How to Find Love in a Book Shop(48)

Now, she was psychotic with boredom. She adored Maud, of course she did, but once she’d pureed some organic carrots and free-range chicken breasts and frozen them into portion-sized blobs, and hand-washed Maud’s little cashmere cardigans in lavender-scented washing powder, and taken her for a walk in the flower-filled meadow down by the riverbank on the outskirts of Peasebrook – what more was there? Apart from cooking a Mongolian fish curry for when Bill cycled back from the train station at seven o’clock at night.

She was living the life she had depicted so many times in the magazine. She thought of all the spreads she’d done outlining bucolic bliss: girls in tea dresses and wellies pegging out washing. Wicker baskets and picnic rugs and muddy vegetables and home-made bloody jam. She had pots of it. Pots and pots and pots.

From the outside, she was living the dream. Inside, she felt bored and empty and meaningless. How on earth had she thought that full-time motherhood was going to be enough for her? She stroked Maud’s fat little hand and felt her heart shrivel with the ugliness she was feeling. She was an ungrateful cow. How could this little bundle not be enough?

Maud had fallen asleep, one hand clutching her little towelling blankie with the rabbit in one corner. What would her daughter think, having a kleptomaniac as a mother? Bea knew she’d always been impulsive, but she’d never put her impulsiveness to bad use until now.

What would Bill think if he knew what she’d done? He was under enough pressure, with the travelling and the job. He could barely speak in the evenings when he came home. He just ate and went to bed then got up at six to set off again. He wasn’t much fun at the weekend either. For the past two months he’d refused to let them have guests down. He didn’t do much. Slept. Watched a bit of telly. Opened his first bottle of beer at midday and drank steadily until he fell asleep again at about nine. If she complained, he snapped at her.

‘You’re living the dream, remember?’

OK, so it had been she who had orchestrated the massive change. She’d found the house, sold theirs, organised the move. Taken voluntary redundancy so she had a lump sum to live on. Arranged their finances so they could manage the drop in salary. Found ways to make savings so their weekly outgoings dropped by half but without a drop in standards. She’d saved them two hundred pounds a week by stopping them going out to eat or getting takeaways and getting a more economic car and not having a cleaner. Saving money had become her hobby, a point of pride.

She thought now she would do anything to be standing in a crowded train, with a takeaway latte in one hand and her iPhone in the other, brainstorming for a breakfast meeting. She would kill for an impossible brief or a draconian deadline or a crisis. These days, a crisis constituted running out of milk or nappies. Neither of which she ever did, because she had infinite amounts of time on her hands and so was the most efficient housekeeper on the planet.

But was she really so bored she’d resorted to shoplifting?

She walked back through the winding streets and by the time she got home Maud had fallen asleep. She pushed the pushchair into the living room, then sat on the pale grey velvet sofa that exactly matched the one opposite. In between was an antiqued mirrored coffee table that bore nothing but the occasional fingerprint. She spent most of her life polishing them off, and didn’t want to think about the day when Maud began to cruise around the furniture.

She put the copy of the Riley in the middle of the table. It was the perfect book to have on display. She admired the black and white graphic on the front cover. She itched to take off the wrapping and look inside, to feast on the images and imagine herself to be one of his models.

Before she had a chance to remove the wrapping, she heard Bill come in the front door. He’d been to the garden centre, to get some posts and some wire for some fruit trees he was planning to espalier in the garden. It was a serious business, espaliering. She wasn’t entirely sure what it was …

She jumped up and grabbed the book. She slid it under the cushions of the sofa just as Bill came in.

‘Hey!’ She smiled at him, trying her best not to look like a thieving lunatic. ‘How are you? Me and Maud have had a lovely morning.’

‘Good.’

‘We bought a book. Didn’t we, darling?’ But Maud was still fast asleep, the book on her lap.

‘Great.’

‘How about you?’

‘I bought a chainsaw.’

‘How much was that?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Good. Because we need one. I’m going to hack that old pear tree by the back gate down. It’s blocking the light into the kitchen.’

‘Great. We can have a gorgeous pile of logs. Make sure you chop them up evenly, so we can stack them by the fire.’ She held her hands eight inches apart. ‘About this long would be perfect.’

Even as she said it, she knew she sounded like a control freak.

Bill looked at her. ‘Does everything have to be a f*cking design statement?’

Bea opened her mouth to reply, but couldn’t think of a good answer. She was puzzled, though. It wasn’t like Bill to be so grumpy. What on earth was eating him?

She had to take the book back. She couldn’t live with herself otherwise. She would confess all to the girl in the book shop. That was the only way to shock herself back to normality.