Chapter 6 6. Maureen and the Lies

At first Maureen was sure that Harold would come back.He would call back, cold and tired, and she would have to drive to pick him up.It must have been Harold's fault at night when she was putting a coat over her pajamas and digging out her driving shoes.So she kept the light on, half asleep, with the phone next to the bed.But he neither called nor came home. Maureen tried to remember how it all happened.The breakfast, the pink envelope, the silence of Harold, and the soft sobbing in the silence.The details hidden deep in the memory emerged one by one: how he carefully folded the reply letter in half before putting it in the envelope, without giving her a chance to peek at the contents of the letter.As much as she tried to think of something else, or nothing at all, she couldn't shake the image of Harold staring blankly at the letter, as if something was disintegrating deep inside him.She wanted to confide in David, but didn't know how to open it.Harold's decision was too incomprehensible, and she felt ashamed, and she was afraid that if she talked to David, she would start to miss him, and the pain was too much to bear.Harold said he was going to walk to Berwickshire.Does that mean he won't come back when he gets there?

Well, go if you want.She should have expected it.Like mother like son.Although she had never met Joan, and Harold had never mentioned her, what woman would pack her bags and leave without saying a word?OK, let's go.Sometimes she wants to end it all herself.It was David who kept her going, not the love of husband and wife.She couldn't remember the details of their meeting, what she saw in him, only that he seemed to see her at a dance, and how her mother felt when she first saw Harold. He is very ordinary. "Your father and I thought it was someone." Her mother uttered the words in her own way, and Harold had to listen very hard to understand, his whole face puckered up with tension.

At that time, Maureen didn't listen to others very much.So what if you don't have an education, what if you don't have a style, what does it matter if you can only afford to rent a basement when you work from morning to night and work several jobs?As long as she saw him, her heart fluttered lightly.She would be the love he never had, a wife, a mother, a friend.She will be everything to him.Looking back sometimes, she wonders where that young girl who wasn't afraid to take risks went.Maureen went through his letters, and there was nothing to explain why he had to walk to Queenie.No letter, no telegram, no trace.In the drawer of his bedside table were only a picture of her, taken when they were first married, and a black and white picture of David, crumpled, which he must have secretly hidden, because she remembered very well that she had taken it with her own hands. The photos are posted in the album.The silence in the house reminded her of the months David had just left, and it seemed that even the house was holding its breath.She turned on the TV in the living room and the radio in the kitchen, but the room was still too quiet.

Had he waited twenty years for Queenie?Had Queenie Hennessy also waited for him that long? Tomorrow is garbage collection day.It was Harold's job to take out the trash.She went online and ordered several brochures from summer yacht charters. As evening approached, Maureen realized she had to take out the trash herself.She dragged the garbage bag outside the house and flung it at the garden gate, as if this duty, which Harold had forgotten, was also responsible for his absence.Rex must have seen her from the upstairs window, and when she came back Rex was by the fence. "Is everything okay, Maureen?" She replied briskly, "Of course. Of course." "Why isn't Harold taking out the trash tonight?"

Maureen glanced up at the bedroom window.The hollow hit her hard, as if there was a sudden pain tearing at the muscles of her face and tightening her throat. "He's on the bed." She tried to force a smile. "On the bed?" Rex's expression sank, "What's the matter? Is he sick?" This man was too easy to worry.Years ago Elizabeth had revealed to her while hanging the laundry that Rex's mother made a fuss and turned him, too, into the most wretched wretch.She replied: "It's nothing, I just slipped and twisted my foot." Rex's eyes were as big as beads: "Did you drop it while walking yesterday?"

"Just a loose brick in the road. He's all right, Rex, just get some rest." "Scary, Maureen. Loose stone bricks? God, God." He shook his head mournfully.The phone in the house rang suddenly, and Maureen's heart beat into her throat.It's Harold, and he's coming back.Rex was still standing by the fence when she ran to the house and said, "You should complain to the local council about this." "Don't worry," she called back, "I will." Her heart was beating so fast she didn't know whether she was going to cry or laugh.She rushed to the phone and grabbed it, but the answering machine was already activated and he hung up.She called back 1471, but she couldn't find the call just now.Maureen sat and looked at the phone, waiting for him to call back, or to go home, but neither happened.

That night was the hardest, and she didn't know anyone who could fall asleep under the circumstances.She removed the batteries from the bedside alarm clock, but there was nothing she could do about the dogs barking outside the window, the cars passing by at three o'clock in the morning, the seagulls screaming just as the sun rose.She lay still, waiting for drowsiness to strike. Sometimes her consciousness gradually became blurred, and she suddenly woke up and remembered everything: Harold was walking to find Queenie.Thinking about it while insomnia is more painful than hearing the news on the phone.This kind of thing is like this, she knows that you will continue to struggle, unbelievable, and you will be knocked down by reality again and again, until you finally accept the facts and the dust settles.She opened Harold's nightstand again and gazed at the two photographs he had hidden away.David, wearing his first pair of tiny shoes, stood on one foot holding her hand, trying to keep his balance, and raised the other foot high, as if examining his own feet.Another photo was of her, smiling so broadly, her dark hair falling over her face.She is holding a courgette the size of a small child, which must have been photographed when she first moved to Kingsbridge.When the three large envelopes from the yacht company arrived, Maureen threw them directly into the trash can.