The Reunion Read Online Free PDF Page B

hardly been a good start. He fluctuated between
guilt and a questioning of sanity that he should even be considering an apology.
Three times he lifted the phone then replaced it before guilt won at 12.07 pm and
he called her.
    Jim answered her mobile. “What do you want, David?” he
snapped.
    “To speak with Jane if you don’t mind.”
    “I’m not letting you.”
    “I want to speak to my wife.”
    “Not after what you said. She wants nothing to do with
you.” Before David could respond, Jim launched into a severe tirade covering
decency, loyalty, compassion, morality and quite possibly much more, but David
hung up before the end of the monologue.
    He walked round to the newsagent to buy the Sunday Times.
Everything on the short journey was the same as ever – Isobel pushing the pram
in a vain attempt to stop her baby crying, Lawrence washing his BMW, Mrs Grant
nurturing her flowers and plants with care beyond the call of duty. It was only
his life that was different.
    “Hello Mr Willoughby, and how are you today?” asked
Stanley Entwhistle, the newsagent and postmaster who had been around since
David had first moved to the area. He had a wild mop of white hair with
matching strands leaping up from his eyebrows and out his ears. Stanley had seen
his children progress from infancy to adolescence and now he would be seeing
his marriage go from ceremony to cessation.
    “Fine thanks.”
    David dropped the newspaper onto the counter and took out
his wallet.
    “What about your Mail on Sunday?”
    “Not today, thanks.”
    Back at home David half-heartedly read the newspaper,
vaguely acknowledging that economic freefall, terrorist threats and
post-accident motorway mayhem perhaps were more significant than his own
crisis. He skipped lunch.
    He was in the hall en route from kitchen to downstairs toilet
when the first of his children returned. Rachel opened the front door, cigarette
in hand.
    “Put that thing out,” David ordered.
    “OK,” she said, throwing the stub behind her onto the
small tidy front lawn, “but I smoke. I won’t inside the house, but that’s all
I’m agreeing to.”
    Still somewhat hung-over, David didn’t have the energy to
argue.
    “And have I missed my fucking bitch of a mother?” Rachel
continued.
    The previous day’s anger might be acceptable, but David
was not prepared to tolerate habitual use of that word from his sixteen year
old daughter. “There is no need to swear, thank you very much.”
    “Fucking bitch, fucking bitch, fucking bitch,” Rachel
chanted as she brushed past him and headed up to her room. A minute later
Britney Spears was belting out of her music system.
    David stood in the hall trying to remember why he’d left
the kitchen in the first place.
    The phone rang, it was Sam. “Dad, could you pick me up? Now
please. Adrian and I have had a bit of a bust up. He’s blaming me for running
his car into a skirting board, but he didn’t tell me it had a turbo
accelerator. Anyway it’s only the bumper that’s busted and his dad says a bit
of glue will sort it.”
    David agreed to set off immediately. He called up to
Rachel to let her know he was popping out. He left without keys; rang the
doorbell to get back in to collect them; rang it again when a Britney track
ended and Rachel had a chance of hearing; picked them up; went out and unlocked
the car; recalled that the original reason for leaving the kitchen was to go to
the toilet; went back inside to do so; and finally departed. “I can’t think clearly
anymore,” he uttered as he started the engine.
    He drove through the comfortable streets of suburban Mill
Hill with a surge of feeling sorry for himself, jealous that for those in the
immaculately ordered houses he was passing, life would no doubt be as secure as
the day before. Well maybe not, he reconsidered, his mind now racing with what
ifs. Perhaps the loss of a job or a death in the family. Or conceivably like
him, a wife leaving, leaving to live with a