like this, she could just remember what it had felt like for them to be close.
‘You know, you don’t have to sell your painting. It’s too personal. And it would be better to hold on to it, keep it as an investment.’
‘I don’t think I could cope with you working longer hours than you do already.’ It was not living without him that frightened her: it was how good she was getting at it.
‘I didn’t mean that.’ He cocked his head to one side, blue eyes softened and considerate. ‘You could always ask your father for money. For the deposit. He always said he’d put some by for you.’
He had broken the spell. Suzanna removed her hand from his, shifted so that, once again, she faced away from him. ‘I’m not going through all that again. We’ve had to take enough from him already. And I don’t want his money.’
At first they hadn’t thought of it as debt: they were simply living as everyone did, a short distance beyond their means. Double income, no kids. They adopted a lifestyle heralded in the better-quality magazines, a lifestyle to which they felt entitled. They bought huge matching sofas in mute shades of suede, spent weekends with like-minded friends at noisy West End restaurants and discreet hotels, felt entitled to ‘treat themselves’ for the most minor disappointment: a bad day at work, failure to get concert tickets, rain. Suzanna, cushioned by Neil’s income, and the fact that both of them secretly liked her spending more time at home, took a succession of part-time jobs: working in a women’s clothes shop, driving for a friend who opened a florist, selling specialist wooden toys. None captured her imagination enough to make her want to stay, to deprive herself of morning coffee with girlfriends at pavement cafés, time spent browsing, or the pleasure of cooking elaborate meals. Then, seemingly overnight, everything had changed. Neil had lost his job at the bank, replaced by someone he described afterwards as the Ball-breaking He-Woman from Hell. His sense of humour had vanished, along with their cash-flow.
And Suzanna had started shopping.
At first she had done it just to get out of the flat. Neil had become depressed and angry, and had started to see evidence of female conspiracies in almost everything: in the fact that the girls in their local school were reported to have achieved better A levels than the boys, in the sexual-harassment cases he read aloud from the newspaper, in the fact that the human-resources manager who rang up to tell him he was only entitled to three months’ salary instead of the six he had expected happened to be female. Alternating between petulant outrage and miserable self-loathing, he became the worst of himself, a character she was unable to deal with. So she had left him to it, and cheered herself up with expensive soaps, ready meals, the odd bunch of flowers – lilies for their scent, amaryllis and birds-of-paradise to sustain her need for the sophisticated. She told herself she deserved it, her sense of entitlement sharpened by Neil’s filthy temper.
She persuaded herself that there were things they needed: new bedlinen – it was an investment, surely, to buy the most expensive Egyptian cotton – matching curtains, antique glass. She invented necessary projects in the flat, a new floor in the kitchen, the complete redecoration of the spare room. It would improve the value of the flat, after all. One always got back twice what one spent on property.
It was only a short stop from there to her own personal makeover. She couldn’t possibly get a new job with her existing wardrobe; her hair needed cutting and highlighting; the stress of Neil’s job had left her skin in desperate need of specialist facials. Her spending became a joke among her girlfriends so she bought for them too. Generosity came naturally to her: she told herself it was one of the few sources of genuine pleasure she had left.
It had made her feel better at first, given her a
‘You know, you don’t have to sell your painting. It’s too personal. And it would be better to hold on to it, keep it as an investment.’
‘I don’t think I could cope with you working longer hours than you do already.’ It was not living without him that frightened her: it was how good she was getting at it.
‘I didn’t mean that.’ He cocked his head to one side, blue eyes softened and considerate. ‘You could always ask your father for money. For the deposit. He always said he’d put some by for you.’
He had broken the spell. Suzanna removed her hand from his, shifted so that, once again, she faced away from him. ‘I’m not going through all that again. We’ve had to take enough from him already. And I don’t want his money.’
At first they hadn’t thought of it as debt: they were simply living as everyone did, a short distance beyond their means. Double income, no kids. They adopted a lifestyle heralded in the better-quality magazines, a lifestyle to which they felt entitled. They bought huge matching sofas in mute shades of suede, spent weekends with like-minded friends at noisy West End restaurants and discreet hotels, felt entitled to ‘treat themselves’ for the most minor disappointment: a bad day at work, failure to get concert tickets, rain. Suzanna, cushioned by Neil’s income, and the fact that both of them secretly liked her spending more time at home, took a succession of part-time jobs: working in a women’s clothes shop, driving for a friend who opened a florist, selling specialist wooden toys. None captured her imagination enough to make her want to stay, to deprive herself of morning coffee with girlfriends at pavement cafés, time spent browsing, or the pleasure of cooking elaborate meals. Then, seemingly overnight, everything had changed. Neil had lost his job at the bank, replaced by someone he described afterwards as the Ball-breaking He-Woman from Hell. His sense of humour had vanished, along with their cash-flow.
And Suzanna had started shopping.
At first she had done it just to get out of the flat. Neil had become depressed and angry, and had started to see evidence of female conspiracies in almost everything: in the fact that the girls in their local school were reported to have achieved better A levels than the boys, in the sexual-harassment cases he read aloud from the newspaper, in the fact that the human-resources manager who rang up to tell him he was only entitled to three months’ salary instead of the six he had expected happened to be female. Alternating between petulant outrage and miserable self-loathing, he became the worst of himself, a character she was unable to deal with. So she had left him to it, and cheered herself up with expensive soaps, ready meals, the odd bunch of flowers – lilies for their scent, amaryllis and birds-of-paradise to sustain her need for the sophisticated. She told herself she deserved it, her sense of entitlement sharpened by Neil’s filthy temper.
She persuaded herself that there were things they needed: new bedlinen – it was an investment, surely, to buy the most expensive Egyptian cotton – matching curtains, antique glass. She invented necessary projects in the flat, a new floor in the kitchen, the complete redecoration of the spare room. It would improve the value of the flat, after all. One always got back twice what one spent on property.
It was only a short stop from there to her own personal makeover. She couldn’t possibly get a new job with her existing wardrobe; her hair needed cutting and highlighting; the stress of Neil’s job had left her skin in desperate need of specialist facials. Her spending became a joke among her girlfriends so she bought for them too. Generosity came naturally to her: she told herself it was one of the few sources of genuine pleasure she had left.
It had made her feel better at first, given her a
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