Cruel Legacy

‘Yes, of course I do,’ Sally responded quickly. Too quickly? she wondered uneasily; her heart jumped shakily in her chest as she acknowledged that it was almost as though she dared not allow herself to consider Kenneth’s question just in case …

Just in case what? Of course she loved Joel; of course she did.

‘I must go,’ she told Kenneth. ‘The kids will be back from school soon.’

‘Yes, of course. It won’t take long to run you back,’ Kenneth assured her.

Immediately Sally tensed. ‘No, I’d rather you dropped me at the bus stop, if you don’t mind.’

She could feel herself flushing again as he looked at her. It wasn’t that she felt she had done anything wrong she assured herself defensively, but her neighbours were the sort who wouldn’t waste time in coming round to find out how she had come to arrive home in such state.

It would be easy enough to explain to them, of course, to tell them that an ex-patient had offered her a lift, and, even as she heard Kenneth agreeing pleasantly that if that was what she wanted then that was what he would do, she felt both angry and flustered with herself for the way she had over-reacted. Like someone guilty … someone who had something to hide.

Nevertheless, it was a shock to see Joel’s car in the drive as she walked up to the house, and as her heart started to thump uncomfortably against her ribcage and her stomach tensed with anxiety at the shock of seeing his car there at such an unexpected time of the day her footsteps slowed slightly.

He was in the kitchen when she walked in, his back turned towards her as he filled the kettle. The breakfast things had been removed from the table, she noticed absently as she hurried over to him, but the surface was smeared and there were coffee-mug rings where Joel hadn’t thought to wipe it clean.

‘Why aren’t you at work?’ she asked him anxiously as she took her coat off, but the moment he turned round she knew the answer. She could see it in his face, in the defeated look in his eyes.

‘What work?’ he asked tonelessly. ‘There is no work. No work, no wages, and no damned redundancy either by the looks of it.’

‘Oh, but that’s not possible! You’ve worked there since leaving school.’

‘Yes, well, it seems that doesn’t count for anything. According to what we were told this afternoon, we’re only getting our current week’s wages because the bank didn’t want it all over the newspapers that they weren’t going to pay us. As far as our redundancy money goes, we won’t know if or what we’re going to get until everything’s been sold off.’

Sally could see from his face, hear in his voice just how much this extra blow had affected him. He looked and sounded not frightened exactly … more beaten and vulnerable, stripped of his confidence, his head, his whole body bowed.

‘Oh, Joel.’ She walked up to him, instinctively moving towards him, gripping hold of his upper arms. ‘Don’t look like that, love,’ she begged him. ‘It will be all right; we’ll manage.’ Instinctively she adopted the soothing, reassuring voice she used to her patients and small children; the look in his eyes frightened her. She had never seen him looking so vulnerable and defeated. ‘It isn’t as though we weren’t expecting it.’ She felt him move and then take hold of her, wrapping his arms around her, holding her almost painfully tightly as he buried his head against her.