If Clooney and Pitt wandered out of their bathroom right now, Zara wouldn’t have been any more astonished. She’d never seriously considered that Millie wouldn’t want to keep on doing what they did now. They had a lovely life. Great jobs. Earned a decent living. And they got to do all that with each other. She’d never really thought about it, but she just assumed that they’d always do this, perhaps even expand the business, maybe open another shop or two eventually. Clearly that wasn’t Millie’s vision.
‘Oh no,’ Millie drawled, and Zara saw she’d finally dragged her eyes from the TV and was looking at her. ‘I’ve never said that out loud before, have I?’
Zara put her spoon down, suddenly not feeling much like cake. ‘No. I mean, I didn’t know you’d even considered doing something else. Have you got plans? Is there something you want to tell me?’ Her voice was a few notes higher than normal, but she couldn’t help it.
Millie rushed to object. ‘No! No! Definitely not…’
Okay, that restarted her cardiovascular system and let her breathe again, until Millie added a sheepish, ‘Although… maybe?’
Zara just stared at her, open-mouthed, until Millie buckled and spilled.
‘I don’t mean I want to leave right now. I just think… Look, it’s right for you. You’re good with boredom…’
‘Millie!’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that you don’t like change. Adventure. Crazy shit. But I do. I’m happy with what we’re doing just now but I don’t want to do it forever.’
Zara tried to get her head around that. ‘So, you mean like some time in the future you’ll maybe want to try something else. Not in the immediate future?’
‘No, of course not. Definitely far in the future. A long way off. Ages away.’
Okay, so she wasn’t saying she was leaving her right now. Huge relief. But… Zara couldn’t leave it alone. She had to know.
‘So when, roughly, are you thinking? When’s ages away?’
Millie shrugged. ‘It depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On whether you want me to lie or be honest.’
Oh. Bollocks.
‘Honest.’
Millie shrugged apologetically and pushed the words out like she was delivering the worst news ever. Which she bloody well was. ‘Maybe next year?’
Zara couldn’t speak. Thankfully, she was saved from having to find a way to form words by the ping of an incoming text on her phone.
Aiden.
Landed. On way to hotel now. What’s the plan?
14
BRENDA
It had almost been a relief when the girls left and – for the first time since the minivan had picked them up at the house this morning, Brenda could breathe. Las bloody Vegas. Never in a million years would she have guessed that the girls were planning this and if she had, she would have stopped them. What a waste of money. Worse than that, she felt like such a complete fraud. She eyed the king-size bed, and it wasn’t lost on her that this should be a time of excitement and maybe a bit of naughtiness in Sin City. She wasn’t feeling either of those things.
She sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Colin, we have to tell them. We can’t keep doing this.’
‘Doing what?’ he asked, going over all the touchable objects with an anti-bacterial wipe. He’d always done that. As soon as they got into any hotel room, out would come the wet wipes, and he’d be off, cleaning away, protecting them from germ-induced certain death. He once spent a whole hour disinfecting a Blackpool hotel room, only for the front desk to call up and tell them they were in the wrong room and had to move, so he had to do it all over again. It wasn’t a compulsion – he wasn’t in the least bit bothered about stuff like that at home. No, it was just a habit. Like the fact that he had a single Scotch after dinner most nights, smoked a pipe in his shed or only ever listened to Radio 2. It had never irritated her more than it did right now. Even when the little nurse angel on one shoulder told her it was a valiant step in the eternal war against bacteria, the little wife angel on her other shoulder wanted to set fire to his wet wipes.
‘Letting them think that everything is fine,’ she answered his question with a touch of exasperation. ‘Thatwe’refine. The girls have brought us all this way to celebrate our anniversary. Doesn’t that seem so wrong to you? Not just the money they must have spent, but also all the thought that’s gone into this.’
He finally stopped bloody cleaning. ‘Honestly, no, Brenda, it doesn’t. It seems kind. Thoughtful. Like something you would do for the people you love.’
Urgh, now he was making her feel even worse. She could see there was a touch of gaslighting going on here, and that she should probably just ignore him, but for once, her emotions got the best of her.
