As he watched the contours of the golf course disintegrating into the dusk, Barry wondered why he kept up his membership. The cool evening air was pleasant on his face. Barry parked the people carrier outside the club restaurant, the Birdie, and stood for a moment beside the car, while Mary reapplied her lipstick. The golf club lay a mere four minutes away from the Square, a little beyond the point where the town petered out in a final wheeze of old cottages. Garrulous and engaging in person, he found it difficult to carry his personality onto paper. They drove down Church Row, the steeply sloping street where the most expensive houses stood in all their Victorian extravagance and solidity, around the corner by the mock-Gothic church, where he had once watched his twin girls perform Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and across the Square, where they had a clear view of the dark skeleton of the ruined abbey that dominated the town's skyline, set high on a hill, melding with the violet sky.Īll Barry could think of as he twiddled the steering wheel, navigating the familiar turns, were the mistakes he was sure he had made, rushing to finish the article he had just emailed to the Yarvil and District Gazette.

They were watching television when he said good-bye to them for the last time, and only Declan, the youngest, turned to look at him, and raised his hand in farewell.īarry's headache continued to thump behind his ear as he reversed out of the drive and set off through the pretty little town of Pagford, where they had lived as long as they had been married. They simply had very different notions of what ought to take up most space in life.īarry and Mary's four children were past the age of needing a babysitter. He tried to give his wife pleasure in little ways, because he had come to realize, after nearly two decades together, how often he disappointed her in the big things. Mary had softened and smiled, so Barry had telephoned the golf club, because it was nearby and they were sure of getting a table. 'Nineteen years, kids! Nineteen years, and your mother's never looked lovelier.' 'Mary, I want to take you out to dinner,' he had lied, to break the frost.

It did not help that he had been writing about Krystal, whom Mary disliked, although she pretended otherwise. However, his wife had been a little stiff and uncommunicative over lunch, and Barry deduced that his anniversary card had not mitigated the crime of shutting himself away in the study all morning. He had endured a thumping headache for most of the weekend and was struggling to make a deadline for the local newspaper. Barry Fairbrother did not want to go out to dinner.

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