceutical rep. I’ll be back late.’
She opened her mouth to tell him it was her birthday, but shut it again. What was the point? What was the point of any of it?
‘Fine. I’ll see you later,’ she said heavily.
‘Sally?’
She cradled the receiver with infinite care. It was that or smash it.
‘Sorry, kids, Daddy’s held up. He said go ahead without him.’ She forced a bright smile and picked up the matches. ‘Who wants to help me blow out the candles?’
The casserole looked unappetising. It was pheasant in red wine with tons of mushrooms and garlic—Sam’s favourite.
She could freeze it, of course.
She couldn’t be bothered. When would she heat it up? On another night when he would phone and say he couldn’t make it?
She looked at the casserole, the sauce congealing, drying at the edges, and held it out at arm’s length above the middle of the kitchen floor.
It smashed most satisfyingly.
It splashed her dress, of course, and the walls and the fronts of the cupboards.
She didn’t care. The dress was already covered in mayonnaise and probably ruined, and anyway it didn’t fit her any more.
She needed to diet. Having an extra slice of chocolate cake probably hadn’t helped.
Still, she wouldn’t be having dinner tonight.
She gave the carnage on the floor a cursory glance, and took the champagne out of the fridge. Crunching across the kitchen on the broken glass of the casserole dish, she retrieved a tumbler from the cupboard by the dishwasher, popped the cork and poured herself a hefty slug.
‘Happy birthday, Sal,’ she told herself, raising her glass.
‘Thanks,’ she replied, and drained the glass.
It tickled her nose. She poured another. That also tickled, and this time she giggled.
Damn him. How could he forget?
The laughter turned to tears, and she set the glass down and left the room, turning her back on the chaos.
She would sort it out tomorrow—if she was still here. It was by no means certain.
Sam shifted in his chair, bored. God, he hated these pharmaceutical ‘sweeteners’. They had adjourned to a local Italian restaurant for ‘a bite of something’. Sam was glad he wasn’t picking up the tab. There were four of them: Sam; the rep; Martin Goody, the senior partner; and Steve Dalton, the other partner in the practice. Martin was divorced, Steve was still single, and there was no reason to suppose the rep was in a hurry to get home. He told endless stories about his exploits, and ‘the wife’ was constantly run into the ground. Sam didn’t imagine for a moment that he would care if his wife worried about his lateness—if indeed she would.
Sally, on the other hand…He glanced at his watch. Quarter past ten—on the fifteenth of March.
Oh, God.
Sally’s birthday.
He closed his eyes, a wave of guilt and remorse washing over him. How could he have forgotten?
‘Sam? You OK?’
He opened his eyes again, and nodded. ‘Yes—I’m fine. I’m sorry, I’m going to have to leave you—I’ve got a patient I’m a bit concerned about and it’s preying on my mind,’ he lied.
‘Can’t it keep for an hour?’ Martin asked with a quick frown of puzzlement.
Sam felt guilty colour crawl up his neck. ‘I think I’d be happier if I went now,’ he said with absolute truth, and with another apology to the rep and to his bewildered colleagues he slid back his chair, retrieved his coat and left.
The drive home was agonising. What could he say that would make it any better? Nothing. He hadn’t bought her anything, not even a card.
He called in at the all-night garage on the way and picked up an indifferent card and a box of chocolates. They weren’t her favourite, but they didn’t have any Belgian ones in the garage. Damn. He looked at the flowers, but they were tatty and bedraggled, definitely past their best. He walked past them, wrote the card in the car and then drove the last few miles home.
The house was in darkness, except for the light in the hall.
Damn, again.
Perhaps she was in the drawing-room at the rear of the house. He put the car in the garage and went in through the kitchen door, as usual, crossing the kitchen in the half-dark.
Something crunched under his feet.
‘What on earth…?’
He stopped in his tracks and peered down at the floor.
Whatever it was smelt delicious.
He backtracked cautiously and flicked on the light. Something dark red, rich and with mushrooms floating in it—mushrooms and something larger—a pheasant?—and the remains of a casserole dish adorned the tiled floor and the front of the kitchen units.
An opened bottle of champagne—good champagne—stood on the side, an empty glass beside it, next to the massacred remnants of a chocolate cake. He studied the carnage in stunned silence, then, picking his way carefully over the mess, he kicked off his shoes at the doorway and walked into the hall in his socks.
