Forty Minutes Home

The car was where they fought. Not the house, never in front of the kids. The car, on the way home from other people's houses, forty minutes of motorway with the heating on and the radio off. "You didn't have to say it like that," Jess said, somewhere past the first junction. "Say what like what." "You know what." Ben did know what. At the table, after the second bottle, Karen had asked if they were still thinking about the extension and Jess had said probably next year and Ben had said, "If she ever lets me look at the quotes," and laughed, and the table had laughed, and Jess had not. "It was a joke." "It was a joke about me. To a table of people. About how I'm difficult." "That's not what I meant." "It's what they heard." He drove. The wipers were on intermittent and he watched them and counted, which he did when he was trying not to say the next thing. She looked out the side window at nothing. Here's what he didn't say. That he'd been carrying the quotes around in his bag for six weeks. That every time he tried to bring them up she was tired, or on a call, or it wasn't the moment, and that at some point being patient had curdled into something else, and it had come out at Karen's table as a joke because that was the only door it could find. Here's what she didn't say. That she knew about the quotes. That she'd seen the folder. That she hadn't looked because looking meant deciding, and deciding meant admitting that the extension was really about the fact that they didn't fit in the house any more, in some way that wasn't about square metres, and she wasn't ready to say that at a dinner table or in a car or anywhere. Junction 9. Junction 10. "I'm sorry," Ben said. "It was a cheap shot." "It was." "I've had the quotes in my bag for a month and a half." "I know." He glanced over. She was still looking out the window.

"I saw the folder," she said. "I just couldn't. I don't know why. I couldn't." "Okay." "Can we look at them tomorrow? Properly. At the table. When the kids are at Mum's." "Yeah." "And can you not make me the joke again?" "Yeah." The wipers went once. He reached over without looking and she took his hand without looking, and they drove like that for a while, badly, one-handed, until the turn-off, where he needed both hands and she let him have them back.