Dinner at Rose's (32 page)

I put down the plate and opened the drawer beside him to find a fork. ‘Thanks. It’ll be better if you ask her.’

He sighed. ‘Yeah.’ He stirred my over-sweetened coffee with deep concentration. ‘Jo . . .’

‘Mm?’

He turned and cupped my cheek in one big hand, ducking his head to kiss me. My heart gave a great bound of exhilarated amazement that lasted all of half a second before my brain caught up, and then plummeted like a stone.

‘Don’t do that,’ I said unhappily, twisting away from him.

Matt stood quite still for a moment. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I thought – oh,
fuck
it.’ He sounded exhausted and utterly miserable.

‘You’ve got a girlfriend,’ I said bitterly. ‘Remember?’

‘No I haven’t,’ he said. ‘Broke up months ago.’

‘
Months
ago?’

‘That night she decided you and I were having an affair.’

A tiny, painful stab of hope pricked me in the chest. I opened and closed my mouth like a goldfish for a while, and then managed, in a sort of croak, ‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘I – I thought you knew,’ said Matt. ‘I thought Kim would have told you.’

‘But I saw Cilla in the supermarket buying
Bride and
Groom
magazine,’ I said to my feet.

There was a short silence, and then he began to laugh. Jo,’ he said affectionately, ‘you womble.’

These romantic words caused the little gleam of hope to swell and blossom. I sat down abruptly on a kitchen chair and burst into tears of sheer blessed relief.

Poor Matt was completely nonplussed. ‘Oh, hell,’ he said helplessly. ‘Jo, I’m sorry. I’m a moron and – and you probably want me to go take a running jump, but I love you so much.’

In response I merely cried harder, burying my face in my hands. I had been trying so hard to come to terms with the dismal truth that Matt was just never going to feel the same way about me as I felt about him – I had decided that when Aunty Rose died I'd better move to the other end of the country so at least I wouldn’t have to see him every bloody day. And now he had suddenly turned everything upside down, and it was all just too much.

After a little while he came to stand in front of me, wordlessly pulling my head up against the solid warmth of his body and stroking my damp hair. I couldn’t stop crying but I put my arms around his waist and hugged him fiercely.

‘Shh,’ he said softly. ‘Come on, love, it’s okay.’

‘S-sorry,’ I gasped. ‘Trying . . .’

He detached me and mopped my eyes with the hem of his shirt. Then he pulled me to my feet and kissed me.

Matt had been my kissing gold standard ever since the night before he went overseas all those years ago. He had kissed me with a sort of skilful and leisurely enjoyment that reduced me to a quivering heap of nerve endings, and nobody since had ever turned me on quite like that. Tonight was completely different. He wasn’t slick and practised at all but almost savage – he held me too tightly and I could feel him shaking as his lips found mine – and it blew that nine-year-old memory into the weeds.

I took his face in my hands and kissed him back with the sort of fervour you’d expect from a really impassioned TV evangelist. And about thirty seconds later the kitchen door opened, and Kim tumbled in out of the rain with Andy in tow.

TO BE DISCOVERED
attached like a sucker fish to Kim’s brother brought me back down to earth at speed. I tried to jump back but was foiled in my attempt to retreat – preferably to the other end of the house, if not the district – by Matt’s arms tightening implacably to pull me back against him. I looked at him, puzzled, and then realised that little though he enjoyed being caught with me in his arms he would be much, much unhappier showing his little sister his erection. I stopped trying to escape and rested my forehead against his shoulder.

‘
Well
,’ said Kim. ‘Well, well, well.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ her loving brother said.

‘Kim, leave them alone,’ said Andy, deeply embarrassed. But Kim wouldn’t recognise embarrassment if it jumped up and hit her over the head. She shook her sleek brown head to dislodge the raindrops, perched on the edge of the table and asked, ‘How long has this been going on?’

‘About a minute,’ I said with some bitterness. It would have been nice to enjoy it for just a
little
longer without anybody else’s input.

‘Excellent,’ said Kim approvingly. ‘Good stuff. Took you long enough, but then neither of you is all that bright.’

‘Kim,’ I said, ‘go away, or I will beat you with a stick.’

‘She doesn’t mean it,’ Kim told Andy.

Matt gave me a little thanks-I’m-good-now squeeze, and I let him go.

‘Josie, you’re a mess,’ his sister informed me.

‘I know.’ I turned and went out of the room. In the bathroom I turned on the cold tap, looked in the little mirror above the sink and winced. The face looking back at me was red and puffy with wild hair and swollen eyes – I looked like someone fresh from a gruelling bout of Chinese water torture. Washing my face wasn’t going to be enough to make me into a thing of beauty, but I did it anyway, brushed my hair into something resembling order and went to peep into Aunty Rose’s bedroom.

She was still asleep, her head turned away on the pillow and her skin as pale as wax. Having spent five minutes entirely absorbed by the miracle of Matt actually loving me back, it was a fresh shock to see her. I moved her water glass within easy reach and smoothed a pillow and then, because I really couldn’t put it off any longer, I went slowly back down the hall to the kitchen.

‘Josie,’ said Kim, prodding my cooling lasagne in distaste, ‘why are you having jellymeat for tea?’

‘Dinner,’ her brother corrected, and smiled at me over her head with an expression that nearly made me throw myself back into his arms regardless of the audience.

‘Isn’t it the same thing?’ Andy enquired, crouching down to scratch Spud between the ears.

‘Aunty Rose always corrects us,’ I told him. ‘And she makes us say “w
h
ite” not “wite”, and “milk” not “moolk”. If you really want to wind her up you just have to say “youse guys”.’

‘How is she?’ Kim asked.

‘Asleep.’

‘Does she know about you two?’

‘No.’

