Saturday Afternoon

Pete lowers his paper and quietens one of his trumpet-playing jazz legends. We exchange a smile and I make sure to give him a kiss, albeit a slightly self-conscious one, because Valeria has reminded us that mutual acknowledgement is important and these small acts of appreciation will help re-establish intimacy. If we're going to keep paying her sixty quid an hour for her advice, I for one am going to take it.

'How was the class?'

'Fine.' My mind brushes against the girl from the pool, then withdraws.

'Have you trimmed your beard?'

He passes a hand around his jaw. 'No harm in looking presentable.'

'None at all.' Something else is different. The Hoover's been out because our worn carpet is without fluff ball or paperclip. 'Spring cleaning?' The pile of newspapers usually stacked beside the bookshelves has disappeared; the broken dining-room chair propped against the wall for a fortnight has gone, and there's no hint of the usual low-level clutter. 'Looks great.' Pete's obviously trying too.

Assembling a cheese sandwich, I notice the fridge is whiter and all the kitchen surfaces have been recently wiped down. It smells lemony.

'Where's Dom?' I ask, eating the sandwich standing up.

'Working on his tan.'

That's a joke. If he's not plugged into Goth Friendly, his social networking site, the details of which he keeps a deliberate mystery, he'll be locked in a garage with his band mates rehearsing for greatness.

'There's a Hitchcock on soon,' Pete says. But I tell him I should get the seed potatoes in, then crack on with the leaflets.

'What leaflets?' His eyes leave the sports section.

'For Heston Fields.'

'Why are you doing them?'

'Someone's got to.'

He asks how much else I'm taking on, and I tell him we're just working out a few ideas then stop because there's a definite wrinkle in his brow, the wrinkle that leads to a frown and then on to the open highways of disagreement.

'You're running another campaign?'

We've had the Heston Fields discussion. Or row, as it turned out, and as far as Pete's concerned, if the council wants to sell a chunk of neglected land so a developer can build luxury flats there's no point losing any sleep. He calls it scrubland, or backlands, but the truth is, it's public land. All right, it's a bit tussocky, but kids play football there and people cross it to reach the parade that qualifies as Heston's high street. We used to play crickeet there with the kids. But I know there's no point reminding him of this because Heston Fields has become what Valeria would call a trigger point. Unwilling to provoke an incident, I stuff my mouth with a final sandwich crust.

When Pete appears at the garden door to say the film's starting, I'm on my knees making divots in the soil. He seems unusually agitated.

'What's got into you?' I ask, shading my eyes. That's meant to sound teasing but it comes out as stroppy. Valeria's right, communication isn't easy: words have so many ways of defying your intentions.

'Nothing.' He pauses to assess me. 'What have you got on?'

My shorts are in the wash, so I'm wearing an old pair of his, khaki and belted at the waist. 'They're only for the gardening.' My tone goes wrong again. He retreats. Should I call after him? But what will that achieve? We'll end up having an involved conversation about shorts which could easily escalate, just as other ordinary conversations have done, until we're not discussing shorts at all, we're arguing about why he doesn't want to help me save the local library and I don't want to watch him referee rugby.

The April breeze is warm and fresh and the hum of a lawnmower floats over from a neighbouring garden while I kneel, cutting seed potatoes into sections, spacing them in a row. All long relationships suffer strain, it's only natural, every couple has their own argument playing out in different forms, the subjects they return to again and again, pressed like bruises that never fade. I sit back on my haunches. We never thought we'd end up seeing a therapist. In fact we probably wouldn't have if Pete's sister hadn't discreetly suggested it to him after a lunch visit. Of course we didn't row in front of her, but we gave ourselves away all the same. Lack of eye contact? Flinching when the other spoke? Plates clattered too loudly in the kitchen? Who knows. But because neither of us wanted to quash the idea, because we agreed the sessions were only a precautionary measure, we found ourselves in Valeria's tranquilly decorated living room with its South Asian tapestries and life-affirming pot plants.

I make another divot and turn my thoughts elsewhere, wondering what Pippa's up to at university on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Would it bother her if I called later? Perhaps a text? But it's impossible to say anything in a text – all those paraphrased thoughts, at every sign off the hopeful: 'be nice to spk sn, love mum xx.'

After a few minutes the doorbell chimes. It chimes again so I call to Pete. He must have his headphones on. I slip out of my clogs and hurry through the living room expecting to find Pru on the doorstep with a question about the meeting agenda. But when I open the door, Pru isn't standing there. Instead, smiling at me is a thin woman in her early forties who has the gloss and wing-mirror cheekbones of a former fashion model. Behind her is a camera crew. A camera crew. And there, waving, is Maggie. For a few stupefied seconds I can't work it out: in some bizarre coincidence she's stopped by at exactly the same moment as a TV crew.

'Are you Tessa Perry?' asks the thin woman.

Partly shielded by the door and ready to close it at any moment, I confirm my identity.

'Excellent,' she says, 'because we're here to ... ' Then she raises her arms along with her voice and everyone cries in unison, 'Make You Over!'

The penny teeters, bright and coppery at the edge of my comprehension then drops into a slot and rolls away. Maggie has brought these people here. Before I know what's happening, they're piling inside.

The living room, which was empty just minutes ago, is now crammed with bodies. One of the...