It’s funny how my relationship with my husband came back to life… after the renovation. I thought we’d forgotten how to feel. Sixteen years of marriage—it’s like an old jumper: comfortable, familiar, but no longer warm.
James and I had settled into a predictable rhythm: work, dinner, the occasional chat before bed. We didn’t argue, didn’t dissect our feelings—we just existed. Steady, quiet, almost like siblings. No sparks, no madness. Sometimes it felt like we were two trees growing side by side: roots tangled, but branches stretching in opposite directions.
Then the renovation started.
We hadn’t planned it lightly. Our son, Alfie, had gone off to summer camp by the seaside for the first time—two whole weeks! “Mum, I’m not a kid anymore!” our twelve-year-old declared, tossing light-up trainers into his suitcase. James and I stood on the platform, waving at the departing train, and when we returned to the empty house, it hit us: now it’s just us, and these walls that remember who we used to be.
To speed things up, we rented a tiny flat nearby while strangers—loud, smelling of paint and sweat—took over our home. Among them was Steve.
Tall, rough hands, cold eyes. He reminded me of a younger James—the deep voice, the way he squinted when thinking. But where James spoke softly, never raising his voice even in anger, Steve shouted at his wife over the phone so harshly it made me wince.
I’d never heard a man speak to the mother of his children like that—through gritted teeth, dripping resentment, as though she owed him something. Then I found out he had a girlfriend on the side.
One day, I stopped by for forgotten blueprints and caught him in the lounge with a young woman. She squealed with laughter as he told a crude joke, then he grabbed her waist and pressed her against the unpainted wall.
And suddenly, I was afraid.
Not for her—for me.
What if James had some silly girl somewhere, thrilled by his attention like a handout? What if he, too, had been living a double life, and I was the last to know?
That evening, I studied my husband across the dinner table, searching for the same indifference, exhaustion, the urge to escape. Instead, he asked, “You holding up alright with all this chaos?”
Meanwhile, the workers had stripped the old wallpaper in our terraced house, revealing traces of our early years. A faint pink stain—New Year’s Eve, our first home, tipsy on bubbly. He’d lifted me up, I’d shrieked, the bottle slipped—half of it ended up on the wall.
Then the nail marks—remnants of the shelf James spent a weekend building while I visited my parents. “Don’t come in!” he’d yelled through the door as I giggled, impatient. It was crooked, but it lasted a decade.
…Three days later, we went wallpaper shopping.
James, who’d always left decisions to me, suddenly came alive. He scrutinised shades, asked, “Which do you prefer?” No rushing, no penny-pinching—he was choosing. For us. For our home. Fingers tracing samples, he murmured, “Think this pearl finish will catch the lamplight?”
When we reached the bedroom designs, he reached for pale blue with a faint silver pattern.
“Like that hotel in Brighton,” he muttered.
I gasped—our first holiday together, before marriage. We’d stayed up all night on the balcony, listening to the sea. The walls had been exactly that colour.
Next, the furniture store, where he insisted on a high-backed reading chair. “You’ll have proper light for your books.”
“How’d you know I’d want that?” I asked.
“Lived with you sixteen years,” he smirked. “Ought to remember something.”
No irritation—just quiet, warm fondness. The kind from our beginning. And I realised: he still loves me. It had just gotten buried under routine, under days bleeding into one another.
But it was never gone.
“Let’s do the bedroom ourselves,” James suggested unexpectedly as the renovation neared its end.
I froze.
“You hate wallpapering.”
“Hated it,” he grinned. “Put up with it for our first flat, remember?”
Yes, beneath the years, under layers of habit—that same man still existed. The one who’d once carried a thermos of coffee across half of London for me. We’d just forgotten where we’d hidden each other.
…Now we’re in the bedroom, and James, just like years ago, confuses top and bottom:
“Bloody hell,” he grumbles, “why do they look identical on both sides?”
I laugh, handing him another strip. Outside, July rain falls, but my head’s full of memories. Us painting our first flat, his palm smearing fresh paint. Him secretly redoing my childhood bedroom wallpaper while I was at uni.
“Just need to finish by the 25th,” I say. “Alfie’s due back.”
James nods, then takes my glue-stained hand.
“Remember doing his school walls?”
As if I could forget. Responsible parents of a six-year-old, we volunteered to wallpaper his classroom. The walls had been painted—we didn’t know you had to strip that first. By morning, every strip had peeled off spitefully. We’d frantically scraped off the paint and started over.
“Proper botched that one,” I smile, spreading paste.
James snorts.
“You swore you’d never…”
“…and yet here we are,” I finish.
His hands—rougher now—smooth each seam with practised motions, though it’s been years.
“Just hope they stick,” he mutters, and we both flinch at the memory.
“We’ve got experience now,” I joke.
As he presses the last corner, it hits me: we’re not just fixing a house. We’re preparing for our nearly-grown son’s return. And ourselves—for a new chapter where we’re a pair again, but different.
Out there, summer hums, a train carries our boy home, and here we are—knee-deep in paint tins and memories, relearning how to be just husband and wife.
But this wallpaper’s different. Like us. It holds fast, like our imperfect, time-tested love—sometimes buried under life’s layers, sometimes resurfacing, like those stains on the walls bearing witness to our history.
Now we wait for the dust to settle. Wait to start anew.
In fresh walls. With an old feeling.
Maybe renovation is life: you tear things down to the bones, then painstakingly rebuild. And under the plaster, those same people still live—the ones who once believed they could do anything.
Now they’re learning the truth of an old song:
All things pass, both joy and sorrow,
All things pass—that’s how life goes.
All things pass—just hold to this truth:
That love won’t. No. Love won’t.
