Dancing Over the Hill: The new feel good comedy from the author of The Kicking the Bucket List

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Cathy Hopkins 2017

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

Cathy Hopkins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008202095

Ebook Edition © December 2017 ISBN: 9780008202088

Version: 2017-12-01

Epigraph

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be.

Robert Browning (1812–89)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Acknowledgements

Matt’s A – Z of Activities for Retirement

It’s never too late!

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Cathy Hopkins

About the Publisher

Cait

Friday night (thirty years ago):

Our passion spent, we lay back on the grass, satiated, our limbs entwined, the sun shining down on our naked bodies. It was one of those times, I would remember and cherish forever.

After a few moments, we sat up and surveyed the valley below and fields stretching out in front of us.

Matt turned to look at me. ‘Forever,’ he said as he looked deeply into my eyes.

‘For—waaargh! Ants!’ I cried as I leapt up and began to brush the invaders off my legs.

‘And … Cait, get dressed! Fast. We have to leg it now!’ said Matt as he pointed to the bottom of the hill where two walkers could be seen advancing up the lane towards us.

‘No!’ I grabbed my dress from where it had been thrown over a fence and dived into it as Matt jumped up and began to scramble into his jeans. Stumbling and laughing, we ran off before the intruders spotted us and realized what we’d been up to.

*

Friday night (now):

‘Fancy an early night?’ I asked. I knew he’d get the subtext, we’d been married long enough not to have to spell it out; plus ‘have sex’ had been on my to-do list for weeks.

‘We could, or …’ Matt replied.

‘Or what?’

‘Glass of wine and a box set?’

‘What have you got?’

‘Latest series of Game of Thrones.’

‘No brainer. I’ll get the glasses, you open the bottle.’

1
A year later: Cait

 Items mislaid:1) Reading glasses.2) Book (it was by the bed).3) Bottle of Ginkgo biloba (it’s supposed to improve memory but I can’t remember where I put that either).4) Mobile phone.

 Chin hairs plucked: 4

‘Matt, Matt. Are you OK? Matt.’

No response. I’d just got home from work to find Matt, stretched out and snoring softly on the sofa in the sitting room. He’d taken off his suit jacket, tie and shoes and cast them onto the nearest chair. An empty bottle of red wine and glass were on the coffee table in front of him, together with an open dictionary. Something must have happened. Matt was never here on a weekday, he was in Bristol, working, usually back on the train which got in around 8.30 p.m. He wasn’t a big drinker, either.

Maybe I shouldn’t wake him, I thought. Should leave him to sleep it off. But … he’s never home in the day. What’s happened? I gave him a gentle shove, then a more persistent one, but he was dead to the world. I checked he was still breathing. He’d been snoring a moment ago – of course he was.

Reassured that Matt was still in the land of the living, I tiptoed out and into the kitchen to search for my mobile to see if it offered any clues. I’d forgotten to take it out with me, so didn’t know if he’d been trying to reach me. I found the phone in the fruit bowl and turned it on to see if there were any messages. There were four missed calls and one text. All from Matt. The text said: When r u back? Need 2 talk.

Two minutes later, the doorbell rang. I opened the door to my two closest friends, Lorna and Debs. They had said they’d drop in on their way back from a trip to the garden centre.

‘Spring flowers,’ said Debs, and handed me a bunch of white tulips.

‘Thanks, but shh, Matt’s home, asleep on the sofa,’ I said as I ushered them through the hall and into the kitchen diner, where I shut the door after them. They made an odd pair. Debs, a curvaceous bohemian, forty-seven years old, with a mop of dark hair piled on top of her head and kept in place with a chopstick, was wearing a kingfisher blue silk top, green harem trousers and a big emerald amulet fit for an Egyptian high priestess. Although British born and bred, with her olive skin and brown eyes she looked Spanish, a throwback to her Andalusian great-grandmother, she’d told us. Next to her, Lorna was small and slim, in her fifties, and was in jeans and a blue shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, her silver-white hair cut neatly to her shoulders. I was the oldest of the three of us, but often felt like the youngest, a twenty year old trapped in an old body. Matt called my friends the S and S, the silly and the sensible, Debs being the first, Lorna the latter; he said that each of them represented a different side of my nature. ‘There’s more to me than that,’ I’d told him. ‘I have many sides – I’m multifaceted, like a diamond.’ He’d laughed. Cheek.