‘Sally?’
Silence, except for the ticking of the grandfather clock. The sitting-room was in darkness, but there was enough light to see that it was empty.
He crossed the hall and peered into the drawing-room. Darkness again. She must be upstairs.
He padded up silently in his socks, opened the door and went into their room. The bathroom light was on, and he could make out her form in the bed, hunched up in one corner.
She was mad with him. It showed in every line of her body. He sighed. He supposed she had every right to be, but she could have reminded him. Damn it, he was busy. She had nothing else to think about.
Self-righteous anger warred the guilt. Guilt won.
He sat carefully on the edge of the bed.
‘Sally?’
‘Go away.’
‘Darling, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not just the meal.’
‘I know.’ He put the chocolates and card under her hand. ‘Happy birthday.’
She sat up slowly.
‘You remembered.’
‘Not in time. I really am sorry.’
‘I should have reminded you,’ she mumbled, ‘only I wanted you to remember without being reminded.’
He nearly told her that she only had herself to blame, but he stopped himself just in time.
Instead he stripped off his tie, dropped his shoes and went into the dressing-room. He put his suit on the hanger, noting a mark on the lapel. Sally would have to take it to the cleaners for him.
He went back into the bedroom in his shirt and underwear, shedding them as he went, and slipped into bed beside her. He would win her round. He always could. It never failed.
I can’t, she thought. I’m so angry with him, I can’t be bothered to pretend to enjoy this any more, either for his ego or for mine.
He kissed her, his mouth warm and gentle. It made her want to cry. She used to love his kisses, but not any more. She had lost him, somewhere along the way, and this man was a stranger—a stranger who took her for granted.
She didn’t want to be taken for granted any more.
So she lay there, without responding, and after a while he lifted his head.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Sally, you’ve made your point,’ he muttered. ‘Come on.’
‘No.’
‘What?’
‘I said no.’
He was still for a second, then rolled away. ‘No?’ he repeated, his voice incredulous.
As well he might be. She couldn’t remember a time when she had refused him without a good reason—and not feeling like it didn’t count.
‘I have apologised for forgetting it was your birthday,’ he went on. ‘It’s not as if I’ve been in bed with the rep, for heaven’s sake!’
‘I just don’t feel like it,’ she said, in a tone that brooked no further discussion.
Sam, however, was harder than that to deter.
‘OK, let’s have it,’ he said heavily. ‘Why not?’
Sally was fed up—fed up with being used, with being sweet-talked and cajoled and coaxed into forgetting what she was angry about. It wouldn’t work this time, because she found the hurt went deeper than she cared to probe.
Hurt made her lash out, dredging up the truth.
‘Because I find I can’t be bothered to fake an enthusiastic response tonight.’
The silence was shattering. ‘Fake?’ he said softly, after an age.
She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. God, she must do something with it, it was a mess. A mousy mess. Yuck.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Nothing,’ she backtracked. ‘I’m just being bitchy.’
‘No, you’re not. What did you mean?’
He wasn’t going to let it go, she realised.
Hell. Her and her mouth. Why hadn’t she kept quiet?
‘I don’t feel like it. I’m angry with you, and I just don’t feel like pretending that I’m not.’
He flicked on the bedside light and sat up against his pillows.
‘That isn’t what you said,’ he told her, his ice-blue eyes searching her face. ‘That isn’t what you meant.’
She turned away. ‘How do you know what I meant? You don’t know who the hell I am any more.’
There was silence, then he sighed heavily.
‘No, maybe I don’t. One thing’s for sure—you aren’t the woman I married.’
He flicked off the light, turned on his side away from her and thumped the pillow.
Sally felt the tears welling again. Was this all her protest would amount to? A huffy silence because she refused to sleep with him?
Her stomach rumbled.
God, she was starving.
It was sheer pride that prevented her from going and eating the supper off the kitchen floor—pride and the knowledge that it was by no means clean enough.
Instead she lay in the half-dark, staring at the broad expanse of his back, and wondered what on earth she could do that would give them both back the people they had married—the people they had loved.
