COMME IL FAUT
The fact of the matter is this - we were a happy family, a family who were much respected in the locality for, despite living on a blank street on the edge of North Sodmington, we were still able to maintain what my wife termed ‘a commeilfaut existence’. I’m still unsure as to whether it is ‘ commeilfaut’ of me to be writing this; is it right that you should be subjected to it? I don’t suppose I had any choice in the matter. That isn’t, of course, to say I was forced, more that I was rendered unable not to. I hadn’t been planning to write this. It just happened. Anyway, I would come home with the children every afternoon, and every afternoon I would find my devoted wife scrubbing away in order to achieve the doctor’s-surgery feel which she was obviously going for: she called it ‘hygiene’. This would happen every day - every day until the day when it did not, a day which I remember too vividly. Of course, it would be wrong of me to continue to write, because I wouldn’t want to cause any trouble. I am, ultimately, being selfish, but then a leopard doesn’t change its spots. When I returned on 5 th November 2003 at 16:03, put my Yale key in the lock, removed my Ralph Lauren duffle coat, placed it on the cherry newel post, took the children’s coats off and helped them with their shoes - how lovely their little feet were! How proper! - I noticed that my wife was on the phone. I don’t know what it was that troubled me about this; she was, after all, just using the phone. Perhaps it was the way in which she was using it: she never was one for elegance. More likely it was just me… As she would say, “it’s always just you.”
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