“I missed you today,” he says, “I did! I missed you”
At home, up on a ditch — with wild hair, a hand-saw and bursting face.
I’m chopping the last metre of a fuchsia hedge — 15ft long and twice my height, and in that state of heady euphoria induced by extreme physical exertion, which precedes total collapse.
Downing tools, I climb down off the ditch, yank up my jeans and proceed up to the house on limbs of jelly.
Inside the conservatory, I subside onto the sofa where I lie immobile. The dog starts yapping as my husband’s car pulls into the drive.
I creak into sitting position from where I’m stretched out like a corpse. “Hello, hello, you gorgeous thing,” my husband says, opening the door, “what a sight for sore eyes! You’re a real sight for sore eyes aren’t you?”
“I missed you today. I did! I missed you.”
I look at him from the sofa. His face is suffused with love.
“Do you know how much I missed you?” he asks, continuing apace.
“Come here to me, gorgeous,” he beckons, “come here to your favourite man and say hello.”
I’m sitting at the kitchen table in front of my laptop, staring squinty-eyed at the column I wrote this afternoon. Agonising over the placement of hyphens and semi-colons for half an hour is never going to redeem it. In a sudden fit of pique, I dispatch it to the Recycle Bin.
My mood is listless; chain-chewing nicotine gum and forgetting to eat has wreaked havoc on my digestion, my shoulder is smarting from yesterday’s exertions and the fires have gone out in the stoves.
The front door slams. I look around from the wood-burner, into which I’m stuffing kindling, as my husband enters the room.
“There you are!” he says, “and I’ll tell you what — I’m all the better for seeing you! All the better for seeing you, I am.” His face glows, as if there’s a sun behind it. “I’ll have you know,” he says, “coming home from a hard day’s work and seeing you would put a smile on anyone’s face — and that’s a fact.”
After producing the bones of a more promising column this morning, and restoring order to the wood shed this afternoon, I’m now standing by the cooker making tomato soup.
“I’m home!” my husband says, standing in the kitchen doorway, “home… home… home… and something smells good! Tomato soup! I love tomato soup…”
I open the cupboard door, take out soup bowls. He pulls a questioning face, “aren’t you glad to see me?” he says, simulating heartbreak. Then he pulls a happy face. “Of course you are,” he says, “and I should hope so, too because it’s nice to be appreciated. It is, isn’t it? It’s nice to be appreciated...”
I’m outside in the soft drizzle, up a ladder, hacking ivy off the gable-end wall with a chisel, so as to prepare the stone for re-pointing. My husband’s car swings up the drive. Getting out of the car, he breaks into song: “Here I am again (clap), happy as can be (clap), all good friends and jolly good company!”
“I’m up here,” I call from atop the ladder, waving at him with my bleeding knuckles.
But he’s too busy singing and clapping to notice, “Here I am again (clap), happy as can be, (clap)…
I’m on the sofa, with a wrenched shoulder muscle, glass of water and mouthful of Nurofen.
“Hello beautiful,” my husband says, coming in and sitting down in the chair opposite. “It’s Friday! And I have a treat in store for you… We’re going for a walk! Down to the pier! And you’re coming with me, yes you are…”
I swallow my Nurofen and glance at my husband’s face. It is flushed with love. “Yes you are,” he says, “yes you are, YES YOU ARE — you’re coming to the pier with your favourite man, aren’t you?”
I look at him. I look at the dog panting up at him. “What does that bloody dog have that I don’t?” I say.
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