Because one thing was certain. There wasn’t much love lost between them at the moment, and if something didn’t happen soon, it would be too late…
It was four days before the last of the casserole disappeared from the fronts of the kitchen cupboards.
The day after Sally’s birthday, they all stepped cautiously round the mess in the middle of the floor, the children regarding it with wide eyes but wisely saying nothing. By lunchtime leaving it there seemed such an empty protest that Sally dealt with it, functioning on autopilot while she pondered the state of her marriage.
Was it Sam’s fault? she wondered as she scrubbed the red wine out of the grout between the tiles. Or hers?
Both?
God knows, she thought. Does it matter, so long as it changes?
But it couldn’t change without help, and to help, they had to know what was wrong.
Defeated, she swabbed the floor down and gave up on the stains.
He was off that weekend, and on Saturday night Sally packed the children off to bed as early as she could get away with, and resolved to talk to Sam.
‘There’s casserole on the cupboard doors still,’ he said as she came back into the kitchen. The table was still littered with plates, and he threw the remark over his shoulder as he disappeared towards the sitting-room with a glass of wine in one hand and the paper in the other.
‘So clean it off,’ she said sharply.
He stopped, turned and came back, his face wary.
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
‘It isn’t my job. I didn’t chuck it on the floor. You clean it off.’
‘No.’
He sighed and stabbed his fingers through his hair, tousling the gold strands still further. ‘Look, Sally, for God’s sake, you’ve had days to deal with it. You’ve got nothing else to do——’
‘What! Nothing else? How do you think your suit got to and from the cleaners? How do yo think the children get backwards and forwards to school? Who does the washing, the shopping, the gardening——?’
‘It’s winter, there’s no gardening——’
‘It’s the middle of March, Sam—in case the fact has escaped you again. That’s spring. I’ve been out in the garden for weeks battling the winter wreckage, pruning and clipping and weeding and tidying——’
‘Aren’t you lucky to have the time?’
Sally poured herself a glass of wine with a shaky hand. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Sam—no, I’m not lucky! I’m bored out of my mind, I’m totally taken for granted—I’m wasted! I’m a lively, intelligent member of the human race, and I’m rotting in this——’
‘If you dare call this house a hell-hole——’
‘Yes? You’ll what? Throw me out? I own half of it.’
‘Only because of the crazy law in this country. I’ve put every penny into this place.’
‘And I’ve just cleaned it.’
He looked pointedly at the cupboard fronts. ‘On occasion.’
Her breath hissed out through clenched teeth. ‘Bastard,’ she said softly. ‘You bought the house. It’s me that’s turned it into a home for us. Left up to you it would be a chaotic, empty shell.’ She took a steadying gulp of the wine. ‘It’s so easy for you. You get up in the morning, you wash yourself, dress yourself, feed yourself, take yourself to work, do your job, come home, eat a meal prepared by someone else, pick up a drink and a paper bought by someone else and go and flop down in front of the television while the skivvy does another two hours in the kitchen clearing up after the chaos of the day and getting the children to bed!’
‘Oh, yes, and during the day, of course, I’ve had nothing better to do than go off to garden centres and swan about at the health club and have coffee with friends and natter at the school gates—God, you women, you’re all the same,’ he ranted. ‘You think you’re so hard done by, and none of you have done a full day’s work in years!’
Sally was so angry she could hardly speak. ‘And who’s got the weekend off?’ she said finally. ‘Who spent the afternoon dozing in the study? Who will spend tomorrow reading the Sunday papers?’
Sam gave an aggrieved sigh and shovelled his hand through his hair. ‘So what? I work bloody hard, Sally. I deserve a rest.’
‘So—do—I.’
He snorted, his eyes travelling round the kitchen. ‘Well, it’s a good job I’m more efficient at what I do than you are at what you do, or all my patients would be dead.’
Sally counted to ten. She was going to kill him. She was.
‘Is medicine your chosen career?’
He looked a little stunned. ‘Yes—of course. You know that.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I do. If you remember, that was how we met. I was a GP trainee, you were a junior partner. It was love at first sight. Seems a hell of a long time ago.’
She turned away, refilling her glass. ‘I chose medicine as my career as well—but I’m not doing it, Sam. Because of an accident of biology, I’ve had to turn into a cook, a gardener, a decorator and a financial manager.’
