Funny how things change… Our marriage came back to life after renovating the house. I thought we’d forgotten how to feel anything after sixteen years together. You know how it is – like an old jumper: comfortable, familiar, but not exactly warm anymore.
Tom and I had settled into a predictable routine: work, dinner, the occasional chat before bed. We never argued, never discussed our relationship – just existed side by side. Steady, calm, almost like family. No fireworks, no wild passion. Sometimes I imagined us as two trees growing close: roots tangled beneath the surface, but branches stretching in completely different directions.
Then the renovations started.
It wasn’t just random. Our son James had gone away to summer camp by the seaside for the first time. Two whole weeks! “Mum, I’m old enough!” our twelve-year-old declared proudly, tossing his light-up trainers into the suitcase. We stood on the platform waving as the train pulled away, and when we returned to the empty house, it hit us – just us now, and these walls that remember who we used to be.
To speed things up, we moved into a rented flat while strangers took over our home – loud, sweaty men smelling of paint and hard work. Among them was Mark.
Tall, rough hands, cold eyes. Something about him reminded me of Tom years ago – his voice, the way he squinted when thinking. But while Tom always spoke gently, even when annoyed, Mark yelled at his wife over the phone in a way that made me wince.
I’d never heard a man speak to the mother of his children like that – hissed through gritted teeth, as if she owed him something. Then I found out he had a mistress.
One day, I went back for forgotten blueprints and caught him in the living room with a young woman. She shrieked with laughter at some crude joke, and then he grabbed her waist and pushed her against the unpainted wall.
Suddenly, I was afraid.
Not for her – for me.
What if Tom had some silly girl somewhere, grinning at his attention like it was a prize? What if he’d been living a double life, and I was the last to know?
That evening, I studied him across the dinner table, searching for that same indifference, that weariness. Instead, he looked up and asked,
“You holding up alright with all this chaos?”
Meanwhile, the workers had stripped the old wallpaper from our little terraced house, revealing traces of our early years. A faded pink stain – us drunk on champagne celebrating moving in, me shrieking as he lifted me, the bottle slipping… Half of it ended up on the wall.
Dents from nails – the wonky shelf Tom built over a weekend while I was visiting my parents. “Don’t come in!” he’d shout through the door as I laughed and tapped my foot impatiently. Crooked, but it lasted ten years.
…Three days later, we went to pick new wallpaper.
Tom, who usually left all decisions to me, suddenly came alive. Comparing shades, asking, “Which do you prefer?” No rush, no penny-pinching – he was choosing properly. For us. For our home. He ran fingers over samples, thoughtful.
“Think this pearlescent one will catch the light?”
Then, by the bedroom rolls, he reached for pale blue with a faint silver swirl.
“Like that hotel in Brighton,” he murmured.
My breath caught. Years before we married, on our first holiday together, we’d stayed up all night on the balcony listening to the sea. The walls had been that exact shade.
Then came the furniture shop, where he insisted on an armchair with a high curved back – “so you can read in good light.”
“How’d you know I’d want that?”
“I’ve lived with you sixteen years,” he smirked. “Should’ve picked up something.”
No irritation in his voice – just warm, quiet tenderness. The kind from our early days. And I realised: he still loves me. It had just gotten buried under routine, under days blending into one.
But it was still there.
“Let’s do the bedroom ourselves,” he suggested later, as the renovation neared its end.
I froze.
“You hate wallpapering…”
“Hated it,” he grinned. “But I put up with it for our first place, remember?”
Yes, under years of routine, beneath the weight of time – the same man who once brought me coffee across town in a Thermos was still there. We’d just forgotten where we’d put each other.
…Now we’re standing in the bedroom, and Tom, like years ago, mixes up the top and bottom:
“Bloody hell,” he mutters, “why do they always look the same both sides?”
I laugh and hand him another strip. Outside, July rain falls, but my head’s full of memories. Us painting our first home, Tom leaving a handprint in wet emulsion. Him secretly redoing my old bedroom wallpaper while I was at uni.
“Need to finish by the 25th,” I say. “James comes back.”
He nods, suddenly taking my glue-smeared hand.
“Remember doing his school classroom?”
How could I forget? Responsible parents of a seven-year-old, volunteering to wallpaper. The walls had been painted – we didn’t realise you had to strip that first. By morning, every strip had peeled off, mocking us. We spent hours scraping before redoing it all.
“We really messed that up,” I smile, spreading paste.
Tom huffs: “You swore you’d never…”
“…And yet here we are,” I finish.
His hands, rougher now but just as careful, smooth each seam. Fingers remember motions, even after all this time.
“Just hope they stick,” he mumbles, and we both wince at the memory.
“We’ve got experience now,” I tease.
As he presses the last corner, it hits me: we’re not just fixing up a house. We’re preparing for our son’s return, for life as just us two again – but different this time.
Outside, summer hums. Somewhere, a train carries our boy home. And here we are, surrounded by paint tins and memories, relearning how to be simply husband and wife.
But this wallpaper holds. Like us. Imperfect, tested by time – a love that hid under layers of routine but never really left, just like those marks on the walls telling our story.
Now we wait for the renovation to end. Wait to begin again.
New walls. Old feeling.
Maybe life’s like renovating: feels like everything’s torn down at first, then piece by piece, you rebuild. And beneath the plaster, the people you used to be are still there – the ones who believed they could handle anything.
Proving what that old song says:
The sadness, the joy, it all moves on
That’s just how the world spins round
But through it all, just hold this one truth –
Love? Love doesn’t leave. Not really.
