1995

 

It’s Thursday night! Country Life day! I’ve found us the perfect place, James, I can feel us there already. Just wait ‘til we move in – 

Really? Fantastic! I’ll get the wine… come here and wrap yourself around me first. God, you’ve got great breasts, come here – 

James! Hang on! Waitwait! Stop! You’ll wake the baby! Can I just show you this house? It’s glorious! – 

Go on then. I’ll get the wine, you get the glasses… And Charley        have I told you today that I love you?

 

Thursday’s were special. She gorged on the glossy contents of Country Life’s houses for sale in their search for a weekend place outside the city. A regular fix for her nesting hormones, she imagined the perfect family life through its pages. Arranging her things around these coiffed interiors took hours as she moved from room to room: the spacious living-dining-kitchens with terracotta flooring, Le Creuset pots hanging above the central walnut-topped island, French doors reaching out to decking, expansive lawns and manicured borders; sitting rooms with inglenooks and a baby grand in the bay window, an over-sized antique rocking horse; the master with dressing rooms and Jack and Jill’s; a pastel-coloured nursery with soft lighting and a nursing chair.

 

Precious weekends involved visiting the chosen few together, making the regular journeys, dreaming, laughing, in the car, to the countryside: country houses in villages with a pub, a local shop, a church and a view. Getting lost following the AA’s Giant, Largescale Road Atlas of Britain, the road falling off the page as baby screamed in the back. Rail tracks, major roads, flightpaths, or the prospect of major reroofing would crush her imagined life until Thursday came round again. Large white envelopes with thick, slick, shiny brochures flopped into the hallway. She held the keys in her mind to all these houses and the life they could offer. They were all hers – theirs. Often for just a week.