CATERINA AND THE WAVES (3)

Brian had gone of course, leaving the usual chaotic remains of a hasty breakfast in his wake. He’d also left the TV on in the kitchen, and so she was ironically now face to face with one of those wretched girls, flapping her arms around provocatively in front of the changing cloudscape and warning triangles.

Caterina stuck her tongue out at her and grabbed the remote control from where Brian had left it and blasted her into darkness. A small victory, she knew, but one that brought a momentary smile of satisfaction to her lips.

She looked around. Brian’s presence, even though it was usually just at the weekends, tended to leave more than its fair share of devastation in their home. She would patiently spend much of her lonely week returning all of it to something resembling order, only for his return to cause everything to cascade into this kind of madness again.

She tended to blame his mother. Brian had been the light of her life and he had never been able to do anything wrong as far as she had been concerned. For years she’d cleared up after him, cooked all his meals and washed all his clothes and, after he’d married Caterina, he’d been rather surprised to find that she was less than enthused at the prospect of doing the same for him. She often asked herself why she hadn’t noticed this aspect of his personality before she’d married him, but she supposed that as they say, “love is blind” and that perhaps Brian’s mother had been very good at hiding such annoyances as he might have from her. Maybe she’d realised that nobody else was likely to be stupid enough to take him off her hands and if she was ever going to be rid of the little parasite, her best bet was to show him in the brightest of lights to his fiancée at least.

She did wonder whether it had been Brian’s shortcomings and general lack of charm that had caused all of her friends to slowly fade out of her life over the last few years. Maybe they’d all seen him for what he was long before she did but felt that they couldn’t, or shouldn’t interfere. Or maybe they’d just all disliked his beer-soaked attentions and flirtations that used to always seem to surface whenever they’d gone to a restaurant with anyone else. Anyone under the age of thirty and who had breasts was fair game, it seemed, whether it was just a waitress, a receptionist or sometimes even the cab driver on their way there. She’d tried to tell him how upset this used to make her feel, but he’d always dismiss it as “just a bit of a laugh” an excuse, she always felt, for some of the worst humiliations in history.

He’d improved a little once they’d moved here of course. It had only been fifteen miles or so from where they’d both grown up, but as far as her friends were concerned, she might as well have moved to the moon. One or two of them had made the journey over shortly after they’d moved in, mostly just to have a look at the house she presumed now when she looked back, but they’d soon stopped coming. There was a nice enough little pub in the village that did decent meals, and a café just up the hill that had pretensions to gastronomic excellence when it transformed into a bistro during the evenings, so if they ever went out these days, that’s where they tended to go. As they knew pretty much everyone who went in there, and it was a pretty small village, even Brian wasn’t stupid enough to try anything on with the people there.

Of course now, when she thought about it properly, Brian’s life during the week was something that she really should have her suspicions about. Maybe her cosy little life in her lovely little cottage wasn’t really all that secure after all. Not that she really knew what she could do about it, apart from agreeing to the move, of course. She occasionally had considered getting on a train and making a surprise visit to Brian one week, and bringing things to a head, but she wasn’t completely sure that, deep down, she really wanted to know what he was up to. She also knew it would only annoy him if she did do it, and cause another row, even if she dressed it up as some kind of romantic gesture they’d both have seen through that lie very quickly.

Brian’s mum was still alive of course, and still making a nuisance of herself whilst living back in town. Once a week Caterina was expected to take that endless bus ride and do her shopping for her. That was what she’d been doing when she’d met Sara that day of course, and probably why she’d felt so pleased about it after another endless afternoon of criticism and being told how hard Brian was working and what a shame it was she didn’t have any grandchildren yet.

She started to clear away Brian’s breakfast dishes and the image of the starfish popped into her head again, only this time it was Brian and his mother tearing at her instead of the gulls.