Читать книгу Good Husband Material - Trisha Ashley - Страница 16

James seems to be making more of an effort to come home earlier, or at least tell me when he is going to be late, so I’m rewarding him with boring old meat and two veg meals with apple crumble and custard to follow, the kind of thing he really likes. I can see I will have to introduce Healthy Eating more gradually.

He’s taken me down to the pub a couple of times, too, for Dogfish Tail in a Basket. (Scampi, according to the menu – isn’t that illegal?)

But he still needs kick-starting before he helps me do anything to the house, and I began to feel like a prize nag before I got him to agree to spend all of the long Easter weekend sorting out the front garden, but it had to be done.

In a moment of inspiration I hired a mini skip and had it delivered to the front of the house, where it proved a magnet for the whole village.

Although we never saw anyone, for they moved under cover of darkness, strange rubbish appeared in the skip every morning – though, to be fair, all sorts of things disappeared as well, from lengths of rotting timber to clapped-out wellies.

We hacked down the privet to a reasonable, though still private (privetcy?) height, and cleared the front garden for returfing.

It was back-breaking work, and I have blistered hands, but the difference already is amazing!

James spent hours afterwards soaking himself in the bath, because he said he would be permanently fixed into a Hunchback of Notre-Dame posture otherwise. He used all my expensive pine bath oil and all the hot water, leaving me to wait nearly an hour for it to heat up again. I tried pointing this out through the bathroom door, but he had the radio on in there full blast and pretended not to hear me, the selfish pig.

Although I’m glad the garden is taking shape, James turned something that should have been hard work but fun into a kind of penance I forced on him, and even when I assured him that all that would be needed when it was finished was a little lawn-mowing and some hedge-trimming, he didn’t seem much cheered, so I haven’t dared to mention the back garden.

While he was still marinating there was another of the silent phone calls, too – the first for quite a while. It never seems to be James who answers them.

On the Tuesday morning James was still hobbling about groaning, and said work would be a nice rest after all that digging, but I felt quite invigorated by the fresh air and exercise.