Junction X

seemed safe enough.
“There’s a removal van pulled up outside next door,” I told her with a practised forced cheerfulness. My stomach gave another brief twinge, as if something inside was as sick of these frosty mornings as I was. “Looks like someone is moving in at last.”
Valerie didn’t look up from her Telegraph, but she made a non-committal sound. I amused myself by putting more butter on my toast than she would have approved of, had she been paying attention. Not that she had been doing a lot of that, recently. As I sat there chewing, I found that I couldn’t remember the last time she had.
I wondered, as I piled thick-cut marmalade on top of the sinful butter, what the new neighbours would be like at number seventy-eight. Phil and Claire, who had owned the house previously, had been good friends to us, and I missed them. It would be good to have a new family in the road. I hoped that it would be another couple, with the man of the pair liking the same things I did: golf, squash and cricket.
I’d commuted with Phil for four years, since we had first moved to The Avenue. Commuted with him, played tennis with him, shared holidays with him. He and Claire had been our best friends for so long it had been a shock when they told us that they were moving. They had slotted into the social life of The Avenue so easily, but then Phil was like that, fitting effortlessly into whatever life he found himself.
After Phil’s promotion, they’d moved to a bigger house on the seafront. The house next door had been empty since they’d left. This had surprised most residents of The Avenue, as usually any house up for sale on this street was snapped up, with new owners moving in straight away. However, since Phil and Claire had moved out, the house had remained empty. Soon, the gardener had stopped coming, the lawn had sprouted to knee high and the roses had grown suckers—much to the disapproval of local residents. The neglected garden was a constant reminder of how much of a hole Phil’s absence had left in my life.
I hadn’t seen Phil since his promotion, although allegedly he was still my best friend. Promotion meant that he had to get an earlier train up to town. Once or twice I had considered catching it, just to see him, but pride had kept me away. He was the one, after all, who had said that nothing would change between us (or between the four of us), but still he’d only managed to ring a couple of times and, despite promising, had not invited us round to the new house. Another thing he had promised was that the first game at The Sands Golf Club, (which had been a deciding factor for buying a house nearer the sea), would be ours—his and mine. He had given me assurances in that airy casual manner that drew all towards him: “As soon as my membership is confirmed, Ed—I swear. We’ll set the place alight! The old stick-in-the-muds won’t know what’s hit them when they see your drive!”
I missed him. I was sure that with a new job and a new house, there were a lot of things to organise, but still—I couldn’t help being hurt and not a little bitter. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Despite our four-year friendship, despite the holidays together, the tennis matches, the golf tournaments, Phil stretched himself too thin, and he was never able to meet all his commitments. His popularity and complete inability to turn anyone down meant that I saw less of him than I liked; the few times he had rung, he’d been ringing to cancel an engagement made in the previous phone call.
However, that morning was just like a thousand others. Valerie wasn’t speaking and I had to get to work, so I finished my coffee and made for the door. Immediately, Valerie rose to accompany me as if she were the most attentive wife on the planet. With hypocritical implacability, she did what she did every single morning I left for work; she followed me to the door, handed me my overcoat and umbrella, watched me put on my bowler hat and kissed me on the cheek, her lips cool against my newly shaved face. The only indications she ever gave that she was not the model of wifely devotion were the glazed fixed stare and a certain hardness of expression.
That morning—I don’t know why, exactly, maybe the annoyance I felt at still being snubbed by Phil—I tried the smallest of revolutions; I decided not to kiss her back. I was less than half-way to the Junction before I regretted that decision. I knew she would make me pay for that rebellion when I got home.
As I joined the growing throng of commuters on the platform that morning, I tried to put Valerie’s petulance out of my mind, but I knew it was hopeless. I knew that it would surface in increments throughout the day, niggling at me with guilt because one didn’t treat one’s wife that way. I knew how it would end—the only way around it would be to sacrifice squash and to buy her a present on my precious lunch break, and then try and make it up tonight. I just wished I knew what it was I’d done wrong.
I was deep in such gloomy thoughts on the platform when a hand poked me in the back and I turned around sharply to find Phil behind me. “You old bastard,” I said with a grin. “What’s this, slumming?”
Phil looked disgustingly tanned; the wisps of brown hair showing under his bowler were tinged with gold, denoting much time in the open air. The open air of The Sands Golf Course, if I was any judge.
“Eddie!” he said. “I got Claire to drive me down instead of taking the earlier train.”
“Won’t that make you late? Doesn’t