Kim looked speculative, and Matt said, ‘Wake her and die, Toad.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ she protested, all wounded dignity.

‘Come on,’ Andy told her, standing back up. Spud nosed his ankle hopefully in case he might start scratching again. ‘I’ll take you home.’

She made a face. ‘Nah, let’s hang out here for a bit.’

I sympathised; being chaperoned by the lovely Hazel would have to be fairly painful.

‘I’ll pay you to take her away,’ Matt said to Andy. ‘I don’t care where – your place is fine – just anywhere that isn’t here.’

Andy grinned. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s go, Kim, I think we’re kind of in the way.’

‘Fine,’ said Kim. ‘I can take a hint.’ She bounced up on tiptoe to kiss my cheek. ‘Be gentle with him, Josie.’

I put my arms around her and hugged her. ‘Sometimes I’m not at all sure why I like you, Kimlet.’

‘Sometimes I’m not sure
if
I like her,’ Matt said.

The two of them pulled up their collars and went out into the wet dark, and then Andy poked his head back round the door to say awkwardly, ‘I won’t – um – do anything.’

‘Good luck with that,’ said Matt, trying not to smile and failing completely.

Andy muttered something inaudible and pulled the door closed.

I wondered briefly what sort of state Andy’s new flat was in. When I lived with him the dirty socks had tended to mount up in the corners of his room and fester, and Kim is a fastidious sort of girl. And then Matt pulled me back into his arms and I stopped thinking about anything except him.

‘I’ve wanted to do this ever since you came home,’ he said at last.

‘Then what on
earth
were you doing with Cilla?’ I asked.

He winced. ‘It wasn’t serious,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t think you’d be interested. You were damn near married to that pillock.’

I shivered. I
was
damn near married to Graeme – last year we had been talking in a half-hearted way about starting a family. And Graeme superintended my wardrobe and was snobbish about the wines he drank and when we went out for dinner he used to send back his meal two times out of three.
And
he sneered at Dolly Par-ton. No, Chrissie was welcome to him. ‘What a horrible thought.’ I leant my head into the comfortable hollow of his shoulder.

The dogs outside launched into their welcome chorus and I realised that the wind must have dropped for us to be able to hear them. ‘Why can’t everyone just piss off?’ I said savagely.

Matthew smiled and released me. ‘You need to eat something, anyway,’ he said. ‘Go and sit down.’

WHEN HIS MOTHER
opened the door I was forking up mouthfuls of lukewarm lasagne while Matt pulled clean washing out of the machine in the opposite corner of the kitchen.

‘Hello, dears,’ she said, brushing the rain from the shoulders of a very smart red woollen coat. ‘I’m just on my way home from my Reiki class, and I couldn’t pass without popping in to see Rosie.’

‘She’s asleep,’ said Matt. ‘She’s had a pretty awful day.’

‘Oh,’ said Hazel vaguely. ‘Oh dear. I’ll come over in the morning. Perhaps she’ll feel better by then.’

Neither of us said anything in response to this – what planet was the woman inhabiting? Matt finished putting clean sheets in the washing basket and began to load dirty ones into the machine.

‘Goodness, Josie, that’s a hearty plateful!’

‘I’m very hungry,’ I said, feeling like a beefy peasant wench. ‘How was Reiki?’

‘Marvellous. So calming. It’s a great comfort.’ She smiled wanly. ‘Kimmy’s home, is she?’

‘She’s at Rachel’s place,’ said Matt with no hesitation at all. ‘She rang and asked me to let you know.’

‘That will be nice for her. It might take her mind off poor Rosie.’

‘I hope so,’ I murmured, seeing that Matt wasn’t going to bother to reply.

‘Matthew, love,’ said his mother, ‘I’ve got a leaking kitchen tap. Could you pop up and have a look at it?’

‘How about you call a plumber?’

‘I’m sure it will only be a teensy little job,’ she said. ‘I wake and hear it in the night and it’s
so
annoying.’

‘Mum,’ he said tightly, ‘I got up at four-thirty this morning, I had ten minutes for lunch and I’ve got to go and check a heifer before I go to bed. Call a plumber.’

Hazel’s lip trembled ominously. I didn’t think we could bear her broken-hearted sobbing tonight – I had been doing quite enough sobbing as it was.

‘It’s shattering, isn’t it?’ I said sympathetically. ‘You lie there waiting for the next drip to fall and you can’t get back to sleep. But if you put a facecloth in the sink underneath you can’t hear it anymore.’

Matt rolled his eyes, picked up the wood basket and vanished outside.

‘He doesn’t realise how much it hurts me when he’s so curt,’ his mother said sorrowfully.

‘He doesn’t mean it,’ I said. ‘It’s just calving. I expect every dairy farmer in the country is being rude to his mother just now.’

‘It’s Rose, too,’ she told me. ‘He’s such a dear boy, Josie; it’s tearing him apart to see her so unwell. Perhaps –’ she paused and looked at me with a Madonna-like expression of patient and loving reproach – ‘perhaps it might help if you didn’t expect him to dance attendance every spare minute, hmm?’

My hand clenched on the handle of my fork as I considered throwing it at her like a spear. I’ve got pretty good aim – I’d probably be able to get her in the side of the head from here. But the consequences wouldn’t be worth the fleeting satisfaction. I dropped my eyes to my plate and nodded.

‘You’re a sweet girl. I know you don’t mean to be selfish.’ Matt opened the door again and she stretched up to kiss his cheek, which must have been particularly annoying when he was holding an enormous load of very dense, heavy gum wood. ‘Goodnight, darling. I hope you feel better in the morning.’ And off she trotted.

‘Am I not feeling well?’ he asked, putting down the wood basket.

‘You mustn’t be, to be so curt with your adored and adoring mother.’