LITMIR.BIZ

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pub, coffee shop, and even sometimes the biweekly car-boot sale on the football green.

      In many ways it made a nice change from the part of Essex where I spent my childhood, where you had to keep an eye not only on your lunch money but also your shoes, coat and scarf when running the danger-filled gauntlet between home and school. Here, you could literally leave the front door wide open and go out to do your week’s shopping, get the car washed, swing by the garden centre and stop off for a free coffee at Waitrose on the way back, and nothing would have happened. Plus the fact it was only one short, winding, country lane away from Harry’s school. It was important to live close by, we soon realised, as the school’s location at the bottom of a valley made it completely inaccessible by car after heavy rain or the slightest hint of snow. And it would be no good for a whole class to be cancelled just because the art teacher couldn’t make it in.

      It just wasn’t the kind of place where very much happened. At all. It certainly wasn’t the kind of place where people regularly left their jobs and took off to go exploring South America.

      So, for ‘Harry and Kirsty’, every day was pretty much the same, our daily routine overlapping with my growing ache to become a mother.

      Every day except this one.

      I’m distantly aware Harry has been talking the whole time I’ve been standing here, wine glass in suspended animation halfway to my mouth, watching the last six years of our life together flash before my eyes. Snippets of what he’s saying filter through, like the words ‘sabbatical’ and ‘mortgage holiday’ and ‘new horizons’. He seems to be pacing the kitchen and waving his arms around.

      Finally, Harry remembers I’m here and stands still, flushed and bright-eyed, smiling expectantly at me. ‘Well, what do you think then, babe?’

      Of all the things I want to say, everything I’ve kept inside, waiting for a moment like this when I have Harry’s undivided attention, what I actually say, in a small voice that doesn’t sound like my own, is:

      ‘I’ve forgotten all my Spanish.’

      Harry’s laughing. Wrapping his arms around me. Spilling the wine.

      ‘Come on, Kirst, that’s rubbish! You were the hardest worker in our whole class – you used to memorise a new verb every night, remember?’

      ‘I did not! You make me sound like the most boring—’

      ‘Sure, you always got top marks in those vocabulary tests, too – photographic memory!’

      ‘Liar! I didn’t ever get top—’

      ‘Okay, okay! We’ll prove it. I bet you can recite ten Spanish verbs in the past tense, right here, right now.’ He’s frowning down at me now, arms crossed.

      I slam my wine glass down on the counter, anger and pain and disappointment boiling over.

      ‘I fucking well CAN’T, actually! I can hardly remember the present tense for most of them! You’re so WRONG!’

      I hurl myself out of the room, hot tears flowing, distantly aware of how ludicrous it is to argue over something like Spanish verbs when the things that really matter remain unspoken.

      I feel Harry’s eyes boring into my back as I run upstairs, and don’t need to turn round to see the shocked expression on his face. I never, ever shout at him. And rarely cry. But right now, the grating disappointment of his Big Surprise and frustration at his comments about my Spanish combine to make my tears overflow. He’s right – maybe I did do well at university – but he should know better than anyone that there is more to me than that. I went through school being known as part of the nerdy crowd, and if the other kids noticed me at all, all they knew about me was that I was quiet and got good grades. They didn’t actually know me. They didn’t know, for example, that in the summer holidays before the end of upper sixth, I dragged my cousin halfway across the county to do a skydive – we took a weekend course and everything, then threw ourselves right out of a plane above the Essex countryside. I’d been so terrified on the way up that I almost threw myself out two stops early. But I still did it.

      At university, I didn’t care what anyone thought except a few close friends who really knew me. A few close friends… and Harry. He should know better than to use my grades at university against me at a time like this. Just to convince me to go along with something he wants. Again…

      I shut myself in the man-den. I know if I go into the bedroom he’ll follow me straight in to try and make up. We’ll sort it out before going to sleep, of course, we always do. But right now I just need a few moments alone.

      Sitting down on the floor among the gaming magazines, I wipe my tears away on my sleeve and pull myself together. Then, wedged on a shelf between an art textbook and a box of CDs, something catches my eye.

      Lonely Planet Travel Guide to Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, 2003.

      Sniffing, I yank it open at a random page.

      Riding the Devil’s Nose railcar in Ecuador is an experience that will stay in your memory for ever. Negotiating a series of heart-stoppingly deep ravines and spindly bridges, the train will take you over 1,000 metres down the Andean mountainside and show you truly spectacular views of the Ecuadorian landscape and distant volcanoes.

      I slam it shut again, trying not to hear the voices of all my friends, reacting in disbelief when I told them I was buying the house with Harry: A mortgage? Aren’t we a bit young for all that… what about your training course? Not to mention all the holidays? Are you sure you want to do this before you’ve seen anything of the world? And then, inevitably, Why are you in such a hurry to settle down? That last question was one I had been asked many times by various friends and never felt able to answer out loud. I have my reasons, I would say, and tolerate with good humour the subsequent teasing about ‘Kirsty the serious one’ and the jokes about old married couples. I did have my reasons, and couldn’t expect any of my friends, with their happily married parents and stable home lives, to possibly understand.

      Feeling a presence behind me I look over my shoulder to see Harry standing in the doorway, a stricken expression on his face, wordlessly holding his hands out to pull me to my feet. I reach up and take them. As I stand, he pulls me into his arms and my head tucks under his chin. Despite my residual anger I welcome the feeling of things sliding back into place, the universe aligning again. We haven’t had a row like that in a long time. I hug Harry back tightly and try to squeeze away the uncomfortable realisation that we haven’t actually talked to each other as much as that for a long time, either.

      ‘Kirsty, I’m so sorry,’ he murmurs into the top of my head. To my dismay I hear his voice crack with emotion.

      I pull back to look at his face, and don’t recognise the pale, serious man staring intensely back at me.

      ‘Er… it’s okay. I’m sorry I reacted like that,’ I mutter, feeling increasingly alarmed by the fierce way he is staring into my eyes.

      ‘Please be patient with me,’ he whispers, holding on to my arms more tightly. ‘I know you want… more. And I want us to have that…’

      This sudden outpouring of emotion is so unlike Harry, so unlike us, that all I can do is stare back at him with my breath held, waiting for whatever will come next.

      ‘…But I really need to do this. Just one more trip. We can see it as the last adventure before…’ His voice wavers alarmingly again. ‘Then, after this, Kirsty, I promise – I’ll be ready to move on to the next level with you.’

      Somewhere on the outskirts of my surprise and alarm, it strikes me that even in a moment like this Harry can talk about our lives as if they were a game on his X-box.

      ‘It’s fine.’ I find the words springing from my mouth before my head has fully made its mind up. ‘Let’s do it.’ I try to smile convincingly. ‘Let’s have your adventure. But just a few months, okay? If we can get the time off work, that is—’ My voice is swallowed up in

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