She shook herself and headed back inside. Looking at the now-empty kitchen worktops and the spotless steel appliances, she felt a rush of relief. No more battles between his desire for minimalism and her never-ending piles of clutter. When they’d first met, he’d found her untidiness as endearing as she’d found his order. ‘Opposites attract,’ they used to say, smiling at each other. But that was five years back, in their final year of university, when Kate, desperate to create a sense of home, had moved into a tiny little basement flat with Ian. It made her feel safe and secure, being part of a couple. KateandIan. IanandKate. When the occasional doubts about their brother-and-sister-style relationship popped up, or she wanted to eat crisps in bed just to annoy him, Kate put them to one side. Nobody had a perfect relationship, did they?
When the subject of buying the house came up, though, Kate couldn’t shake off the sense that things really weren’t right. She couldn’t bring herself to sign a mortgage and tie herself to the house for the next twenty-five years. Surprisingly, Ian didn’t seem that concerned – maybe he, too, had realized that their relationship was more a convenience than a grand passion?
She placed her much-loved Dualit toaster, bought with her first pay packet, into the packing box, showering crumbs everywhere. Then she stuffed her cookery books down the sides along with an assortment of sharp knives, a box of scented tea-lights, some photo frames and a wonky, completely useless, leaky clay vase.
She taped up the final box and surveyed her work. Ten packing crates weren’t much to show for a five-year relationship. Funny, she thought, at twenty-six she’d still never lived alone. She’d gone from home to halls of residence at Edinburgh University, and finally, when she and Ian graduated, they’d moved in together, more from force of habit than from any great desire. Now she would be lodging with friends, like a student again.
Rather than try and divide up the furniture, the ever-practical Ian had suggested that he give her a lump sum of money. It was sitting in an envelope on the kitchen worktop, with her name and a smiley face (oh, how that drove her mad!) written across the seal.
Kate slipped the envelope into her pocket, and left the key in its place. Sam would collect the boxes later. She left the house with only a small suitcase and an overnight bag – looking, she thought, as if she was popping off for a weekend away with friends, instead of walking out of one life and into another.
2
The Road to Duntarvie
‘You can’t just go and live on an island.’ Emma was chopping onions so furiously that she was in danger of ending up with half a finger in the chilli con carne. ‘They could be mass-murdering fiends. They might chop you up and put you in the freezer.’
She swiped the onions from the chopping board and into the saucepan as if to illustrate her point. Olive oil hissed, filling the kitchen with a delicious smell.
Kate turned away, smiling to herself. Emma wasn’t exactly a stranger to impetuous decisions herself. She’d met her husband Sam when he’d rung her IT company looking for help with a computer that had crashed, with all his files on the hard drive. He was a widower, father to twin girls of three, and had been on his own for eighteen months. While fixing his laptop, Emma somehow sneaked into his heart, and into those of Katharine and Jennifer. Then another broken computer just happened to need fixing, and Emma just happened to stay for dinner (spaghetti hoops on toast, with fromage frais for pudding and chocolate milk – ‘That’s a special treat for visitors,’ Jennifer had told her, solemnly).
In a ridiculously short space of time they were living together as a family, which horrified Sam’s ex-in-laws, until they realized how happy it had made Sam, and their precious granddaughters. Emma and Sam would have carried on as they were indefinitely, had it not been for the girls, now six and deeply entrenched in the pink-and-princesses stage. They were desperate to see Daddy and Emma doing Proper Dancing, and Emma wearing a lovely dress.
Kate had loved arranging Sam’s secret dancing lessons, finding ways to distract Emma while he disappeared twice a week to a studio in the centre of Cambridge. Booking a babysitter for the girls (‘It’s the least I can do, seeing as I’m your honorary best-woman’), Kate had taken Emma on a mission to relive their teenage years, when they’d escaped from Saffron Walden to admire the big shops and bright lights of Cambridge. They’d hung out in cafes, reminiscing over their teenage dating disasters, and watched fourteen-year-olds as they hovered hopefully round the make-up counters in John Lewis, desperate for free samples. She smiled to herself now, remembering.