‘Matt? What’s going on?’ asked Debs, and was about to go barging in to see him but I pulled her back.

‘I don’t know, but he’s clearly had a skinful. Best leave him for now.’

‘Not like him,’ said Lorna as she settled on a stool at the island.

‘Why don’t you wake him?’ asked Debs. ‘Find out?’

‘I thought I’d let him sleep whatever it is off first.’

‘Wise,’ said Lorna and stood up. ‘Should we go?’

‘I … maybe. In case … I don’t know, something’s clearly happened and, until I know what, I don’t … Probably best you’re not here to see him in whatever state he wakes up in.’

‘No clues at all?’ asked Debs.

‘No, apart from a dictionary on the table. He must have been working on something.’ He always had his nose in a book, researching something or other for his job as a TV programme developer.

Lorna handed me a pot; in it was a wild geranium, its white flowers tinged with the faintest pink blush. ‘It’s a Kashmir White. If you like it, we can get more,’ she said as she headed for the front door, where she pulled out a leaflet and handed it to me. ‘And this lists the gardening classes on locally. We could go together, but we can talk about that another time. Come on, Debs. Call us if you need.’

‘Call us anyway,’ said Debs.

‘I will,’ I said, and saw them back out. I was sorry to see them go. I’d been looking forward to an hour catching up with them with a bottle of rosé on the decking outside in the warm May sunshine, plus Lorna had promised to help me make a start on the long overdue task of designing the garden borders. ‘And thanks for the plant, Lorna. It’s lovely.’

Lorna stepped forward and hugged me. ‘Keep calm and carry on, as they say.’

‘Ditto,’ said Debs, and hugged me as well.

After they’d gone, I went back to the kitchen and put the kettle on. My mind had gone into overdrive. What’d happened? Need 2 talk? That wasn’t like Matt. Over the years, he’d become Mr Incommunicado. He never needed to talk, unless it was to discuss what to get from the farmers’ market for Sunday lunch, or to ensure I recorded some history or sci-fi programme for him while he was out.

I glanced at our wedding photo on the dresser. Thirty years ago. Matt, handsome in his wedding suit, was smiling at the camera, his brown hair worn longer back then. Although padded out around the middle now, with grey flecks through his hair, he looked younger than his sixty-three years. Beside him in the photo frame, I was two sizes smaller, my hair long and chestnut brown, worn straight and loose, and topped with a wreath of white gypsophila to complement a medieval-style ivory velvet dress. I’d wanted to look like one of the Pre-Raphaelite heroines; I was such a romantic back then. My bridesmaids, Angie and Eve, stood to my right. Both were in pale mint velvet: Eve, a waif with long Titian hair; Angie not much taller. She had short dark hair and looked uncomfortable in her dress, much preferring jeans and a T-shirt to anything remotely girlie. So much had changed, of course it had. My hair was now three shades of blonde and shoulder-length, and I was no longer a size ten. Angie had moved to New Zealand over twenty years ago and Eve was dead. I missed both of them sorely. And Matt and I … We looked so happy in the photograph: in love, full of hope for the future. It had been a great wedding, a sunny day in a picturesque church in Dorset, then sausage and mash at the local pub with close friends and family, followed by a honeymoon exploring the Cornish coast. We hadn’t had the money for exotic locations – not that we minded. We’d set off in Matt’s Golf convertible, top down all the way, stayed at B & B’s along the route, eaten chips on windy beaches, stuffed ourselves with cream teas in roadside cafés and relished every minute of it.

At what point had we given up on each other and settled for what we had now? A relationship where we muddled along, taking each other for granted and barely communicating beyond the mundane everyday necessities of what we were going to eat, who was picking up the dry cleaning or going to plant the spring bulbs. Was it after our two boys, Sam and Jed, had left home? Or later? A slow fading-away of passion, to the comfortable stagnancy of familiarity and death of desire. Although we’d been together a long time, ridden the rollercoaster of marriage with good and bad times, more recently we’d become like lodgers sharing the same house. We had two TVs (one in the living room, one in the bedroom), we had two bathrooms, two cars, and occasionally slept in separate beds because sometimes Matt snored like a bear with a blocked nose.

