A Crowded Marriage by Catherine Alliott Page B

upset too, Kate; can’t bear the thought of going. Can’t bear it. And I hate the thought of being beholden to her too.”
    She drew back sharply and looked at me. “Oh, I wouldn’t take it rent free.”
    â€œWe’re not going to,” I said quickly. “Alex would have, but I made him ring a local estate agent and find out what the going rate was for renting a dilapidated cottage round there. It’s peanuts, actually, but Alex has written to Piers saying it’s a terribly generous offer, blah blah blah, but we’ll only accept if they let us pay rent. I do have some pride.”
    â€œQuite right,” she said, fishing a tissue out of her sleeve and blowing her nose loudly. She went back to butchering the cucumber.” And what about your house? Number forty-two?” She jerked her head over the road.
    â€œWe’re not going to sell it, we’re going to rent it out.” I perched on the edge of the table. “Alex wanted to sell, but I’ve talked him out of it. We’re getting a stonking great rent for it, incidentally, so who knows? In a year or so, when we’re back on our feet, maybe we can move back? Come back to London.”
    Kate smiled down knowingly at her red pepper and chopped away in silence. “You won’t,” she said eventually. “No one ever comes back. Once they’ve gone, they realise how much better life is out there. And aside from the fact that I’ll miss you like hell, I think that’s what’s upsetting me so much. The fact that I’ll still be in sodding London with my successful husband and my vast sums of money, and you’ll be in a little cottage in the country with roses round the door and a veggie patch at the back and a few chickens in the yard. Heaven.” She sighed. “What’s it called—Rose Cottage? The Orchard? Go on, make me drool.”
    â€œShepherd’s Cottage.”
    â€œ Shep herd’s Cottage,” she breathed, putting her knife down for a moment and gazing straight ahead. “Even better. More kudos, less chocolate box. With baby lambs gambolling on the hillside behind you and trout glistening and leaping in the brook? Typical!” She brought the knife down with such force that half the red pepper leaped off her board in alarm. I picked it up and she gouged away at the seeds inside it like a Shakespearean henchman going for Gloucester’s eyes. I gulped.
    â€œWell, you’ll come down and see us, of course. Spend weekends, and we’ll come up here. You know, to dinner, the theatre…”
    Even as I said it, though, I knew it wouldn’t happen. Knew that, whilst Kate would be blissfully happy mucking in with the steam stripper and the Polyfilla on a Saturday morning before munching a ham roll on a back doorstep, Sebastian, after a hard week at the operating table, could probably think of better things to do. Likewise, theatre trips would be unlikely to feature in the Camerons’ social calendar for obvious financial reasons. The truth was that our lives, which up to now had been so intrinsically woven, so intricately stitched together, were going to be pulled apart with alarming ease. A relationship that had taken many hours of coffee drinking, school running, scooping up of each other’s children and cooking of kitchen suppers to perfect, was to be shelved in moments.
    Kate dredged up a great sigh from her L. K. Bennetts. “Of course we’ll see each other. Of course. I’ll come down for the day in the school holidays and bring the children, and you’ll pop up here occasionally when you’re in town, but…it’ll be different. It’ll be the end of an era. The end of…old ways.”
    We exchanged sad little smiles, and might have exchanged another hug, but Kate sensibly picked up her knife and began paring again in a more measured, slightly less manic way. “But a new start for you, my friend,