Free Days by James Lovegrove Page A

morning,” Linda says to herself under her breath, and she thinks she knows the reason. Gordon is anxious about taking the day off, scared that the branch manager will somehow, against all the odds, find out that he isn’t suffering from the ’flu, and consequently not just deny him the promotion he is hoping for but fire him. She understands his fear, although she has no sympathy with it. She knows that if it weren’t for his anxiety, he would never have dreamed of speaking to her the way he just did.
    He really should have more faith, though. Her performance on the phone to the branch manager’s secretary just now was a superb piece of dissembling. She played the concerned wife to the hilt, assuring the secretary that Gordon was mad keen to go to work but that she was refusing to let him leave the bedroom. She described his symptoms – the racking coughs, the streaming eyes, the dribbling nose – in avid detail. She even pretended to copy down some homespun cold remedy the secretary gave her involving whisky, honey, and fresh lemons. For that, Gordon shouldn’t be snapping at her; he should be grateful to her. But she forgives him anyway. Today being the day it is, the greatest day of her life, she cannot bring herself to hold a grudge.
    She closes the front door behind her, making sure the latch clicks to, then locks the two mortices and sets off after her husband down the straight strip of concrete that bisects the front lawn. She notes that the roses beside the path are withering and will have to be deadheaded soon, and that the privet hedge which separates their property from that of the Winslows, the family occupying the other half of the semi-detached, needs trimming again. It still hasn’t quite been established whether the hedge is the Winslows’ responsibility or hers and Gordon’s, but she has taken its upkeep upon herself because the Winslows, frankly, don’t have the first clue how to look after a home. Their half of the semi is a mess. They have let the garden grow wild and weed-strewn, the hulk of a broken-down car is rusting by the kerbside out front, and the house itself is a shambles: the brickwork needs repointing, the roof retiling, the curtains washing.
    The Winslows have been dogged by a run of bad luck recently. Mr Winslow lost his job on the assembly line at the washing machine factory, his daughter’s application to work in the Leisurewear Department at Days was rejected, and his wife has been forced to swap her full-time position at the local supermarket for a part-time one in order to care for her old and ailing mother. But Linda has only to look at her half of the house, with its neat front garden and sparkling white paintwork, and remember how little money she and Gordon have had to spare these past few years, to know that she is correct in her opinion that poverty is no excuse for untidiness. She feels sorry for the Winslows, but these are tough times and the only way to survive them is by being ruthless, both with yourself and with others. Often during her and Gordon’s five-year struggle to earn their Silver Linda came close to calling the whole scheme off, unable to foresee a time when their deprivations would be at an end, but since despair was just another luxury they couldn’t afford, she never succumbed to it. It was important, too, for her not to let her standards slip, so she taught herself the basics of home decoration, both internal and external, in order that the house would never look as though its occupants were in straitened circumstances. She also picked up the rudiments of plumbing and electrical wiring from books in the library, and thus saved on several hefty repair bills.
    As for her sideline in hairdressing, after leaving school Linda spent a year as a trainee at a beauty salon, working at slave wages in the anticipation of a full-time job that, in the event, never materialised. Realising that Gordon’s salary alone would not be enough to secure them a Silver,