Page 74 of The Housewarming

‘It won’t be. She’ll come round. People get over stuff, big stuff.’

Matt leans back from his dinner and takes a long slug of his beer.

‘I should’ve told her,’ he says, watching his friend make short work of the last mouthfuls of a meal he knows he cannot so much as touch.

Neil shrugs. ‘What happened happened. You can’t judge yourself on what you do in a panic. You were just trying to protect what’s yours.’

‘My castle,’ Matt replies, the words laced with bitter irony.

‘Exactly. She’ll understand that once she calms down. She just needs some space, that’s all.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

Neil grins. ‘I’m always right.’

‘Do you think you’ll do the kitchen soon then?’ Matt says, looking about him, at the pine units, the peeling corner of the lino floor.

Neil swallows his last mouthful and pushes his plate away. He takes a swig of beer and sits back in his chair.

‘Think we might move, to be honest,’ he says.

‘Move?’ Matt reels. ‘Since when?’

Neil shrugs and sighs deeply. ‘Might go further out. Get more for the money, you know? There’s some beautiful places over by Guildford – big gardens, off-street parking, garages, the lot. One place we saw had a barn.’

‘You’ve already looked? You never said anything.’

‘Only online. It’s not a definite plan, just something we’re thinking about. There was nothing to say really, to be honest. But I don’t want to do a load of work on this place and end up selling it. I’d rather just move to our forever home.’

Forever home. That’s Bella talking. ‘So you’d… you’d leave the area?’

‘We’re hardly moving to Australia.’

‘I know, but…’ But what? Matt finds himself fighting a feeling of betrayal. He swallows it. ‘You always did fancy a barn, didn’t you?’

‘Yip.’

‘And I… I suppose it’d be good to raise kids out there.’ Shit. That was clumsy.

Sure enough, Neil stands, abruptly, and crosses the kitchen. ‘Another beer?’

‘Sure, yeah.’

Neil brings the beers, sits down. He coughs into his hand, pushes his fist to his chest, as if to rub at a pain or a morsel of food that won’t go down. ‘Ava told you then, did she?’

Matt nods. Another wash of guilt.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

Neil shrugs. ‘Not your fault. That’s why we haven’t done the house yet. Treatment costs a bloody fortune. One more try and we’re going to look at adopting. And if we do that, it’ll be new place, new area, new start.’ The sentences rattle from him, as if he wants them out in one go – and quickly.

‘I see.’

From the garden, the unlikely chirrup of evening birdsong. Matt tries to remember a time when he didn’t live on the same street as Neil. He cannot, not in any concrete way.

‘We heard an owl the other night,’ Neil says. ‘They get confused with all the street lighting, birds do. You get a lot more birds further out.’

Another pause. Matt picks at the label on his bottle until Neil chinks it with his own.

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