A Certain Age Read Online Free PDF Page B

this happen?” he yells, and he doesn’t see the water in time, and he slips on it, and as he slips he grabs the kettle and it’s not unplugged! And as he yanks it, the flex shorts at the plug and he dies in a shower of blue sparks and it’s all my fault!
    “Are you all right, Henny?” Mrs Bryan said. I was sitting in the car in Bathsheba’s car park just outside the Gabriel Oak Experience – where twice a day the kiddies can take turns driving wooden stakes into the stomachs of pretend sheep blown up like balloons, apparently it was very memorable in the film, and we’re quite proud of it because it combines good old violent country know-how with a nice thing from a book, and at the same time features the sound of escaping air, which is always so popular with children. [
Blows long expressive raspberry, to demonstrate
] Where was I? Oh yes. “Henny, are you all right?” Mrs Bryan says. “I need you to pump up the sheep when you’re ready.” And I make my decision. “Just got to pop home for something,” and I drive all the way home and the fridge is shut and the kettle is unplugged, and I think I’m never, ever telling Steve about this, because he’ll say I told you so and get me locked away. Still no sign of Steve, of course, not even [
wistfully
] fried to a crisp on the kitchen floor.
    Scene Three: at home; music
    Well, the police have been. I left it forty-eight hours in the end, so as not to look hysterical. Also, I lost track of the time watching
Pet Rescue,
which is great, I always thought it would be, Steve wouldn’t let me watch it in case I got too involved. So I waited till that finished, and then they came, and now they’ve just gone. Two men and one woman. I’m glad there was a woman because she admired the biscuit tin. “So it’s very unlike your husband to disappear like this?” they said, and I said, yes, totally. Detective Sergeant Law asked if I knew of any other relationships he had, and I said, “Well, there’s his mother, I suppose I’d better tell her,” and he said, delicately, he meant did Steve have a girlfriend or anything, and I burst out laughing. They all exchanged glances as if to say, “The wife is always the last to know” and DS Law said they would be looking into it anyway, so I said ha, good luck, and they exchanged glances again. They asked me to account for my movements on the day he disappeared and I think they were a bit surprised by some of the details but the woman police officer said she’d seen the film of
Far from the Madding Crowd
and the bit with the blown-up sheep was fantastic; she wouldn’t mind having a go at that herself. They asked if he’d taken his passport, and I said of course he hadn’t; he was only going to work. And then I looked in the drawer and actually it wasn’t there, and mine wasn’t either, and I started to think, “Oh spit, were we going on holiday and I’ve forgotten all about it?”, but I didn’t say that to the police because I’m sure normal people don’t say things like that. So to change the subject I said, ooh Sergeant LAW, isn’t it interesting the way people’s surnames often fit their profession – allthose TV gardeners called Flowerdew and Titchmarsh, and TV cooks called, and of course I couldn’t think of one, so I said Rosemary Lemonsqueezer, and they just looked at me. DS Law asked about Steve. Did he have any history of mental illness? And I laughed again, and they said, “Do you have any reason not to love your husband, Mrs Williams?” And I said, “Of course not. I mean, leaving aside twenty-five years of marriage.”
    Scene Four: in the stationary car, with windscreen wipers going and heater fan
    I rang Steve’s Mum to tell her what had happened. She got hysterical at once, so I was glad I rang her from Bath-sheba’s. I said she ought to hold fire on the anniversary party stuff just in case Steve hadn’t shown up by then. She couldn’t seem to take it in; she kept asking, “But where’s