one of the tongues to find it is made from thin liquorice strips. Resisting the temptation to eat one, she turns away, not wanting to spoil its perfection. Sometimes, she thinks, the Before is better than the actual event. Sometimes she thinks about this so much that she cries because holidays and Christmas and parties are hardly ever as good as she hopes they’ll be.
The food has been talked about a lot before the party because Lottie from school is bringing her brother with her and he has something wrong with him. They have to be really careful with the food, which doesn’t seem fair when it is her party.
Still, she won’t let that spoil it. It’s going to be the best party ever.
It’s not her fault that everything goes so badly wrong.
We had a restless night. Anya tossed and turned, and the room felt stiflingly hot. I finally dropped into a deep sleep sometime in the early morning and woke at ten to the sound of gentle rain against the window and a grey sky.
Anya was already up, her side of the bed cold.
My head was throbbing, but I forced myself to pull on running gear. Much as my body and mind resisted it, it seemed as though exercise might help and, anyway, I deserved the punishment. Yawning, I walked through to the kitchen. I was expecting to see her reading the papers on her iPad, her favourite mug steaming next to her. But now I noticed there were none of the usual weekend smells; toast cooked until almost black the way she liked it, and strong coffee that she made as though it was an art form. I wouldn’t have been that bothered if we had instant, was the God’s honest truth. But I guessed I was finally getting used to the good stuff.
The kitchen felt gloomy and I snapped on the main lights. There was a note on the table.
Ell,
I’ve gone over to Mum and Dad’s for the day. I’m still feeling a bit shit and I think I need some of my mum’s TLC. We both know what a terrible patient I am.
Not sure what time I’m back.
X
I didn’t see why she had to go over to Julia and Patrick’s because she was feeling ill. It seemed a bit selfish too, especially as Patrick hadn’t been in the best of health since his heart attack the year before. It was true that she wasn’t a good patient; whoever invented the term ‘man flu’ clearly hadn’t met my wife. But I would have been perfectly happy to make her tea and deliver dry toast, or whatever you’re meant to do, when needed. And if I was being really honest, Julia was more of the ‘pull yourself together’ school of middle-class woman than your cuddly supplier of chicken soup.
The truth was that Anya had form for doing this. Every now and then she would have a couple of days of being a little withdrawn when she would gravitate towards her mum and dad, instead of me. Yes, I know that sounds hurtful, and it was, a little.
But you have to understand what they were like as a family. Tight-knit, fiercely loyal to each other. Once you were ‘in’ you felt special too. It was a golden circle. I’d thought families like this only existed on television until I’d met the Rylands.
I looked at the note again.
The kiss – single – didn’t lessen the uncomfortable sensation that the note was a little cold, by her usual standards. There would usually be a little joke, or a ‘Love YOU’, which was a thing we did.
I thought about the events of the evening before. Her odd mood. The atmosphere when Zoe arrived. Me almost dropping her from my shoulders. Her wanting to go, then being sick. That weird vibe in the Uber …
The fact that some of these memories had hazy edges gave me a prickling feeling of shame. How many pints of cider had I drunk? Five? Six?
Had I ruined our day out? An unpleasant feeling began to creep over my skin. Sometimes, when I drank too much, it made me conscious that ‘Nice Respectable Teacher Elliott’ was a thin veneer over the treacly darkness I feared lay inside me.
I bashed out a text.
No worries. Hope you feel better. Love YOU xxxx
Outside, I turned left and began to run along the coast road. It was raining, that fine rain that deceived you into thinking it didn’t mean business, but which soon drenched you through to the bones. My hair clung to my head and I was breathing like an old man, filled with my usual conviction that everything about this activity was wrong and unnatural.
Drum and bass thumped through my earbuds, which usually spurred me on to run harder, but just felt annoying today. I switched the music off and all I could hear was the roaring of waves hitting the shore, my own rasping breath and the hiss of the odd car going through puddles as it passed me.
The sea was to my left; silvery grey in the rain, lace-edged waves licking at the slick, shining sand. There was a low wall and scrubby grass between the road and the beach down below, yellow signs dotted here and there that warned of unfenced cliff, with a dramatic stick man falling to his death.
This road seemed to go on for ever, past bungalows on the other side that already had a closed-up-for-winter, sad look about them, and the café that still gamely had bright beach towels and deckchairs with ‘witty’ slogans for sale on its covered porch.
After a while I turned right, heading up the hill that led to Petrel Point, where there was a World War Two lookout and a great view.
This was a savage bit of the run, and there was an easier route via a path leading from a car park on the other side, but the view at the top made it worthwhile.
As I made my way up the hill, the usual metamorphosis began to occur. I slowly began to transcend the feeling of hating running and everything connected with running, as my body warmed up and my stride became more fluid.
I’d never run in my life until we moved here. At first, I did it because it seemed like the sort of thing people in their thirties did when they left London and, frankly, I was a bit lost. The endless space around me felt as though it might suffocate me, in a weird way, and I couldn’t get used to everyone looking the same. Why are people so obsessed with having space? Buildings make me feel secure. I’ve never had much of a desire to be the tallest thing on the horizon.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those people who thinks London is the be-all and end-all of civilization. I wouldn’t want to have stayed where I grew up, in a shitty council flat in one of the more depressing bits of north London. It was just a bit more of an adjustment than I’d expected it to be.
Anya grew up in the next town along.
Lathebridge is a genteel place, with its famous Grand Hotel on the front that hosts a small arts festival every year, and its white regency houses along the seafront.
Casterbourne is more crummy arcades and charity shops than cream teas and literary folk, but it was cheap enough for us to buy a small house, with help, and well, there was always the sea. Right now, a silvery band was spreading across the horizon and promising brightness to come. It was one of the things I’d come to love about living here, that the weather could change so quickly. I could see for miles as I reached the top.
I was starting to feel simultaneously better and absolutely knackered, so I looped round past the fort and made my way back down towards home.
I pictured what Anya was probably doing right now. She’d be on the long sofa in their living room – sitting room – probably curled up watching telly and maybe drinking her beloved green tea.
I had an idea; maybe I’d have a shower and just turn up. No one was going to object, were they?
Many, perhaps most, people felt quite differently about their parents-in-law.
When friends made disparaging jokes about their own, bemoaning Christmases and birthdays in their company, I smiled along as though I got it, but really, mine