Jack had been a railway engineer before retiring. He liked measurements, correct procedures, and explanations that could be tested. May, who had worked as a primary-school teacher for nearly forty years, had a different relationship with uncertainty.
She could make decisions quickly, argue her position confidently, and adjust without much embarrassment when she was proved wrong.
Jack admired that.
He also found it exhausting.
Their marriage had not been especially romantic in the conventional sense.
Jack had never been one for extravagant declarations. He found Valentine’s Day commercially suspicious and preferred buying May flowers in June, when the garden was already full of them, and the gesture was therefore entirely unnecessary.
May had once told a friend that Jack was a good man who would rather repair a leaking tap than discuss his feelings.
The friend had asked whether this bothered her.
“Occasionally,” May replied. “But I do appreciate having a tap that works.”
They had argued about money, Jack’s long hours at work, Helen’s education, May’s tendency to volunteer for committees she later complained about, and the proper way to load a dishwasher.
There had been one particularly unhappy winter, many years earlier, when Jack’s work required him to spend weeks away from home,e and May felt she had become the sole adult responsible for their daughter.
He had returned one Friday evening expecting a warm welcome and found May sitting at the kitchen table with a list of household expenses.
She had not shouted.
That was what made the conversation difficult.
She had simply asked whether he knew which teacher Helen had, when her next dental appointment was scheduled, or why she had stopped attending swimming lessons.
Jack knew none of the answers.
He had spent the weekend furious with himself and resentful of the fact that May had been right.
They did not solve everything in those two days.
But he took a different job the following year.
He was home more often after that.
Neither of them ever described the decision as a sacrifice.
It had simply become part of the history of their marriage, another thing they knew about each other without having to mention it.
By the time they reached their seventies, they had settled into a routine that suited them.
Jack woke first, usually at six-thirty.
He made tea in the large brown teapot, warmed the cups with hot water because May disliked tea that cooled too quickly, and placed two digestive biscuits on a small plate.
May came downstairs at seven, though she insisted she had been awake for hours.
They drank their tea at the kitchen table.
Jack read the newspaper.
May commented on the weather, the neighbours, the state of the garden, or whichever politician had annoyed her the previous evening.
At eight, she fed the birds.
At half past eight, Jack walked to the corner shop for bread or milk, whether they needed either or not.
He claimed the walk was good for his knees.
May claimed he went because he enjoyed gossiping with the shopkeeper.
Both were correct.
They had lived together for so long that their affection was expressed largely through anticipation.
Jack knew May disliked being asked whether she wanted a second cup of tea because she considered the answer obvious. He filled her cup without asking.
May knew he became irritable when he was hungry, so she kept oat biscuits in a tin near the kettle and occasionally pushed one toward him during difficult conversations.
Neither habit seemed especially important.
They would become important later.
The missing scissors were followed by a forgotten appointment.
May had agreed to meet her friend Dorothy at a café in town on a Wednesday afternoon. They had been meeting once a fortnight for nearly twenty years, usually to drink tea, complain about the price of lunch, and discuss people they both knew.
At four o’clock, Dorothy telephoned.
“Is May all right?”
Jack looked toward the sitting room.
“As far as I know. Why?”
“She never came.”
He checked the calendar.
The appointment was written in May’s handwriting.
When he asked her about it, she looked genuinely surprised.
“That can’t be today.”
“It is.”
“No. Dorothy and I meet on Thursdays.”
“You’ve got Wednesday written here.”
May came into the kitchen and examined the calendar.
“Well, that’s wrong.”
“It’s your writing.”
“That doesn’t mean I wrote the correct day.”
Jack could see no useful response.
May called Dorothy and apologised, blaming the confusion on having too much to do.
She made another appointment for the following week.
Then she sat at the table looking at the calendar for some time.
Jack noticed, but he did not ask what she was thinking.
The following month, she left the kettle boiling dry.
It was an old electric kettle that normally switched itself off, but the mechanism had begun to fail. Jack smelled the hot plastic from the garden and came inside to find May standing at the sink washing a cup.
“Did you put the kettle on?”
She turned.
“Oh.”
He unplugged it.
“How long has it been on?”
“I don’t know.”
“It must have been a while.”
“I got distracted.”
He opened the kitchen window.
May watched him.
“You needn’t make such a fuss.”
“I’m not making a fuss.”
“You’ve got that expression.”
“What expression?”
“The one you make when you’re trying not to tell me I’ve done something stupid.”
Jack set the kettle on the worktop.
“May, I haven’t said anything.”
“You don’t have to.”
He looked at her.
Her cheeks were flushed.
