Home > Little Whispers(2)

Little Whispers(2)
Author: K.L. Slater

Now I realise she was probably terrified of giving herself any time to think.

I throw the cloth in the sink, wash my hands and make a coffee. I’m sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar when my phone rings, making me jump.

Isaac’s name flashes up on the screen and I snatch it up. ‘Hello?’

‘Janey, I got it,’ he blurts out excitedly. ‘Bob, the CEO, offered me the job on the spot!’

 

 

Two

 

 

Later, when Rowan is in bed, Isaac shuffles closer to me on the sofa so I can see his laptop screen. ‘Look at this house. Bob put me on to it; he reckons it’ll attract a buyer almost immediately.’

The warmth of his body, so close to mine, should be the most natural thing in the world, but it feels a bit strange. We usually sit separately at night, going for the comfort of stretching out on our own sofas rather than snuggling up together like we used to do.

‘I thought the properties in a place like that were way out of our league,’ I remark, glancing at my husband’s bright, animated face. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him like this, upbeat and full of hope. My heart lightens a touch.

He clicks on the main picture of the house, and I admit I’m surprised at the low asking price, even though it’s still way up on the steep side for us.

It’s a modern four-bedroom detached with a square bay window on the ground floor and a smart red-brick front. It’s set back from the road with a generous front garden and enough block paved area to park a car. The imposing glossy green door with a big shiny chrome knocker is fitting of the estate agent’s description of ‘this ultra-smart executive property’. He clicks on other photographs that show a substantial rear garden bordered with mature trees and shrubs.

Rowan could actually play in a garden like that, rather than the postage stamp of mossy grass we have here in our shabby Victorian semi, overlooked by several of our neighbours. I have a flash-forward of me sitting on the neatly flagged patio at Buckingham Crescent, reading a book with a cool drink to hand, while Rowan practises his football skills on the grass with one of his new friends.

Buckingham Crescent is one of the poshest streets in the whole of West Bridgford. The town sits on the River Trent, south of Nottingham, and is about a fifty-minute drive from our current house in Mansfield. I remember reading about the street’s status in our local newspaper and wondering how it must feel to live there.

‘I wonder why it’s so cheap,’ I murmur.

‘Well it’s not exactly cheap,’ Isaac laughs. ‘It’s what they call “keenly priced”. Bob says it was only added to Rightmove yesterday.’

He points out a shortlist on the right-hand side of the screen that gives details of similar houses sold in the area over the last twelve months. There are only two in Buckingham Crescent – people seem to stay put there – but one of them is the house we’re looking at right now.

‘The owners have only been there a year,’ he remarks. ‘They’ve put it on at nearly ten grand less than they bought it for, so maybe it’s a marriage break-up or something and they need a quick sale.’

He clicks lazily through the remaining photographs in the property’s gallery, and I take in the glossy black-and-white kitchen, the pristine family bathroom with its free-standing tub and separate rainforest shower, and the master bedroom complete with en suite and small dressing area.

I can’t imagine living somewhere like that, even if we had money to spare from Isaac’s new salary. The thought of asking new friends around for drinks and nibbles at the weekend is part of a lifestyle I daren’t even dream about.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re friendly with our neighbours here. We’ll stop to pass the time of day on the school run and often bump into them at after-school football matches, but that’s about it. Once the front doors on our street close at the end of the day, people keep themselves to themselves. Folks around here don’t hold dinner parties or invite each other around for Pimm’s on the patio. It’s enough just trying to put a decent meal on the table for our kids each night without feeding everyone else.

Yet I can’t help dreaming a little, either.

Rowan’s such a bright, friendly boy, he’d easily make friends if we moved to a different town. The new postcode would mean we could enrol him at one of the small, OFSTED-ranked ‘outstanding’ schools, instead of the sprawling academy on the outskirts of Mansfield he currently attends. With its oversized classes and profusion of supply teachers due to a high rate of staff absence, Isaac and I both worry that Rowan isn’t getting the attention he deserves.

I’m a qualified teaching assistant, so maybe I could even get a part-time position at one of the primary schools, now that my responsibility for looking after Mum is over. I’ve not really considered going back to work yet, but a highly rated school in a middle-class catchment area would be so much less stressful than my last job, which was at a failing primary school in an ex-mining village, a government targeted ‘area of deprivation’. Despite the challenges, it’s a job I used to really love doing. It was more than just my work with the kids in class; I felt useful in other ways, too.

If they had a problem, parents often felt they could approach me more easily than the class teacher because they saw me as one of their own. I miss the feeling that I’m helping to make a difference to people’s lives and helping shape their children’s future.

There would also be a lot less physical strain than I had caring for Mum and it would help to take my mind off the obvious.

Confusion twists and turns inside my body. I make a tremendous effort to push the thought of my mum’s pale, wasted face away. She’d looked blotchy with nerves before she died. Then her face cleared like a weight had been lifted at the exact moment I felt the burden of her secret passing to me. It felt as real as if she’d handed me a baton in a relay race. I swear I felt the weight of the responsibility leaving Mum and becoming my own.

That was her final legacy to me, imprisoning me for the rest of my life. I could never do that to my boy. Never.

I swallow down the festering ball of fury in my throat, battling as ever the raw burn in my chest that feels just like a brand new hatred for a woman I’ve loved all my life. Since Mum died I’ve alternated between this fury and an aching grief so deep and bottomless, I feel as if I am drowning with each and every breath I take. In the days following her death, it felt as if I was slowly dying too.

‘I could ring the estate agent before they close to arrange a viewing for tomorrow, if you like?’ Isaac fixes me with a look that snaps me out of my stupor.

This all feels like it’s moving a bit too fast. This morning, life was dragging along as normal; now, suddenly, Isaac has his fancy new job and everything is about to change. I don’t know where the resistance I feel is coming from. I want to change our lives just as much as he does; in fact, I’ve hoped for little else recently.

‘OK, if you can get the time off.’ I don’t want to spoil his upbeat mood. ‘It’s only a viewing, isn’t it? We don’t have to make any decisions right away.’

‘Of course, but with our moving expenses paid and a house like this going for a song, we don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth either.’

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