RUTH stood at the kitchen sink, her hand hanging without aim in the washing up bowl. She knew she should be doing the washing up, clattering about a bit least so James would think she was actually doing something. But Ruth just stood at the kitchen sink, her hands dangling in the plates and cutlery soaking in the water in the bowl beneath her fingers, her thoughts elsewhere. The thick suds made by the washing up liquid were popping and tickling her wrists as the bubbles burst. She watched them slowly disappearing. Just like my life she thought.

She could Imagine James sitting in his favorite black leather reclining armchair in the living room. He’d be engrossed in the catalogue that came by post this morning. It was full of yachts and sailing boats for sale. He’d be weighing up the pros and cons of each vessel. He’d be planning making notes, and planning some more. He was a great planner. She was fed up with his eternal planning.

And another thing, she hated that chair. It was so old the fabric of the artificial leather had grown hard and stiff, leaving the chair misshapen and odd-looking. The stuffing was starting to protrude out of the cracks and split seams too. Wherever they had lived that damn chair had away been the last thing James had packed and the first thing he had unpacked at their destination. Once proud and shiny, it was now battered and looked like junk. But James still hung on to it as though it were the crown Jewels. Quite simply it made the living room look cheap and tatty, and any semblance of taste she had tried to bestow on the room was lost by the presence of that awful chair. She couldn’t remember how often she had asked James to get rid or it or at least buy a new one. They’d even quarreled about it. But James didn’t want a new one, just as it was, saying it had taken this long to get it feeling just right. And nothing would make him part with it. Thinking that quarrel, Ruth wondered why there wasn’t a petulant ‘so there!’ on the end of that sentence.

That attitude she suddenly realized had shaped their lives right from the start. Oh, she wasn’t without fault in the matter. Back then whatever James decided was all right by her. She had so wanted to please him that anything he wanted to do had instantly become what she wanted to do, too. By the time she had wanted to do something different to what James was planning for both of them, it was too late.

James was the man of her dreams, she remembered. She had admired passion for his work and his burning ambition to better himself. There had been the traits that Ruth had found so endearing and exciting to him. She had fallen in love quickly. Together they would sit for hours in his old car parked at the top of the hill, looking down on the twinkling lights of the town. They would lean back in their seats, hold hands while looking through the windscreen at the stars, and tell each other of their hopes and desires for their futures.