The Map of Us: The most uplifting and unmissable feel good romance of 2018!. Jules Preston

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       agreement

      Katherine thought that she might be able to sneak the top handle handbag into the house without her husband seeing. She was wrong. Clive was home early. His 5.15 had cancelled. Clive was a dentist who had scrupulously clean hands and very small eyes that were worryingly close together. He was a good man who enjoyed drilling holes in people’s faces. He was a contradiction.

      Katherine and Clive lived in a modern and minimalist house where visitors were welcome as long as they took their shoes off in the hall and washed their hands before touching anything. It was painted throughout in shades of white. It all looked the same white, but all the whites were actually infinitesimally different. It was a subtle effect. Some of the walls looked slightly dirtier than others, but you had to look really closely.

      Clive was sitting on the white stairs when Katherine walked through the white door and took her shoes off in the white hallway. There was really no way she could hide the patent leather handbag that was wrapped in tissue paper inside the carrier bag that had ‘Exclusive Handbags’ written on the side in big letters. Clive pinched the skin between his eyebrows. There wasn’t much to pinch. Katherine knew what it meant.

      ‘I thought we had an agreement,’ he said.

      ‘I know,’ she said.

      ‘You were doing so well,’ he said.

      ‘I know,’ she said.

      ‘Then why?’ he said.

      ‘Because it’s perfect.’

      Clive laughed. Not a cruel laugh or an amused laugh but a laugh that was full of inevitability and surrender.

      ‘No handbag is perfect,’ he said.

      ‘Don’t say that,’ she said, suddenly close to tears.

      ‘I love you,’ he said, softly.

      ‘I know,’ she said. Then she left him sitting on the stairs while she went to find a place on a glass shelf for her new handbag.