I glanced at the booklet Lorna had left me. Gardening classes – they would be good, but when would I fit them in? I found a piece of paper and pen and began to outline my week to see if I could find a space.

Monday

Day: Receptionist job at the local doctor’s (temporary). I am really a global, bestselling children’s author (undiscovered due to the fact I haven’t finished a book yet).

Evening: writing class (learning how to be global, bestselling author and how to get published).

Tuesday

Day: Writing. Yoga class.

Evening: Film club or book club (alternate weeks).

Wednesday

Day: Receptionist job again.

Evening: Choir.

Thursday

Day: Receptionist job.

Evening: Supper with friends Debs and Lorna or Zumba.

Friday

Day: Supermarket shop. Writing my bestselling children’s novel. (Hah, that’s a joke, I thought. So far I have several abandoned attempts in a drawer in the desk in my study, and have written Chapter One of a new book on my laptop. I mean the words, Chapter One, not the actual chapter one with sentences and the beginning of a plot line and all.)

Evening: Pilates then drink with the group.

Saturday

Household chores. Walk with walking group.

Sunday

Day: Visit Dad in Chippenham.

Evening: New Age therapy course with Debs (i.e., couple of hours of clearing chakras, waving crystals and acting like a pair of lunatics).

No space for gardening classes unless I let something go, I thought. Not wanting to disturb Matt, I began to outline his week too.

Monday–Friday: Work 8 a.m.–8.30 p.m.

Evenings: Home. Occasionally has a work-related dinner; otherwise home for supper and he watches the news, history channel, sci-fi or a war film.

Saturday

Day: Chores. Sometimes watches the rugby or football.

Evening: Sometimes pub with brother Duncan.

Sunday

Reads the papers, front to back. Catches up on emails and work. Dozes in front of the TV.

Hmm. I know what anyone reading this would conclude, I thought as I compared our weeks. Here is a couple who don’t spend a lot of time together. Exactly. We don’t. We co-exist. Not that we don’t spend some evenings with each other, of course we do. That’s when we watch box sets or whatever’s new on Netflix. We’d worked our way through The West Wing, The Wire, The Sopranos, Orange Is the New Black, Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men and many more. We were polite to each other, kind even, but we don’t talk much beyond everyday necessities, not any more, not to each other. Who needs to talk when there’s a new series of House of Cards to watch? Our arrangement had worked, but lately I’d been wondering: was it enough?

I’m having an existential crisis, I thought. My friends, Debs and Lorna would say: Not again, Cait. You had one of those last year, and the year before, but this is different because of a few major things that have happened.

My mum died a year ago.

My oldest and best friend, Eve, died eight months ago.

Lorna’s husband, Alistair, died last year, a few weeks before Eve.

My youngest son, Jed, moved to Thailand.

My eldest son, Sam, moved to LA with his wife and my grandchildren.

All of this has made me very sad and has reminded me that no one knows what’s round the next corner, so I’ve taken the ‘seize the day’ attitude. I’ve been trying to make the most of life by filling my days with things to do, people to see, places to go. If I keep busy, busy, busy, I don’t have to think about loss and I can get by. However, the recent events have made me question many aspects of my life and my relationship.

Is this it?

Should I accept that my marriage has gone stale and carry on as we are?

What could change things?

Do I want to change things?

How would I change things?

Should I get some Wonderbrow paste to dye my grey eyebrows?

As I said, all existential stuff.

With those happy thoughts, I made tea and wondered again what Matt had to tell me. I mentally made a list of possibilities.

 An affair?

 He was ill?

 Someone had died?

I liked a list. Some women of my age are ladies who lunch. I am a lady who lists. It’s just the way my brain works, it makes an inventory of everything; lists always make me feel calmer. Debs said that’s because my star sign is Virgo and they like things to be ordered and in the right place. She also said I had Aquarius rising, which was at odds with the Virgo part and accounted for my slightly eccentric and split personality and tendency to surprise people by doing or saying something out of the blue.

When I was younger, my lists looked like this:

 Look for God.

 Find a way to change the world for the better and bring about world peace.

