Goody Two Shoes (Invertary 2)

“Who’s doing the service?”

She smiled apologetically. With a grump, the minister reached into his desk drawer and pulled out an old, battered calendar.

“Let me see. It’s Monday now, so how do Thursday afternoons suit you?”

She looked at him blankly.

“Wedding counselling. Looks like you two need the full package.”

Caroline’s shoulders slumped slightly. “Thursday will be fine. Will you tell Josh or will I?”

At last the old man grinned. “Oh, I think that should be your job.”

“I’ve booked the flights.” Andrew McInnes stood in the doorway to the bedroom. “We leave in a couple of hours. Is that enough time to pack?”

Helen McInnes didn’t look at her husband as she pulled clothes from the drawers. “It will have to be.”

There was silence. She gritted her teeth. Andrew McInnes was a man of few words. It had been charming when she’d met him as a girl, but now it was lonely. All those conversations she had with herself. All those years spent trying to guess what was going on in his head. She was tired of it. All of it.

She heard him shuffle his feet. “Are we going to tell him?”

Helen turned to look at her husband of thirty-five years. Logically, she knew he was older. His hair was greying and there were wrinkles round his eyes, but he still looked like the man she’d met all those years ago. He was tall, with broad shoulders, and deep-set eyes that were always so intense. She’d loved those intense blue eyes of his, especially when they were focused on her. It’d been a long time since his scrutiny had made her tingle. Now it only made her sad.

“I guess we have to.”

He nodded. No wasted words for Andrew McInnes. He pushed his hands into the pockets of the ugly tartan trousers he insisted on wearing, and looked at her. Just looked.

“I better pack, then.” He turned and headed to the spare bedroom, where he’d been sleeping for almost a year.

Helen let out the breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding, and stared out of the window to the golf course behind their house. A house she hated. She felt guilty as she looked down onto their pool—guilty because she missed her friends in Atlantic City; she missed working all day long beside her husband. At least back then they’d had something to talk about. Now there was nothing.

With a sigh, she packed summer dresses into her bag, wondering how warm it got in Scotland in July. She could have asked Andrew, he would have known, but somehow along the years of enduring his silence she’d grown weary of hearing her own voice. She threw in a couple of sweaters. That should tide her over. If she needed anything else, she’d go shopping. It wasn’t like money was a problem anymore. Josh had been very generous to them, and the sale of the business had made them a tidy profit.

“I’m all done.” Andrew was back in the doorway. It was as though he was scared of entering the room.

“I won’t be long.”

“I’ll make us a sandwich.” He disappeared downstairs.

Helen patted her rounded belly and wondered if bread was a good idea. She’d been struggling through a low-carb diet for months now, but didn’t seem to be losing the last flabby spots on her body. She sucked in her belly and looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was the same bleach-blond bob she’d worn for almost forty years. Her breasts had long ago given into gravity, and now she couldn’t bear looking at them without a bra. And her hips—great child-bearing hips, Andrew had called them…well, her child-bearing years were over and now her hips were just wide.

She looked at the door where Andrew had stood. She couldn’t put off going downstairs much longer. She’d make it through another silent meal together. And after they’d dealt with Josh, they’d go their separate ways.

She wondered if she would feel lighter, or if she would die a little more inside.

CHAPTER THREE

By eleven o’clock on Tuesday morning, the castle was full of workmen. There were guys stripping boards off the walls in the hall. A team were ripping up the carpet, and a group of teenagers were removing the TV from the living room wall and hacking at the spot where it used to be. Josh dragged the foreman into the kitchen as Mitch came down from the fourth floor with bags under his eyes the size of suitcases.

“What the hell is going on?” Mitch demanded.

“I’m about to find out.” Josh perched on a stool at the kitchen counter. “This here is Mr. Buchanan; he’s in charge and he’s going to fill me in on what everyone is doing.” He turned to the foreman. “When I let you in, I thought you were here to work on the sound studio.”

The old man pulled his cap from his head and scratched the bald spot in amongst his thinning grey hair. “This is your house, Mr. McInnes—if you don’t know what’s going on, I’m not sure how I can help.”

“I need coffee.” Mitch headed for the espresso machine.

“I spoke to Caroline yesterday.” Josh folded his arms over his Scooby-Doo T-shirt. “She said it’d take weeks to get permission for the renovation. How come you guys are here this morning?”