Empty Rooms

Come morning, I’ve been focusing on ideas for drumming up business, as my victory at the WI has inspired a hitherto unknown desire for world domination. This carries me through to lunchtime when a perky voice on the phone brings me back down to earth.

‘I have some good news for you,’ the voice promises, ‘we have a firm offer on your house.’

An offer, above the asking price with no chain to worry about is every seller’s dream, but this is it. Our family home will be gone. I haven’t been back to it this year but it’s always been there in the background: strong red brick waiting for us if we change our mind. I can’t quite believe it will belong to someone else very soon.

The estate agent tells me she’ll send the paperwork to both Alan and myself and suggests that I start arranging the clearance to ‘ensure a quick sale’.

Briefly I consider dawdling for as long as possible to put the buyers off, but what good would that do?

It’s over; it’s actually over.

When Alan first told me about the affair, I felt as if I was falling from a great height even though I was sitting on the sofa. That nauseous sensation of free fall returns now and when I land, something I love and care for, a solid symbol of our family history, will be gone.

It takes me another couple of days but I eventually build the courage to face it; dressed in scrubs and armed with plastic bags I arrive at the house. My plan is to sort and throw out anything that won’t be coming with me. I’ve managed to kid myself this will be just like any other spring clean (well I haven’t, but that’s what I keep saying and hoping I’ll start believing it).

As I park in the drive I see Alan has been keeping the garden tidy; I wonder whether this is because of the sale or because he misses having a garden in his new flat. I hope it’s the latter.

I’ve never attached a great deal of significance to ‘things’. I know some people hold on to every painting their child has ever drawn or they press every rose they’ve ever been given, but I’m not that sort of a person. I could lose everything but the photographs and it wouldn’t spoil the memories. This feels different; previously when I threw out an anniversary card or glitter-bombed advent calendar I felt reassured that another would take its place the following year. The constant was always the family home where they’d be displayed for that brief moment. No more.

I unlock the door and push against the weight of the junk mail still addressed to Mr and Mrs Hargreaves. Seeing the name doesn’t faze me – it is junk after all.

It’s the smell that breaks me; although fused with the mustiness of the empty house, it’s unmistakably us. I stand in the hallway and breathe in the aroma of family: wellies and waxed jackets fighting with the plug-in air fresheners I scattered during the sale.

I walk into the living room where, even now, the sofas have retained the unmistakable dents where each of us sat. I sit down in my dent and pick up a cushion; I hold it close and wonder how we got to this. How it is that one minute, all of this is a safe, familiar haven and the next it’s just another property to be cleared out as soon as possible? It feels like a death and I suppose it is the death of a marriage. Sad is such a tiny word but when you truly feel it, it’s the biggest, blackest void you’ve ever known.

There are no photographs left on display, so this could be anyone’s house, unless of course it’s yours. Then you know you bothered keeping the really tatty footstool because it’s the perfect height, and that the scratch in the floorboards was the result of the oversized Christmas tree Zoe begged for; she proudly brought all her friends round just to see it.

I brace myself and go upstairs. The emotions start pulsing through me with each step climbed, I’m getting so breathless I might as well be climbing Everest. The spare room and scene of the crime fills me with disgust and disbelief while our bedroom drives a surge of anger as I remember the irritating habits I used to put up with, the snoring and teeth grinding. I always used to say that snoring was a sign of a person you love sleeping peacefully and therefore I didn’t mind it. No wonder he was sleeping peacefully, he was bloody exhausted. Bastard.

It isn’t until I open the door to Zoe’s room that the tears start; the second I walk in I’m back in the room of a little girl safe in her home with a mummy and daddy.

I know she’s left home and I know that we’re both still here for her, but she’s right, it’s not the same. Every event from now on – her wedding, the birth of her children, their birthdays – they’ll all be a negotiation with new partners and that woman will be in our family photos. You can’t just waltz in and steal someone’s family.

