you ought to get that?’ said Tess.
‘You're probably right,’ said Joe.
It was only a phone call but the intrusion seemed a shrill and portentous disruption to their self-imposed isolation. As Joe went to the hallway to answer the phone (thinking, hang up, hang up) Tess sat alone in the kitchen, unable to do the crossword, unable to decide who would be an acceptable caller. Listening to Joe, it did not take her long to deduce it was only the vet. With a lurch, she realized they'd missed Wolf's appointment.
‘God, I'm so sorry,’ Joe was saying. ‘We could bring him down this afternoon? Five sounds good. We'll see you then.’
Joe returned to the kitchen. ‘I clean forgot about Wolf's appointment – I wrote it down somewhere.’
‘You lummox,’ said Tess, thinking to herself, he said we – he said we could bring him down. He said we'll see you at five.
So they all piled into Joe's car.
Driving through Saltburn it felt as if they were returning after quite some time away. There seemed to be more people around and, after days of fine weather, more colour too. There were children on bikes and teenagers in T-shirts and pensioners without headscarves or hats. Some of the shops now ventured their wares outside, promoting them in racks and baskets on the pavement. The milkshake booth was open on the lower prom and there was quite a queue. The cliff lift was in operation. The pier was packed, the sand was speckled with families and the windbreaks looked like colourful punctuation marks.
Joe had to carry Wolf into the surgery because Tess's coaxing hadn't worked; in fact the dog's quaking and whimpers had started in the car when they headed out of Saltburn towards Marske. This, in turn, set Em off but the pair of them yowling and resisting merely made the grown-ups roll their eyes and laugh.
The vet was pleased with Wolf's progress. The bandages were changed (Em was invited to choose and went for orange and mauve) and the dog was extravagantly praised. Finally, the plastic collar was ceremoniously removed and another appointment made for a week's time.
‘I won't be around,’ Joe said, ‘but Tess'll bring him in.’
This torpedoed through Tess like a bolt of lead. Quickly, she forced herself to concentrate on a packet of organic dried pet food because her eyes were smarting at the thought of Joe's departure. She didn't know when, exactly, it was to be. But what she did know was that he would indeed go. And soon. Where? Where was he going?
Stop it! He's still here.
As they walked back to the car, she slipped her hand into his, giving him little surreptitious tugs to slow the pace.
‘I will have to go,’ he told her the next day, as if he'd been conscripted.
‘But not tomorrow.’
‘Not tomorrow,’ he said, as if the notion was preposterous, ‘but by midweek.’
And though she was about to put her arms around him just then, he quickly set off swanning around the garden, picking up anything he came across. Twigs. Leaves. A peg – as if it was a pressing job earmarked for precisely that moment. He kept his face turned.
‘Belgium,’ he said, ‘then France.’ He was putting the items on the garden table, arranging them into a pointless pattern as if it was all part of the chore.
Tess knew she couldn't afford to comment because the sharp pressure at the base of her throat would reveal itself as a telltale crackle to her voice. She couldn't comment because the notion of Joe's indisputable departure suddenly stripped her of confidence in their closeness. France! she goaded herself, you know who's in France. All she could do was stick a banal smile on her face and busy herself too, picking up the odd leaf or peg or plastic bottle top that Joe had missed on the lawn. How she had felt herself blossom this past week – now she could sense her petals closing; furling themselves tightly around her core.
Joe wanted to be able to say, I'll try and come back most weekends. But he knew he couldn't because actually, he just didn't know when he'd next be back. He also wanted to be able to go over to her and take the garden debris from her hands and raise her face to his and let a thoughtful kiss say it all. But he couldn't do that. Because he found that he was already walking to the house under some ridiculous pretence of checking if his Gore-tex boots were there or whether he had left them in France. It wasn't about the boots; he knew that. It was about feeling bizarrely and horribly awkward in the presence of the girl who'd recently made his life seem wonderfully straightforward.
Tess was able to snatch a moment by herself in her room. Em was happily engrossed watching Story Makers and Tess had asked Joe, who was reading the paper in the same room, whether he'd watch Em while Tess ran her bath. With the bath running, she had taken herself into her room and stood in the centre, her face in her hands. She had to acknowledge it wasn't simply that she wanted him to stay because she loved being with him and she'd miss him. It was that she didn't want him to go because she didn't know where it was he went and she suddenly feared where it was that might lead. What if, when she was out of his sight, someone else sprang to his mind? They'd co-existed in this wondrous world in which she'd so easily believed that they had discovered some kind of super-reality. Now, standing alone in her room, she wondered whether they'd simply constructed a hermetically sealed fantasy. She went to check the bath. So much noise, for such a slow system. She had the temperature just right and she added bubbles before sitting herself on the edge in a deflated slump. In a rush of masochistic taunts, she goaded herself that she was just a bloody house-sitter and skint single mum with no hope in hell of the sort of happiness she'd kidded herself was so real and feasible during this last week.
Over the next two days, Joe and Tess tried their best to recapture the spirit of togetherness but the spectre of his departure hung over them in a pall they just couldn't shrug off. Even Em being unbelievably cute and Wolf managing to clown around rather unsteadily didn't bolster them much. They weren't gloomy, certainly they weren't snappish or uncommunicative; it was as if the soundtrack of life in the house was now in a minor key whereas before it had been a veritable symphony in C major. The colours of their aura were in subdued hues rather than the dazzling primaries of the days just gone. The sex was still good but it was more inward and the eye contact lessened.
After a final supper, over a last glass of wine and the crumbs of Stilton and Jacob's Cream Crackers, Joe finally broached the immediate future.
‘What'll you do, Tess?’ he asked. ‘What have you planned when I'm gone?’
She thought about it. She actually hadn't thought about it at all. She'd been too involved in the present.
‘Well,’ she said at length, ‘it'll no doubt revolve around playgroup and the vet.’
Joe nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘not just from Wolf – from me.’
‘I guess I'm going to have to find a bit of work.’ She said this more to herself.
‘Work? Why?’ He paused. ‘Tess,’ he said, ‘my last trip – what I said about you leaving –’
She shook her head, signifying he needn't say more.
He reached for her wrist and squeezed it.
‘Joe,’ she found herself saying. ‘What you said – about the lady, in France –’
But this time he shook his head, signifying she needn't say more and he squeezed her wrist again for emphasis.
‘OK?’ he said, a little sternly.
‘OK,’ she said, a little shyly.
They paused with their empty glasses and dabbed at microscopic remains of cheese.
‘So why look for work?’ Joe said at length. ‘Surely there's still plenty here that could do with your magic touch?’
She looked desperately uncomfortable and it took her a while to respond.
‘Because I'm a bit broke.’
‘Shit,’