A Crowded Marriage Read Online Free Page A

resting my head back in the soft, damask cushions and gazing up at the ceiling. “I’d forgotten what it was like to be sexually propositioned and turn a man down.”
    Kate shot me a quizzical look but I didn’t elaborate. There was a time and a place for such confidences and six o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon with four small children running about, some with bigger ears than others, was not one of them.
    â€œThank you for collecting Rufus for me,” I said, watching my son on his hands and knees in his grey school uniform on the conservatory floor, as he assembled a Playmobil fort with Orlando, whilst Tabitha and Laura, Kate’s daughters, who were enjoying an exeat from boarding school, painted each other’s toenails with rapt absorption. Not for the first time I reflected that daughters would have been nice. Would still be nice.
    â€œOh, it was no trouble. Orlando was in after-school club anyway because I suddenly realised we’re at the opera tonight and I wouldn’t have time to wash my hair, so I quickly shot to the hairdresser’s.”
    I smiled into my tea, marvelling at the disparity of our lives. My son was in after-school club because I was desperately trying to earn a few pennies by flogging my pictures whilst Kate’s was there because she’d been indulging in a luxury I’d never experienced and probably never would. Not whilst I could stick my head under a shower for free.
    I gazed out of the sunny conservatory, a natural extension of her enormous vaulted kitchen beautifully furnished with free-standing oak cupboards and hand-painted Swedish linen presses, to the billowing garden beyond; well over half an acre and possibly the largest London garden I’d ever seen. When I’d first stood at these windows and gaped at the view, I’d been staggered. I couldn’t even see the bottom of it. An initial sweep of lawn complete with croquet hoops gave way to an apple orchard and longer grass, then beyond that, in the middle distance, something that looked remarkably like a bluebell wood. It was like being in Wiltshire, rather than West London, and I’d said as much.
    â€œAh, but you see, that’s where my heart is,” Kate had confided with a smile as she’d joined me that day at the window, arms folded. “In the depths of the country, preferably on a horse. But I have to make do with pretending I’m there in this rus in urbe extravaganza.”
    â€œI wouldn’t mind making do with this,” I’d gawped.
    â€œI know, neither would most people. I’m spoiled. But it’s a sad fact of life, my friend, that however much you have, you want more. Or something different, at least.”
    When I knew her better I realised she seriously minded about living in London. But Sebastian was a cardiovascular surgeon at the Wellington and needed to live within a certain radius of his hospital in case they needed him, so that was that. They’d tried owning a country cottage in Norfolk, but Sebastian found it almost impossible to get there on a Friday night and Kate hadn’t wanted to be there without him. “I’m rather like the Queen Mother in the Blitz,” she’d quipped. “If the King isn’t leaving neither am I, and if I’m not leaving, neither are the children.” So they’d sold the Norfolk cottage, and sold their Knightsbridge house too, moving from Montpelier Square to leafy Putney as a sort of compromise. And actually, once inside, you’d be forgiven for thinking you really were in a country house. Faded chintzes on the sofas, heavy oil paintings of dead ducks and partridges on the walls, and antique furniture on the polished wooden boards all contrived to preserve the illusion. There were even rabbits in a hutch in the garden and Kate was threatening a Shetland pony.
    â€œThere’s plenty of space,” she’d said excitedly, dragging me down to the orchard one