Thrown by Sara Cox

Author:Sara Cox [Sara Cox]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Published: 2022-03-17T17:00:00+00:00

28

Sheila

Sheila was feeling like a teddy with half its stuffing pulled out. She’d barely slept since finding the knickers, and was desperate for a second opinion. She couldn’t trust April at the food bank with her woes (she may as well hire a town crier – discretion wasn’t exactly April’s middle name). She’d seen Jameela at pottery, but they hadn’t quite found the right moment to chat.

Sheila washed the breakfast dishes and watched Martin through the window. She felt disconnected from him, curling inwards and away from him to protect her heart, like a hedgehog rolling into a defensive ball. Martin sat on a wrought-iron garden chair, his fleece zipped up to his salt and pepper stubble. The morning was fresh, but the pale blue sky promised warmth later.

Laid before him on the table were some of the treasures he’d brought back from his latest mudlarking trip, and he was gently buffing a Victorian bottle with a cloth.

Such care he took, tenderly rubbing, almost caressing the bottle, that Sheila snorted in derision. ‘Lucky bottle,’ she muttered to the bubbles in the sink, wondering what, if there was a house fire, he would grab first? His wife, or the trunk of debris found at the bottom of the Thames?

Martin looked up at that point and their eyes met. He half smiled as if he only vaguely recognised her, and then gestured for her to come outside.

‘Look at this my turtle dove,’ he said, as she stepped out of the back door. He held up a bottle and his gold-rimmed magnifying glass. She took both from him roughly enough to make him flinch slightly.

‘Martin, I can’t believe we still have this in the house – you know this handle is ivory?’ She looked him squarely in the eye. ‘It makes me sick.’ It felt good to say these words out loud to him.

Martin looked confused. ‘It’s antique Sheila, the one Mum got me for my fortieth. I can’t help that it has an ivory handle – different times Sheila. You know what the Victorians were like – they’d shoot, stuff, or eat anything that moved.’

Sheila remembered the present very well – it had outshone the watch she’d bought Martin, and his mum knew it of course, smiling beatifically at her as he gushed over the magnifying glass.

Sheila recalled how Martin had eventually realised his reaction was irritating Sheila and had made a show of pointing out to his mum the engraving on the back of the watch – a line from one of their special songs: ‘Nothing more, nothing less, love is the best, Sheila’.

Now she doubted if she could ever listen to Madness again.

‘Well to be honest Martin,’ she said now, turning the magnifying glass this way and that, ‘if I got half a chance, I would get rid of it – it’s an awful reminder of man’s cruelty.’ She glared at him.

His eyes widened at the threat. ‘But Sheila love, you still have your mum’s old fox fur in the loft.

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