Clover Stroud on home, belonging and learning to let go
What and who makes a home, asks Clover Stroud in this exclusive extract from her new memoir, and The Shift's May bookclub pick, The Giant on the Skyline
I’m thrilled to announce that this month’s bookclub pick is Clover Stroud’s new memoir, her homage to home, The Giant on the Skyline. Paying subscribers can attend an exclusive online event with Clover in June and be in with a chance of winning a free copy.
I rarely knew where my husband Pete was. Once, I calculated we’d spent no more than thirteen consecutive days in the same place for the previous five years. We might spend a weekend together, three nights if we were lucky, before he’d leave, sometimes for Europe or Asia, but mostly to America. And as I stood in the kitchen listening to Pete’s voice, I tried to imagine him on the other side of the Atlantic.
‘It was beautiful, the house. We could be happy there, although we’d need to put all our stuff in it and make it a proper home. Make it ours. The agent who showed me around, she’s called Sylvia, she can do a virtual tour for you. She thinks it’s a really good family house. A blank canvas right now, but a home.’
His voice was distant as he clattered around on the other side of the room. On speakerphone, the Atlantic distances between us felt even greater. He must have been in Washington, since that was where the red-brick house was. He had sent me a link to the house a few days before in a WhatsApp message, and I had seen it, lying in bed one morning, after reaching for my phone, looking for him. Pete had been there, where he always was, on WhatsApp. We typed little messages to each other in place of touching or talking. His message said he missed me so much. That he also felt good to be back in Washington. Then he gave me a small, violent shock by attaching the link to a property website.