Case Histories

And way back then, when all Michelle had to worry about was whether she could get an essay in on time or whether she had a decent pair of tights, back in that other time when she was young, she had thought that a country cottage was also romantic, and when she'd first seen the cottage she thought it was the quaintest, prettiest thing ever because it was so small and so old, more than two hundred years old, built of brick with patterns of flint bedded around the lintels and sills and it had once been – yes – the forester's cottage, and the estate had given it to them to live in when they got married. It was a "tied" cottage and Michelle thought that was funny (but not in a way that made her laugh) because it wasn't the cottage that was tied – it was Michelle.

She'd had a glimpse of a possible future – the pretty cottage, the garden full of flowers and vegetables, bread in the oven, a bowl of strawberries on the table, the happy baby hitched on her hip while she threw corn to the chickens. It would be like a Hardy novel, before it all goes wrong.

When she married, already six months' pregnant, she left school and quit her out-of-school-hours job in a cafe, and Keith said, "It's okay. After the baby comes you can still go to college and everything," although they both knew it would no longer be a good university but some crappy polytechnic in some crappy town (probably Cambridge, God help her), where she would end up doing an HND in business studies or hotel management, but nonetheless Michelle thought, "Yes, I will do that, of course I will," but in the meantime if she was going to be a wife and mother she was going to do it properly, which is why she spent all her days cleaning and scrubbing and baking and cooking, and assiduously reading housekeeping books, continually amazed at just how many skills and crafts could go into making "a lovely home" – the patchwork quilts you could sew, the curtains you could ruffle, the cucumbers you could pickle, the rhubarb you could make into jam, the icing-sugar decorations you could create for your Christmas cake – which you were supposed to make in September at the latest (for heaven's sake) – and at the same time remember to plant your indoor bulbs so they would also be ready for "the festive season," and it just went on and on, every month a list of tasks that would have defeated Hercules and that was without the everyday preparation of meals, which was doubly difficult now that the baby was weaned.

When her mother saw her pureeing cooked carrot and baking egg custards for the baby, she said, "For Christ's sake, Michelle, just give her a jar of Heinz baby food," but if she bought her jars of food she would eat them out of house and home, she was so greedy, fattening herself up like a pupa. She was always hungry, you could never give her enough. And anyway jars were cheating, you had to do things properly, although even Shirley, who was usually on her side, said, "Michelle, you don't have to put so much effort into everything." But she did because she was driven by something, only she didn't know what it was but she was sure that if one day she could get everything finished then she'd be free of whatever it was that was driving her. "You'll never get everything perfect, Michelle," Shirley said. "That's impossible." But it wasn't. Given enough time you could make anything perfect.

The thought they should get some chickens of their own and perhaps a goat to milk, because maybe something was missing – maybe it would just take one fat white wyandotte to make the idyll possible. Or a Sicilian buttercup. Really, chickens had the prettiest names – the Brahma and the marsh daisy and the faverolles. She had a book from the library. She'd stolen the book because she hardly ever got the chance to get into town to go to the library. She didn't believe in stealing, but she didn't believe in being ignorant like a peasant, either. Or perhaps a goat – a LaMancha or a Bionda dell'Adamello. The goat book was stolen too. Country life had turned her into a common thief. Goats had ridiculous names – the West African dwarf and the Tennessee fainting goat. Or perhaps it would take a perfect strawberry patch, a wigwam of runner beans or a row of marrows and then, suddenly, like finding a magic key, it would all work. She hadn't mentioned the marsh daisy or the West African dwarf to Keith, because although he was country born and bred, he'd rather go to a supermarket any day than raise livestock. And anyway, he wasn't really speaking to her because every time he reached for her in bed she pushed him away and rolled over with her cold back to him and thought, "So this is what it's like to fall out of love with someone."