Season to Taste by Natalie Young Page B

how he would get down. He’d stand
     for a bit on his stick, she thought, let time pass on the sand by the oak tree. She would have helped him to get back down—on
     another day—or offered to walk with him, but she thought of the thigh and closed her eyes and walked on.
    â€œI’ve got nothing left,” he shouted after her. Lizzie heard him, and felt a trembling in her legs. She broke into a run and
     kept going. She wouldn’t come up here again. That was the way to manage the encounter. She could leave him up here, and she
     wouldn’t come this way again.

    70.  Having ventured out, open the front door to the house carefully. It will seem strange coming back in. It might seem a bit
     like a lair. You will long for something else, something cleaner, shinier, and a lot more anonymous. Like a hotel room, for
     example. Flat, crisp sheets. Scented puffy pillows. For the moment, this is where you live and work.
    71.  Place the keys in the small chipped bowl beside the front door, and collect any post from the mat. Remember, life will still
     be going on as normal out there. The post will still come to the house, and the postman will arrive in his red van at eleven
     in the morning, Monday to Saturday, still leave the engine running while he trots to the front door. The bills will come.
     They’ll have to be paid. Everything can be done online.
    72.  Plant feet in slippers. Kick draft excluder into place.
    73.  Once in, look around. Is the house warm? Does it contain you for the moment? Are there not logs you can use to make a fire?
     Make a fire now. Put the kettle on. Try to keep doing these things. You need your body to help you through this. Keep it warm,
     fed, contained, soothed. It needs to eat, digest, and get you through this. Don’t let it let you down.
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    Inside, there were soaps in the cupboard under the stairs. Value packs, multiple Doves piled on the shelf. With the Hoover
     that hadn’t broken yet. And the old ice-cream carton of clothes pegs that she’d spilled across the kitchen table to choose
     one for her nose. And the spare scrubbing brush. Once a year it was changed. Silly objects she’d picked up on her shopping
     trips, to try to furnish and feather things; and the cooking utensils and the food was hers. And the small ceramic geese on
     the sill that she’d hand-painted. Things were cleaned but they always got dusty again with the dirt that came in from the
     woods as he walked in and out from the driveway and from the car. In the beginning, it was him who’d brought in all the dirt.
     He’d never been careful with the doors, never seen her efforts to wash the floor. Then she’d mentioned it to him and he had
     tried very hard to wipe his shoes and keep the floors clean. He’d taken it on as his job and done it very well. Which had
     made him a good man—a kind man—and good enough to marry at the Guildford registry office. He’d said they would probably have
     kids in time. Tim Smith had come. Lizzie’s mother had come up from Hove. Jacob had given her a sculpture of his hand as a
     wedding present. Then they’d gone to the Italian restaurant in Guildford. That had been wonderful. A really special day.
    No one would have thought, back then, that they’d end up in business together. She thought of the red lipstick and the red
     jumper and white skirt she’d been wearing on the wedding day. A white pencil skirt to the knee. It had been fabulous. Holding
     up a glass of champagne. With a little white beret and a rose pinned to the side of her head.
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    Twenty-five years later she’d tried to leave him. The summer before that he’d tried to leave her. He’d got as far as the Dog
     and Duck where he’d had some supper and taken a room for the night.
    She’d got as far as the Cornstack Inn at Elstead. It had been a warm August evening and she’d driven with the