‘Don’t forget mother.’
‘Oh, I don’t—I never forget I’m a parent, but I think you do, very often. And a husband.’
‘Well, I like that! I work damned hard to provide for you all, and what do I get in return?’
‘A clean house, well run, a lovely garden to relax in if you were ever here, children who’ve been brought up to know the meaning of the word respect, a balanced diet to keep you fit while you go out there and slave your fingers to the bone in your chosen career…’
He had the grace to blush. ‘Look, Sally, I’ve apologised. Give it a rest.’
‘No, I won’t—not until I’ve had my say. I didn’t choose my lifestyle, and I don’t like it. I feel frustrated, under-valued and worthless, and I hate that, Sam. I can’t take it any more, and I won’t!’
He set his glass down very carefully. ‘What are you saying, Sally?’
He looked rattled. Did he think she was going to leave him?
Perhaps she was. She had no very clear idea.
‘I just want—recognition.’
‘Of what? Your cushy lifestyle? Give it a rest.’
‘My cushy lifestyle? You haven’t lifted a finger since Friday night!’
‘And the last thing I had to do was admit a child to hospital with query meningitis!’
‘Lucky you. The most important thing I’ve had to do in the last twenty-four hours is remember to put the chicken in the oven!’
‘I don’t know why you’re complaining! You want for nothing—absolutely nothing. Anything you need, you have. Money, clothes, holidays—all you have to do is ask—’
‘Exactly.’ she met his eyes, her own burning like bright stars. ‘All I ever have to do is ask. Maybe I don’t want to have to ask you for money to buy you a birthday present! Did that ever occur to you?’
‘Dear God, woman, you think you’re so hard done by! What you need is a real day’s work—that would soon shut you up! A short spell in the real world, just to show you how lucky you are.’
‘Done!’ She set her wine down and turned towards him. ‘We’ll swap jobs. You’ve got some leave owing to you—take it. Take three weeks. I’ll do your locum, and you—you can put your feet up and do my job!’
The challenge vibrated in the air between them. Sally could feel the blood zinging in her veins. It had to work. He had to pick up the gauntlet.
‘You’re on,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll start on Monday morning.’
She shook her head. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, just as softly. She picked up her wine and the evening paper. ‘There’s no time like the present—we’ll start now.’
And with a smirk of victory, she walked past him and into the sitting-room.
He followed her. ‘I wouldn’t dream of leaving my desk covered in coffee-cups and clutter for someone else to take over. We’ll start on Monday—and we’ll spend tomorrow putting our mutual houses in order. I think that’s only fair.’
He lifted the paper off her lap and walked calmly across the room, flicking off the television and switching on the CD player.
‘I was watching that!’
He raised an eyebrow just the tiniest fraction. ‘Were you? Before you do the dishwasher, or afterwards?’
It was all she could manage not to smash every single plate in the house.
Monday was one of those funny old spring days that was freezing to start with and by lunchtime was hot enough for a T-shirt. In a smart tailored suit that stilljust—fitted, and tights and court shoes and a slip and all the paraphernalia of power dressing, Sally was boiling.
Boiling, and exhausted. She had hardly slept a wink for worrying about their rash exchange of jobs. What if she slipped up? What if she found she was so out of date that she couldn’t tell an ingrowing toe-nail from a case of dysentery?
She had kept up, of course, out of interest—or so she hoped. But was reading all the professional journals that came into the house an adequate substitute for clinical practice?
Probably not. In three weeks, she could do an enormous amount of harm.
Then there was the reaction of the practice staff.
‘Hello, Mrs Alexander,’ the receptionist had sung when she went in.
The practice manager looked up and echoed the remark.
Sally shifted her bag from one hand to the other. ‘Um—Dr Alexander, actually. Sam’s Mrs Alexander for the next three weeks. We’ve swapped.’
Their jaws dropped.
‘Swapped?’ the practice manager said with a gasp. ‘But—what about your insurance?’
‘It’s up to date, Mavis, it’s fine.’
‘But what about the payroll? What do I do about paying you?’
Sally smiled. ‘That would be wonderful, of course, but in the circumstances I think we needn’t bother with that. It would only go out of our joint account into our joint account.’
