How It All Began Read Online Free PDF Page B

briskly that Stella was in no condition to talk and that Jeremy had better not get in touch for the moment. She, Gill, the sister, might contact him in a day or two. Stella had seen her doctor and was on tranquilizers.
    Jeremy was not accustomed to adultery. He had done it a few times before, but these had been transitory matters. Now, he was branded, condemned, sentenced, and all because of a change of plans and a message. So…so fortuitous. So unfair, in a way. The situation as it was—had been—really wasn’t hurting Stella. Their married life was going on as it ever had done; he was home as much as his work allowed, he was an attentive father, he and Stella—well, when you’ve been married nearly twenty years you’re not in the first flush of passion, are you? But there was nothing basically
wrong
; Stella of course was inclined to fits of depression, and frequent manic reactions, he’d learned to live with that, to manage her, in a way. She was needy, he knew that, you had to pander to that, but all in all they got along well enough; sexually, things were fine, unless Stella was in one of her states, and anyway he wasn’t a man who always felt the grass would be greener elsewhere. Until Marion hove on the scene, and he found her most attractive, and so invigorating, and there was always so much to talk about and…well, before he knew what was happening he was entirely involved with her, in bed, out of bed, and not really feeling all that guilty because this wasn’t going to interfere with his life with Stella and the girls. Almost certainly not.
    But now it had. Everything had gone up in smoke; that blastedwoman Gill had muscled in, Stella was allegedly heading for another breakdown, the girls had been told that Daddy would be away indefinitely on business. Marion had been a comfort, on the phone; rational, soothing. Look, just take things day by day, try to get past this tiresome sister, talk to Stella when she’s calmed down, everything always looks a bit different after a week or two. She wasn’t saying—well, there’s us to think about too, you and me, what do
we
want? And he was grateful for that; he didn’t really know what he did want, except that he was a man who didn’t care for upheaval, and things weren’t good at all on the financial front, and he certainly couldn’t let himself in for anything that involved expense. Let alone divorce.
    Jeremy may seem a somewhat contradictory figure. Here is someone whose occupation is the acquisition and disposition of a superior form of junk—reclamation, after all, is just that—who spent most of his days scouring the landscape for the antique doors, wash basins, chimney pots, old brewery signs, cast iron radiators that one person did not want but another would, and the rest of his time prowling around amid the heaped, piled, stacked confusion of his wares; a man who worked with random chaos, but for whom a stable and orderly base was a necessity. He liked to know that the carefully restored farmhouse in Oxted was always there. And his girls. And Stella.
    Jeremy did not see his wares as superior junk, or himself as a serendipitous junk-hunter. Of course not. He saw himself as a connoisseur, as a skilled investigator. He knew how to study sales catalogues and estate agents’ Web sites; he could smell out any mansion prime for stripping and be there at the point when the builders got going. He knew just how casual an interest to display before handing over a wad of notes and getting on the phone to the guys who did the heavy work for him. He knew the thrill of the chase, the discovery: the overmantel spotted jutting from a pile of rubble, the stained glass panel behind some smashed-up kitchen fittings. You never knew what might surface, but when you saw it you recognized it at once: that supposedly redundant artifact which could be given a new lease on life, that could spark acquisitive fire in a customer. The railway waiting-room clock, the wrought