Kirsten smiled in a way that she hoped was polite yet not wholly encouraging. An elderly man in a green anorak further down the aisle was looking at them disapprovingly, as if they were breaking the silence of a library or a cathedral. And yet there was no denying that the Geordie guy had a point. ‘I used to love purple when I was a teenager,’ she heard herself reply. ‘I was a bit of a goth, mind, but all the same – my clothes were purple, my DMs were purple, even my hair was purple at one point. But now . . .’
‘Now here we are, looking at bloody Linen White and Clotted Cream and No Personality,’ he said, gesturing contemptuously at the tins in front of him. ‘Sod it, I’m going retro after all. I’m too young to die a beige, middle-class death. I’m going to find some colours. Are you with me?’
This was the moment Kirsten probably should have given him another polite smile, shaken her head and turned back to the sea of uninspiring neutrals. She was pretty sure there wasn’t even a shade called ‘No Personality’. But despite everything, his words were ringing a bell within her, activating some part of her that had been buried too long beneath thoughts about mid-price wine and Egyptian cotton sheets and yes, endless boring dinner party conversations. Suddenly she was sick of tepid, scared-looking colour schemes. ‘Yeah,’ she said impulsively. ‘I’m with you.’
Kirsten snapped back to the room just as Charlotte reached her latest punchline and everyone burst out laughing again. She joined in hurriedly with a fake chuckle so that nobody would notice she hadn’t been paying attention. Were they still on bras, or had they moved on to something else? Had Charlotte swiped someone’s knickers this time? ‘Brilliant,’ she said to no one in particular, and wondered how long it was before they could leave. She was on earlies this week and by now – Thursday evening – her very bones felt as if they were too tired to hold her upright much longer. She glanced across the table at her husband, trying to catch his eye, but he’d been nobbled by Annie, whose head was close to his as she spoke – asking for something, at a guess. Charlotte pissed, Annie on the scrounge, her mother-in-law, Gwen, updating them at length on her usual ailments . . . they just needed Sophie now to dredge up a childhood argument or injustice, and it would be full house.
Or maybe, Kirsten thought, struck by how mean-spirited she sounded in her own head, maybe she needed to lighten up. Get over herself. Stop seeing everything through the critical filter that seemed to have dropped before her eyes after discussing paint shades with the Geordie hipster. Because for some reason, he – Neil – had been popping up in her mind with a running commentary ever since she’d left the store and returned to her car (‘Does anyone actually yearn to drive a Vauxhall Vectra? I mean, did you? What sort of person chooses the most boring car on the road anyway?’). She’d heard him again as she paused outside her front door (‘Is that it? I’m not being rude, but does this building say Dream Home to you? Because it looks pretty dull from where I’m standing’) and now she was even imagining what he would have to say about Charlotte’s birthday party. (‘Well, this is wild, right? That anecdote about the broken fridge-freezer is really up there in my collection of life highlights.’)
Was it possible to have an epiphany in the paint aisle of a DIY superstore? It seemed unlikely but look at her now, with her tin of unopened plum paint sitting like a small act of rebellion in the utility room back home, plus her dissatisfied eye tonight, flicking to and fro around the faces of her in-laws, around Charlotte’s ivory walls (‘Hey, is that Goose Egg?’ she felt like asking). She had washed up in a world of oatmeal carpets and double-glazed windows, with a safe husband who never surprised her any more, and suddenly all she felt like doing was running away from it all.
She pictured herself leaping to her feet, striding for the door. ‘So sorry,’ she imagined calling back over her shoulder. ‘But I’ve realised I’m in the wrong life. I’m off to find out what happened to the real me, the Kirsten who used to have fun. Bye!’
They would be confused, the lot of them. Charlotte might try to hug her and press the number of a psychotherapist into her hand. Annie would roll her eyes and mouth ‘attention-seeker’ across the table. Sophie would give one of her suspicious little frowns as if worried a trick was being played on her. Gwen would claim that the exact same thing had happened to her last week, only worse, and she had put it down to allergy-related hallucinations. As for Kirsten’s husband . . . would he notice? Would he try and stop her, even?
Better not think about that.
Back under the bright lights and canned elevator music of the DIY store, Neil had eventually chosen a can of bright turquoise paint for his kitchen. ‘This is the one,’ he’d said, hefting it down with a decisive air. ‘Perfect.’
‘What’s your wife going to say about that?’ Kirsten had asked, hearing a certain archness in her tone, only to regret it in the next moment. She didn’t usually talk that way. Had she sounded too flirty?
He looked her full in the face, and all the blood rushed dizzyingly to her head. ‘What wife?’ he asked, deadpan.
She gulped. Clearly it had sounded too flirty, she thought, panic quickening inside. Way too flirty, and now his response was like a gauntlet thrown down. Your turn. She was too chicken to proceed any further though. The last scraps of her bravery were spent sliding the can of Iced Plum from the shelf.
‘This one, I think,’ she mumbled, fixating on the label – matt emulsion interior paint – and nodding to herself as if to say, yes, this is definitely the only thing on my mind right now.
‘I don’t have a wife,’ he said, apparently determined to hammer his point home. ‘Or a husband,’ he added with another twitch of his eyebrow when she dared look at him. They were very expressive eyebrows, she noted, feeling her cheeks turn hot. He could have conducted an orchestra with them, given the slightest encouragement.
Well, she had given him enough encouragement, she decided. Perhaps too much. And now she needed to row back to the safety of shore. ‘Good to have that cleared up,’ she said, trying to disguise her embarrassment. ‘Anyway, nice to—’
‘I’m Neil, by the way,’ he said, holding out a hand.
She fumbled with the paint tin, swapping it into her left hand, feeling the plastic handle dig into her palm as she reached out to shake. ‘Kirsten,’ she replied. Her heart was actually starting to pound now, her back prickling with a sudden sweat. Alarm or excitement? It was hard to tell. Oh God. Where was this going? What was happening? It was as if something had been awoken in her with the press of his fingers. Some animal instinct raising its head, testing the air.
‘Great to meet you, Kirsten,’ he said, his gaze direct, as if he could see right into her mind. His black sweatshirt had the words Landscape Legends printed on it in neon pink, she noticed distractedly, along with an illustrated pink spade (was he a gardener?), but then all she could think about was how strong and warm his hand was. Firm. Not clammy. A perfect specimen handshake, in fact.