Mavis grappled with that for a moment, then tutted. ‘It really is too bad of Dr Alexander not to have said anything. What about the patients?’
‘What about them? He’s on holiday, tell them. I’m doing his locum.’
Jackie, the receptionist, grinned. ‘Mr Lucas’ll hate that. He doesn’t approve of working women. Tells me that every time he comes in, now he knows I’ve got children.’
He hadn’t liked it, either. He had grumbled and complained the whole time she sounded his chest, and when she told him the only cure for his persistent bronchitis was to give up smoking he harumphed and stalked out, muttering about interfering busybodies and not knowing your place as he went.
The other patients were less overtly offensive, but she could tell that Sam’s sudden defection was unwelcome.
‘Don’t get me wrong, dear,’ one elderly lady said kindly. ‘I’m sure you’re a perfectly good doctor, but Dr Alexander has been so understanding and helpful about my condition—perhaps I’ll wait and see him when he comes back. When is he coming back?’
‘Three weeks,’ Sally told her, and watched her face fall.
‘Oh. Well, perhaps I’d better not wait. It’s my dizzy spells, you see, dear. They seem to be getting worse.’
Sally took her blood-pressure, checked her history and asked for a more accurate description of her ‘dizzy spells’.
‘Oh, my legs go all funny—I feel weak all over and then sometimes I just go down plop.’
‘You fall?’ Sally asked.
‘Oh, yes, sometimes.’
‘Do you pass out, do you think?’
She looked doubtful. ‘I don’t think so—no, dear, I’m sure I don’t.’
‘Could you do something for me, Mrs Wright? Could you walk over to the door and back for me, please?’
Sally watched as the woman did so, noticing that as she turned sharply she reached out for the doorknob, steadying herself for a moment before looking up with a shaky smile.
‘Often happens like that, when I turn. Oh, dear…’
Sally helped her back to her chair, and watched as the woman removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes.
The glasses caught Sally’s eye. They looked very modern in contrast to Mrs Wright’s clothes, almost as if they didn’t fit, or belonged to a different era…
Something clicked in Sally’s memory. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had new specs recently, have you?’
‘New…? Well, I have, dear, actually, a few weeks ago. These are bifocals—vari-something, they’re called. As a matter of fact they’re a bit tight, so I only wear them on special occasions or if I can’t make something out. Usually I wear my old ones.’
‘I wonder,’ Sally said thoughtfully. ‘Did you ever have dizzy spells before you got the new glasses?’
‘Before?’ Mrs Wright thought for a moment. ‘Well, now you come to mention it, I don’t believe I did, not really. Only when I go to my sister’s and we get the sherry out, but I don’t suppose that counts, does it?’
Sally smiled. ‘Probably not.’
Mrs Wright’s face creased in worry. ‘You don’t suppose my eyes got worse because of something like a brain tumour, do you?’
Sally hastily reassured her. ‘No, not at all. I think you may have had a different prescription, so your brain’s having difficulty making sense of what it sees, especially with them being varifocals as well. It’s quite a common reaction. Would you mind giving me the name of the optician? I’ll ring them and find out if they’ve changed your prescription. Often if one eye changes more than another, that can cause dizziness.’
Mrs Wright fished in her bag and brought out a tatty old appointment card. Sally rang the number, asked about the prescription and then set the phone down with a smile.
‘They’ve made the right eye much stronger. That could easily give you symptoms of dizziness at first.’
‘So what do I do? I can’t really see at all well now with the old ones, and to tell you the truth, I’m afraid to wear the new ones too much.’
‘I think you should. Actually it’s the chopping and changing that’s confusing your brain, and if you stuck to the new ones, you’d probably find you were much better very quickly.’
‘Well, if you say so, dear,’ Mrs Wright said doubtfully. ‘I could always try it.’ She sounded highly sceptical, as if it couldn’t possibly be so easy.
Sally crossed her fingers under the desk. ‘I hope it works. Come back if not and we’ll have a closer look, but I’m fairly confident that’s the cause of your problems.’
Mrs Wright headed stiffly for the door, then turned carefully to say goodbye. ‘Shall I send in the next patient, dear?’
‘If you would, please.’
The door closed, and Sally leant back, her teeth worrying her lip. What if she was wrong? What if it was something much more major and the glasses were just a distraction?