I slump down on the bed and eventually I get so angry, the tears dry up. I feel like screaming but then hear the door open. At that moment, precisely the wrong people walk in.

‘I shouldn’t be here,’ says Amanda. ‘I wouldn’t want another woman in my house, you shouldn’t have asked me.’

I rush to the top of the stairs grabbing a slipper on my way.

‘No you fucking shouldn’t. Get out of this house – both of you,’ I roar and throw the slipper full force at the door. It bounces off Alan’s head, so I’m very relieved I didn’t pick up the vase. It has the desired effect; they scarper.

It has the right effect on me too; I sit at the top of the stairs and calm down. This was my house, I made it a home with my efforts and those facts remain. Zoe would have left home anyway and perhaps we would have downsized. We’re just not doing it together.

I may have rationalised what has happened but I can’t take any more of this place. I stuff a couple of Zoe’s teddy bears into a bag and walk out, knowing that as I lock the door, it is the last time I will visit this house.

I don’t want anything, so Alan can take it or dump it, I don’t care.

As I walk down the drive, Alan leaps out of his car where he’s been waiting for me.

‘I’m sorry Angie, I didn’t think,’ he says.

‘You never bloody do, that’s half your problem. And it’s a bit late for apologies don’t you think,’ I spit out as I barge past him, getting into my car and slamming the door.

‘Is it?’ I’m sure I hear him say through the screeching of my reverse departure.

My mother has other plans and decides she’ll sort out the house. I tell her I’m just going to leave it all behind and I might as well be saying that I’ll be letting a free sample go untasted; she’s horrified.

‘You can’t let her go rummaging through your valuables, taking what she fancies. She’s done enough of that,’ she says.

I can’t imagine Amanda helping herself to anything but I couldn’t bear the thought of either of them commenting on my life, a life they ruined for me.

‘I’d rather the Cats Protection League took it all,’ says Mum.

My mum hates cats (‘always licking their bits in plain sight’) and wouldn’t ordinarily contribute to the protection of any at all, so this is quite a statement from her. She’s off this afternoon to claim her rightful bounty and from what I can gather she’s taking an army of militant pensioners with her.

Good luck to them; I dread to think what the place will look like when they’ve finished.

My concern right now is making a success of the business that I’ve invested everything in. I give myself a target of having the Christmas trip completely sold out to help me focus.

I need to be speaking to more groups of people so I get out the list of the organisations I want to contact, but before I get the chance, the phone starts ringing with repercussions from my mother’s clear-out.

‘Your mother has thrown out all of my clothes and given all of my fishing gear to Help the Aged,’ Alan wails.

I imagine I’ll have the opposite problem when I see her; it’s highly likely that she’ll bring so much stuff back for me to keep ‘just in case’.

‘In fairness to her,’ I say, ‘you never used it and if you haven’t worn it in the past six months, you’re not going to.’

‘That’s not the point, why did you even let her near the house?’ he asks.

I take a deep breath, brace myself then tell him calmly.

‘I can’t go back, Alan, it holds too many memories. I also couldn’t bear the idea of you both rummaging through our things mocking our time together. We weren’t perfect but you won’t be either in a few years. You’ll buy tack because it’s funny, you’ll keep rubbish because it reminds you of something, and no one else will understand it. I didn’t want our tat ridiculed, so I sent Mum in.’

‘But my fishing gear?’ he asks.

‘Two things,’ I reply. ‘One, when did you last fish and two, do you honestly think the honourable Nigella is going to let you keep all that gear in a luxury apartment? Or maggots in the fridge? Do you?’

‘That’s true,’ he laughs, and I can picture the warmth of his eyes as he does so.

‘And you should thank Mum anyway,’ I continue, ‘because if you’d even tried to move all that stuff in, you’d have had your first row.’

‘Oh that ship sailed some time ago,’ he says. ‘The florist made a lot of money that day.’

The first part both surprises and delights me; I ignore the second.

He always went to the supermarket for my flowers.