Page 5 of Out of Control

“Wakey-wakey!”

Joe was standing over her with a tray. How, given his nocturnal noises, had he managed to get up, get dressed for work, boil the kettle, which sounded like a rocket taking off, and then bring in a breakfast tray — all without waking her?

“Sit up! You don’t want to fritter your retirement away in the land of nod.”

Obediently, she pushed herself up to a sitting position and shrugged on the dressing gown that Joe was offering. She rearranged the pillows behind her and Joe placed the tray across her lap.

“Coffee, toast and a bowl of that fruit salad, which I assume we should have eaten last night.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. You deserve it for taking me in.”

Fiona smiled at him. It was nice to be pampered and not have to go downstairs and make her own breakfast in a kitchen still chilly before the central heating properly kicked in.

Joe sat down on the edge of the bed, leaned over and kissed her. “I’ve got to go. It’s my Saturday to work and the first patient is at eight thirty a.m. Don’t worry about cooking tonight. We’re going out — it’s the practice Christmas do and the first chance I have to show you off. And I am going to make the most of it!”

Then he was gone, leaving Fiona blinking her gritty, sleep-deprived eyes and trying to imbibe coffee quickly enough to enable her brain to compute the full impact of what Joe had just said.

Chapter 4

Joe’s overriding feeling as he drove away from the house was relief. Relief that Fiona hadn’t said ‘no’ to his plea for somewhere to stay. Fiona was self-contained, confident, happy in her own skin, and appeared to have no special need for him or anyone else in her life. She’d never demanded anything from him, meaning he was free to carry on with his own life without the complication of wondering when or if to introduce her to his young adult children or wider family. Their weekly dates had been spent in a desert oasis reserved for just the two of them and that had suited them both. But his mates were getting curious about ‘this Fiona’. He suspected they thought he was making her up. And he was frustrated with making excuses for not taking her along to things and appearing like a Billy No-Mates.

As he drove, he hoped it wasn’t too late to add Fiona as his ‘plus one’ to the practice Christmas do that evening. He was looking forward to his colleagues’ reactions when he turned up with ‘this Fiona’, who was more attractive than his ex-wife, even though she was ten years older.

“Carol.” He leaned conspiratorially on the reception desk and spoke to the woman who kept the whole physio practice in check. “I’ll be bringing someone with me tonight — is that OK?”

“Fiona, at last!” Carol exclaimed. “That is fabulous. But why now?”

He didn’t elaborate any further, despite Carol clearly being desperate to know more. Fiona would look stunning this evening and everyone would be impressed. The anticipation thrilled him. How would he introduce her? His partner? Cohabitee? Girlfriend? Or just by her name?

Joe made himself a mug of instant coffee in the grimy cubbyhole that passed for a kitchen in the staffroom. Not as good as the coffee served at Fiona’s but on a par with the stuff hisex-wife Rose had always seemed happy with. Rose accepted the mundane and didn’t strive for anything better in the way that he did. Unfortunately, he still had to tolerate the mundaneness of work. His state pension was seven years away and the divorce meant that leaving the petty stresses of his career behind was not an option. He should have started a practice of his own as a young man instead of making money for someone else. He couldn’t even say he’d devoted himself to the NHS and received all that Covid-clapping back in 2020. He blamed Rose’s love of the ordinary for the failure of his marriage — more of the same had no longer been enough for him. With the kids leaving home they should have been doing something out of the ordinary.

He pulled himself back to the present. Tonight wouldn’t be mundane at all with Fiona shining at his side. He couldn’t wait.

Carol poked her head around the staffroom door. “Your first patient’s here, Joe.”

He gave her a wink and headed to his treatment room.

Chapter 5

The toast Joe had made her was cold and covered in massive amounts of marmalade — he hadn’t listened when she’d told him a few weeks ago that she’d switched to sugar-free peanut butter. The banana in the fruit salad had gone soggy overnight. The breakfast reminded Fiona of the Mother’s Day trays her colleagues described in minute, loving detail, made by their young children. The difference was that a child could be genuinely praised for putting such a meal together; it was harder when the chef was a grown man.

“Don’t be such a perfectionist, Fiona.” That’s what her mother would say of this situation. “You can’t expect everyone to meet your high standards.”

To be fair, Joe couldn’t have rectified the banana situation without travelling back to the previous evening and not making his bombshell announcement and then not dragging his suitcases in from the car, thus allowing them to eat the fruit salad at the correct time. But it wasn’t difficult to put some logical thought into breakfast, especially when he, unlike her, had had the luxury of a full night’s sleep. He could’ve brought the coffee and fruit salad first and then gone to make fresh, HOT toast instead of staring at her and talking about showing her off to his work colleagues this evening. The magnitude of that last thought made her worry again. Would they mistakenly think she’d been the catalyst for his marriage break-up? She couldn’t bear to be branded ‘the other woman’. They’d want to know why he’d been keeping her hidden away for so long. People loved to gossip and they’d put two and two together and make five.

How would he introduce her? She cringed at the thought of him calling her his ‘other half’ or ‘partner’. Anything like that made them seem more of an item than they actually were. She wanted him just to use her name.

Fiona moved the tray onto the empty side of the bed. As she did so the plate holding the cold toast slid to one side revealing an advent chocolate nestled on a yellow Post-it note from the pad beside her landline in the hallway. He’d scribbled,Jumping the gun again with the calendar but I want you to know how much I love and appreciate you. XXX.

It was like giving someone your last Rolo. Fiona’s heart filled. She felt wanted. The inedible toast was forgiven. Joe might not be the world’s best breakfast chef but he was a romantic at heart. That was just one of the reasons why the relationship they’d had over the past year had worked so well. Smiling, she was about to pop the chocolate in her mouth when she had a better thought. She placed it on one of her lace handkerchiefs on his pillow for him to find later.

In the shower some of her tiredness slipped away. But as she towelled herself dry, her mind wouldn’t relinquish its journey around this new version of her relationship with Joe. She’d always looked forward to and enjoyed their weekly dates, but having him turn up with his suitcases or meeting his work colleagues had never been on her agenda. She’d been retired from work less than twenty-four hours, and it was a Saturday, but she felt a longing for the office, where everything would be as she expected and the day would proceed in an orderly fashion. Without surprises. She gazed at her work suits hanging in the wardrobe, each one protected by a dry cleaner’s polythene sheath and ready to wear. Next year’s electronic calendar had a reminder set for the end of May. If the suits hadn’t been worn by then, they would be donated to charity, one a month, until there were just two remaining: her favourite navy one for funerals and her only beige one for christenings and weddings. Fiona wasn’t a hoarder. Her garage was the only one in the road that housed a car instead of cardboard boxes. Similarly with the loft — Fiona’sheld only the small Christmas tree that Joe had bought for her at the beginning of their relationship.

She pulled one of the suits from the wardrobe and stroked the few inches of caramel-coloured fabric hanging below the reach of the plastic cover. At work her mind was focused and it was easy to keep any demons or overthinking at bay. In the early days, after losing Amber and then the divorce from Rob, it had been a relief to have the ordered thought process of computer programming and later the endless spreadsheets of IT project management forced upon her. Now, as well as taming retirement, she faced the additional unknown of life with Joe.

Her phone buzzed and flashed up the warden’s name from her mother’s sheltered housing complex.

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