Free Chain Reaction by Gillian White Page B

find out what’s going on round here, and now you’ve spilled the beans it’ll be everywhere tomorrow. Why do you never listen? We are moving because the children have gone and we want somewhere smaller…’
    ‘Don’t be silly, Joy. Everyone knows—’
    ‘Excuse me, but no, they do not! Or they didn’t until you put your oar in. Sometimes you can be so insensitive, Vernon,’ and she fled upstairs in floods of tears.
    She had told everyone they sold the Mini because she was finding driving so stressful.
    Oh, why can’t she be honest? Life would be so much simpler. Honest with herself if no one else. There is no shame in what they are doing—thousands of others are in the same boat. There certainly would be shame if they went creeping deeper and deeper into debt until everything was beyond redemption, as some people do. But Vernon isn’t that sort of man. Vernon is a good man; he intends to pay everyone back and still end up with a place to live in.
    ‘This can’t possibly be it, Vernon.’
    They draw up outside the house in the highly polished blue Ford. Vernon might be in a mess financially but he still cleans and polishes the car on a Sunday. A man of habits, sometimes just lately he thinks it is the habits that have been keeping him sane.
    Vernon glances at the brochure again. The place is in the middle of nowhere, fields to front and back. He strains to read the name on the broken gate. ‘Hacienda. It is, I’m afraid.’
    Joy fidgets, peering out. ‘Well, at least it’s a house on its own, with a garden and a name.’
    ‘But look at it, love! It’s nothing but a heap of ruins. It can’t have been lived in for years. Come on, let’s go.’
    ‘Hang on, Vernon. Hang on. It could be made nice.’
    Vernon senses trouble brewing. ‘It could be made nice, yes, if you had a spare fifty grand to spend.’ And he rests his case, firmly folding his arms on the subject.
    She won’t have it. ‘But we might have one day, who knows?’ says Joy hopefully, suddenly drawing strength from the notion that she could after all have a detached house with a garden and a decent-sounding address. This when he has spent hours trying to convince her that they really have got to make a sensible choice.
    The gate is not attached to the post. They walk up the weedy garden path and push open the shabby front door, avoiding the nettles that grow amongst the feelers of ivy. ‘It could be a charming little cottage. I can see exactly how it could be in my mind’s eye,’ calls Joy, cheering. ‘And look, what a cosy little sitting room this must have been. We could sit in front of the fire in the winter and—’
    ‘Joy! The ceiling is caving in with the damp. None of the doors fit. The chimney is running with water.’ Vernon wanders round the room in a gathering state of gloom, and out into the small kitchen beyond. There’s an old stone sink, flagstone floors, rotting shelves hanging off the bulging walls. He sniffs. There is something dead and decaying behind the alcove. He wishes he could share his wife’s optimism but he can’t. She is resorting to fantasy because she cannot bear the truth.
    ‘We could put a Rayburn in here and cook on it and heat the water. And what a wonderful, overgrown garden, Vernon. A secret garden! We could even keep chickens. We could grow all our own food, eat our own eggs and sell the surplus, and we could have open fires instead of that costly central heating. This house is even small enough to light with oil lamps, they’re in all the shops again now.’ She is suddenly gleeful after months of depression. ‘Oh, Vernon, think. Just think of the money we’d save!’
    He will normally say anything to avoid confrontation. ‘Joy! Stop it!’
    ‘But Vernon…’
    ‘It’s just no good.’
    ‘But Vernon, listen to me.’ Her restless hands are washing each other over the cracked and dirty sink. Seeing this makes him want to cry, Joy is so unhappy.
    But he makes himself answer her patiently.