Page 70 of The Village Midwife
‘Yeah, but you know I love your Sunday roast. I’ve missed them. Microwave lasagne just isn’t the same.’
‘Youcancook.’ Zoe took a seat and poured herself some more wine.
‘I can’t be bothered. There doesn’t seem like much point when it’s only me. All that work and cleaning up and nobody to share it with.’
‘I think it’s important to keep some standards, and looking after yourself with good food is one of them. Cut corners where you like, but not with what you eat.’
‘I appreciated how you used to make sure I ate well, like when I’d come home tired and go for a pack of instant noodles from the cupboard and you’d be like, “Even if you want to eat those, at least stir-fry some vegetables or chicken to go with them!” You were right, of course. I was definitely healthier when I lived with you.’
‘You look fine.’ Zoe reached for the potatoes and spooned some onto her plate.
‘You look amazing. This place must suit you.’
‘I suppose it must. Thanks.’
‘I mean it.’
Zoe looked up and gave a tight smile. ‘OK. Thank you.’
‘So your neighbour…’ Ritchie said as he grabbed the bowl of carrots. ‘His wife’s preggers?’
‘Billie’s his daughter.’
‘Right. How old is she?’
‘Twenty-three…I think. It’s hard to keep track of all my mums, but she’s about that.’
‘He doesn’t look old enough to have a girl that age.’
‘I’ll tell him you said that – I’m sure it’ll make his day.’
‘So he pops over now and again to let you know about her?’
‘More or less. I mean, he’s a neighbour, so sometimes there are things happening locally that he tells me about. He’s friends with my landlord as well, so there’s the odd occasion where I bump into him at Daffodil Farm too.’ Sensing an inquisition and determined to head it off, Zoe changed the subject to one she knew Ritchie would be keen to discuss. ‘How’s the job hunt going? Any progress since I last spoke to you?’
Zoe mentally buckled in. She knew from experience this was going to be a lengthy conversation, but while Ritchie wasoccupied on this, he wouldn’t be quizzing her about areas of her life she wanted to keep to herself. As she poured gravy over her meal, he began.
‘Not really. I mean, there’s this guy…you remember Blakey from the pub? He knows a man who knows someone who works for the engineers on Fawcett Street. They want someone for turning or cutting or something. I dunno. I’m way overqualified for it. I might apply anyway and take it if nothing else comes up. I’ve got my name down with all the employment agencies, but they keep finding things that are miles out, and I don’t see why I should spend hours driving every day. My redundancy package will be all right, though I did want to go to Bali, you know, and there’d be enough in there. Foster, who goes to the footie, buys and sells on that clothes website, makes a bit on the side – he reckons I ought to do that. But can I be bothered with that? I ought to do a couple of years on the dole. I mean, I’ve paid my dues over the years, and I’ve never claimed, and there’s people who’ve never done a day of work in their lives scrounging off my tax …’
Zoe had stopped listening. She hadn’t meant to, but she was finding it hard to concentrate because Alex’s face at the front door as she’d thrown his flowers to one side kept swimming in front of her eyes. She would have to go and apologise, as soon as Ritchie was gone.
She chewed slowly, running the conversation through her mind. Should she try to explain why she’d done it? But how could she when she barely understood it herself? She could pretend it was an accident, a slip, but she didn’t see that washing either because it was a very deliberate action, and he wouldn’t buy that excuse for a minute. Perhaps the wisest course of action was to gloss over it, pretend it hadn’t happened and never mention it. Perhaps he’d forget and they’d simply move on. She supposed in time he might, but the look on his face told herotherwise. And she’d know what she’d done, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to forget it. She knew she’d feel guilty every time she saw him for a long time yet.
Maybe she’d misread the situation. What if he hadn’t even noticed? Zoe only thought he had.
She suddenly became aware of a gap in Ritchie’s conversation and smiled vaguely at him. ‘How’s the chicken? I put half a lemon in it.’
‘It’s great,’ Ritchie said through a mouthful. ‘I saw Ellen from the newsagent’s at the end of the road where our first house was, and she said another factory near us was laying off as well. It’s bad. You know what it is, don’t you? It’s all this stuff being made in the Philippines and Taiwan and China and all these other places where people are earning pennies. There’s no way we can compete with that. No wonder this country is on its arse. What do they want? Do they want us to work for pennies? Is that the only way around it? You know, if I lived somewhere like that, I’d be a high-up manager with my qualifications. It’s an insult, the jobs I’m expected to take. I wouldn’t get out of bed for the wages of some of them…’
Zoe nodded, but she’d stopped listening again. She glanced towards the window to see that the weather was dry and the sky promised that it would stay that way. She might be able to catch Alex at his excavation site if Ritchie didn’t stay too late.
‘It’s hard for you to understand,’ he continued, Zoe doing her best to pay attention again. ‘Because you’ve got a job that will never get rid of you. People will always have babies, so you’ll never be out of work. This redundancy has made me think – imagine how we’d have been up shit creek if we had?—’
He stopped dead, suddenly silent and awkward. ‘Like, I don’t want to say it, but you know what I mean. I’d never wish for what happened, but I’m relieved, in a way…Oh, shit, Zoe. I didn’t mean it like that.’
Zoe reached for her wine and knocked the remaining half of the glass back in one go. ‘I know what you mean. I suppose it would have been hard if we’d had a child and you’d lost your job, but we’d have found a way to manage.’
‘I didn’t mean that to sound the way it did.’