She didn’t have time to worry. The next patient came in, and the next, and the next, and the temperature climbed steadily.
By the end of her surgery she was hot, bothered and ready for a nice, long shower. She hadn’t had time this morning, because she’d been awake so much in the night that she’d slept through the alarm, and Sam, so used to her getting up and bringing early morning tea, had slept in as well.
Consequently there’d only been time for one of them to shower, and guess what?
She stuck her head round the door of the reception office. ‘Anything urgent for me?’ she asked.
The practice manager, Mavis, shook her head and continued her phone conversation with a patient.
‘I’ll be at home, then,’ she told them, and headed for the door.
It was cooler outside, but she still felt sticky. It was nearly twelve. If she hurried she should still have time to shower and change into something more comfortable before going back for two.
Sam was in the garden when she arrived, and heaps of black bin-bags were stacked on the edge of the drive.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Scarifying the lawn. How did it go?’
‘OK. What’s for lunch?’
‘Lunch? I don’t know—what did you have in mind?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘What did I have in mind? How about coming home, having a plate put in one hand, a mug in the other and told to put my feet up?’
Sam snorted rudely. ‘You’re joking—I’m busy.’
‘No you’re not. We’re swapping roles, remember? It was bad enough not getting early morning tea today, without having to forage for my lunch. Anyway, I want a shower. That should give you a few minutes to knock up something fascinating.’
Tossing him a cheeky grin, she turned on her heel and headed for the door.
‘Sassy little mouth,’ she heard from behind her, and the grin blossomed into a full-blown smile. This was definitely going to have its up-side.
At one-thirty the phone rang.
‘Mrs Alexander, you forgot to sign the repeat prescriptions before you left. They’re due out after two.’
Sally sighed. ‘OK, Jackie, thanks. I’ll be back in ten minutes.’
She gave her cup of coffee a regretful glance and stood up.
‘Problems?’
She looked at Sam, sprawled comfortably on the sofa in the little sitting-room off the kitchen. Not for the world would she admit she had fouled up.
‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ she said breezily and, picking up her bag, she headed out of the door.
The afternoon was busy, followed by a hectic evening surgery.
Mavis caught her on the way out of the door. ‘Sam rang,’ she told Sally. ‘He said the car needed filling up and don’t forget to do it or you’ll run out.’
‘Doesn’t he trust me to do anything?’ Sally muttered. She wondered how he’d got on with the children after school. Would he have sat them down and done their homework with them, or just let them watch telly? Well, she couldn’t do everything…
She drove to the nearest garage, which happened to be where they’d bought the car, and pulled up beside the pumps. The filler cap was on the other side, of course.
Cursing mildly, she backed out, crashing the gears she had grown unused to, and pulled up on the other side of the pumps to fill the car.
The down-side, she reflected, was that Sam had the big automatic Mercedes estate, and she had his little Peugeot diesel runabout. More sensible for town work, easier for parking in little spaces and far more economical, but she wasn’t used to it and frankly didn’t want to be. She missed her luxuries.
The pump switched off, and she paid for the fuel and got back in the car. Nearly seven. She was starving. Lunch had been a bit hasty and seemed a long time ago. She wondered, as she crashed the gears again, what Sam had dreamed up for supper.
As she pulled away up the road, she became gradually more and more aware of the horrendous noise from the engine. Great clouds of black smoke poured out of the exhaust, and the engine was misfiring like a pig.
She pulled up immediately and switched off, staring in puzzlement in the rear-view mirror as the inky fog behind her sowly disappeared.
What ever could be wrong? She’d only just filled it up…
Oh, hell.
Furious with herself, anticipating Sam’s initial anger and then the endless miles he would extract from the incident at dinner party after dinner party, she made her way back to the garage on foot.
Fortunately the service receptionist was still around, and managed to hide his amusement well. He gave her the keys of a courtesy car, asked her to sign the insurance form and promised to deal with Sam’s car.
She drove home in a mixture of defensive anger and self-recrimination.
Sam greeted her on the drive. ‘What the hell have you done with my car?’ he said in amazement.
‘I filled it up,’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘So?’ Sam said patiently.
‘With petrol.’
She closed her eyes and waited for the explosion.
