Free Broken Places by Wendy Perriam Page A

endless photos,to ensure that proper records were kept (non-existent in his own childhood ).
    Perhaps he thought, his mind still racing, he ought to buy a kitten, to soften the blow of losing Charlie, who still had not returned, despite his continued searches and enquiries. It would be her kitten, of course, waiting to greet her every time she visited. As yet, he hadn’t found the courage to break the news of Charlie’s loss; indeed, could barely believe that the cat had gone for ever and might actually be dead. Charlie was his family – the one and only part of it he’d kept – and also tied in with the whole history of his marriage.
    He found himself making for the living-room – and the wedding photo he still kept on his desk. All other photos of Christine had been unceremoniously dumped, but this one was too precious to destroy. His marriage had seemed momentous at the time: to have someone of his own, at last; someone there for him, committed to him, faithful unto death. And to be part of a real family, with intriguing new in-laws, when, up till then, he was unable to lay claim to a single relative. His younger self stared back at him from the elaborate silver frame: his carroty curls ablaze with sheer excitement ; a triumphant grin stretching from ear to ear; one protective arm around his new, miraculous wife.
    As his eyes moved to her face, he felt his usual sense of outrage at how that plump and homely girl had become the fashionably thin virago who had dragged him through the divorce courts. It was all down to Kroszner-Merriott , of course. Only an American-owned company would have dictated such long work-hours; insisted on assertiveness training for all higher-grade employees, and demanded exacting standards in personal grooming – tooth-whitening, manicures, slimming regimes, ultra-modish clothes. Gradually Christine had metamorphosed into a tough, go-getting materialist, instead of the simple girl he had met on a peace march, twenty years before. And then had come the blow.
    ‘I’ve outgrown you, Eric. I’m sorry to be brutal, but that’s the simple truth. And I can no longer live with a man who won’t drive a car, get on a plane, or even go for a swim. That’s grounds for a divorce, you know, so my lawyer says. He reckons your refusal to travel, along with all your other fears, have caused serious rifts in the marriage and left me isolated.’
    Isolated! Whilst all the time, unknown to him, she was bedding odious Dwight; the pair of them plotting to destroy the marriage by classing his humiliating terrors as ‘unreasonable behaviour’, in order to deflect attention from their own repellent carryings-on. He could have cited adultery, had he decided to fight back, as equally valid grounds for a divorce. But he loathed the thought of a split-up; hated fighting, on principle and, anyway, had no weapons in his armoury. How could a mere librarian, who had never been abroad and was even scared of water, for Christ’s sake, compare with a Harvard-educated CEO, who owned two houses and a boat, and used aeroplanes like buses? Besides, he was shamefully aware that most people would take Christine’s part and regard his fears as totally unreasonable , since his terror of driving or of any sort of travel, had seriously restricted their married life.
    And now that she and Dwight had triumphed, things were even worse. Whatever he, the loser, might lay on for Erica would only lead to invidious comparisons. A brief pony-ride at Vauxhall City Farm didn’t have quite the cachet as private lessons in horsemanship at some swish equestrian centre in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. And could a paddle-boat on the pond in Battersea Park really bear comparison with sailing on a fifty-foot ketch around the San Juan Islands?
    Determinedly, he switched on the TV, to distract himself from Dwight. It was too early to leave for his bike trip – still bitter-cold outside, although the sun was doing its brave best to