 Find my soul mate.

 Live happily ever after.

Now the lists looked like this:

 Check blood pressure.

 Buy supplement for arthritis.

 Google best anti-wrinkle cream.

 Buy over-the-counter sleep remedies.

2
Cait

After half an hour, I fetched my laptop from the top floor and went into Facebook for my daily fix of animal rescue clips. There was one of a baby orang-utan playing with a monkey. Cute. Orang-utans are my favourite animal. Now … what else had people posted that was essential viewing and part of life’s rich tapestry? I’d just opened footage of a bunch of Yorkshire men singing ‘Mi chip pan’s on fire’, when I heard a groan from the sitting room. I was about to close the page when I noticed a new friend request from a Tom Lewis.

‘Cait, are you back?’ I heard Matt call.

Tom Lewis. The Tom Lewis? It couldn’t be, I thought, as I abandoned the laptop and went through to the sitting room. I used to know someone of that name, but it couldn’t be him, surely? I hadn’t heard from him in over forty years. He had been the love of my life many, many moons ago. No. Couldn’t be him. Probably some random request. I got a number of those from men, mainly in the military, I didn’t know. Everyone on Facebook did. Spam. Couldn’t be my Tom Lewis. Either way, I’d have a proper look later.

Matt opened his eyes, usually conker brown and focused, now red and blurry. ‘Ah, there you are.’ He smiled at me. On the rare occasions that Matt drank too much, he was a nice drunk – affectionate and sleepy, no trouble.

‘So what’s happened?’ I asked.

He looked over at the dictionary. ‘Was looking up words.’

‘Words?’

He reached over, picked up the book and read from a page. ‘Redundant – no longer needed or useful, superfluous. Retirement – to recede or disappear into seclusion. I am sorry, Caitlin.’

Ah. So that was it. ‘Seriously?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Seriously as in not funny.’

With that, he lay back, closed his eyes and nodded off again. I noticed that his left sock had a hole in it and his big toe was poking through. He was usually so perfectly turned out in his spotless shirts and well-cut suits for work, and this vulnerability endeared him to me.

I need a drink too, I thought.

I went back into the kitchen and found a bottle of Pinot Grigio in the fridge as the implications hit me. I opened the French doors and went to sit on the bench in the sunshine on the decking outside. I got out my mobile and called Lorna.

‘Matt’s been made redundant.’

‘Shit.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Will he get a pay-off?’

‘Maybe but it won’t be much. He was there as a freelancer though he’d been with the same company for a long time. He’s still out for the count so I don’t know the details yet.’

‘Is it definite?’

‘Think so. Hell, Lorna, how are we going to get by? We don’t have savings, or any cushion money, in fact.’

‘Don’t panic,’ said Lorna. ‘At least you have your job at the surgery.’

‘Only until Margaret Wilson is back from her maternity leave.’

‘What about your writing?’

I laughed. Despite time spent at my laptop, my ideas were sparse. ‘Nothing happening at the moment.’

‘You need to get an agent.’

‘I need to get a good idea first, and getting an agent is as difficult as getting a publisher.’

‘Something will come.’

‘Maybe. Hope so.’

‘In the meantime, at least you’re earning something.’

‘I guess.’ My job didn’t pay a lot. Matt and I had an agreement. I paid for the fun stuff. I earned enough to keep us in wine, the occasional meal out, and holidays once a year – and those to Devon or Cornwall, nowhere too expensive. Matt paid for the boring stuff – gas, mortgage, electric, phone, car, insurance. In short, he was the breadwinner.

‘He could always look for another job,’ said Lorna.

‘Maybe, but will he be able to get one at his age? It may be time to sell the house.’ It had always been on the cards that we might have to sell up one day, in order to release money for our non-existent pension pot because, like so many of my generation, we didn’t think we’d get old. ‘Matt didn’t just say redundant. He used the word retirement too.’

‘Big change for you both,’ said Lorna.

‘Wasn’t part of the plan just yet.’

‘Never is. Sometimes we chart the course of our lives internally with our choices, decisions and plans for the future, and think we’re in control. Sometimes change comes from unforeseen and unexpected external forces, and we realize that we’re not in control at all. Sounds like today is one of those days and you have no choice but to go with it.’

I got the feeling she was talking about Alistair’s short illness, as much as what had happened to Matt. Her husband had died last year of pancreatic cancer, eight weeks after he got the diagnosis. ‘So what should I do?’

‘Stay calm. Have a glass of wine. See how things unfold. Not all change is bad.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘Call if you need to.’

‘Will do.’

After she’d hung up, I began to think how this change might affect us. Losing his job meant Matt would probably be at home all day. How would that be?

We had our lives worked out perfectly to avoid each other, without actually admitting that was what we were doing. When he got in from work late in the evening, I gave him space and let him retreat into his cave (as advised in the book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus). If I wasn’t out at one of my classes, I’d have a brief chat when he got home, and then I usually went up to bed to read. He came up around twelve when I was asleep and, if I wasn’t, I pretended to be. He got up early and was gone by the time I rose in the morning, and so it went on until the weekend. I hardly knew what went on his head any more, nor he in mine, but this never troubled us because we were both so busy living our separate lives that we had never had to confront the fact we’d grown apart.

Will we need to sell the house if he can’t find other work? I asked myself. Probably. I liked our home. It was a five-bedroom semi-detached Edwardian in a quiet tree-lined street in Bath, with a south-facing, level garden at the back – hard to find because so much of the city is built on hills, so most gardens are sloped or terraced. We’d moved here over fifteen years ago after a weekend trip when we’d fallen in love with the area with its Georgian architecture, crescents and houses built with honey-coloured stone. We could walk into town in five minutes and be in the countryside in ten. I looked around at the wooden floors, which were scuffed and in need of sanding, and the magnolia walls, which I noted were overdue a lick of paint. I didn’t mind. It had a cosy, lived-in feel from when the boys were teenagers with a hundred interests and hobbies, hence shelves and cupboards in every room that were full of books, DVDs, games and sports equipment. I’d even found a snorkel and pair of flippers the other day, under the bed in Jed’s old room.

The house was too big for just the two of us now, but I loved having the extra space, even though the whole place needed a clear-out to really take advantage of it.

Although Jed had moved out when he went to university, he had still come back from time to time, and had only gone properly when he’d moved to Thailand over a year ago. I know other mothers who mourned when their kids finally left home, empty-nesters, and I did go through some of that when they disappeared. For a while the house seemed so empty and silent, but in time I found it liberating. I’d paid my dues; had the house full of noisy boys, sleepovers, cooking endless meals, laundry, ironing, never being able to get near the TV remote, shelling out money for all sorts, not being able to sleep until I knew they were home, safe and in their beds. Of course I missed them, but not their mess and the worry when they were out late. Now I had peace and quiet, two rooms to spare for storage, food in the fridge that didn’t get eaten within twenty-four hours of being bought, time for my friends, and beds down the corridor to go to if Matt was snoring. I went to my part-time job and worked on book ideas with no pressure. It hadn’t mattered that I wasn’t a high earner. Hadn’t mattered. It would now.

A text came through from Debs. Everything OK?

I texted back. Matt’s lost his job. Details l8r when I get them.

Debs texted back. Take Star of Bethlehem flower remedy for shock, both of you. Want me to send some over?

She had an alternative cure for all ills and, over the years, I’d been given all sorts of concoctions to apply or ingest, though I quite liked the flower remedies, probably because they came in brandy.

She texted again a moment later. We’ll sort it this evening.

Will have to take a rain check. Want to see how Matt is.

We had a supper night when we could all make it. It was our private counselling session. Debs had suggested it last year as an excuse to get together, and she’d made up rules. We took turns in choosing where to go. It had to be somewhere we hadn’t been before. We put our troubles on the table and offered each other support and advice. It had been a life-saver, an evening to laugh, cry, try out a new place and air any problems. I’m not sure I’ll be able to afford supper nights for a while, I thought as I decided to opt for Lorna’s advice, poured myself a second glass of wine and wrote a list of things to do.

 Check out local house values on Rightmove.

 Check out properties for sale in areas we could afford.

 Stop worrying. It’s only stuff.

Cue the mini princess from Frozen singing ‘Let It Go, Let It Go’ in my head. Cue visualization of smashing her in the face with a frying pan.