Lovers and Newcomers (36 page)

‘Well. Hi,’ she muttered.

‘I’m just going,’ he reassured her. ‘I needed a cup of tea first. Sorry if I’ve overstayed my welcome.’

She was opening a tin of dog food. The smell of it reached Amos and he swallowed hard. She forked chunks of brown meat into Rafferty’s bowl and threw the fork into the sink.

‘It’s all right.’

‘What are you doing today?’

The memory of her bare breasts was still with him. He was fairly sure they had featured in his dreams, but this aspect of his interest in Jessie was now muddled with another, different response. The daylight kitchen, so chilly and bare of what he would consider essentials, and the sight of her pale ankles under the childish dressing gown, made him feel protective of her and even vaguely paternal. The question was the same one he might have asked Toby or Sam at some point during a university vacation.

‘Working,’ Jessie said, pointedly. ‘I’m on double shift again.’

She moved past him, drawing the blue edges of her dressing gown together. She was also thinking about last night’s tattoo episode, he understood. Now he felt like a pervert.

‘I’ll let you get your breakfast,’ he said. He rummaged in his coat pocket and found the car keys.

‘See you, then.’

He paused. ‘What
was
it we were smoking last night, by the way?’

‘Something stronger than you’re used to.’

He laughed at that. ‘I’m not used to anything at all, not any more. Do you know how old I am?’

‘Sixty?’

Amos cleared his throat. ‘Well, almost,’ he said.

The dog barked once, in approval, as he let himself out of the front door. He slithered down the concrete path to the parked Jaguar.

When he let himself back into the Mead cottage he noticed the bad smell immediately. He emptied the bin, threw out an arrangement of dead flowers, and sluiced away the khaki slime that had gathered in the vase. He picked up his phone and dialled Katherine, but as usual her mobile was switched to voicemail.

Katherine walked under chains of Christmas lights towards the bar where she was to meet Polly and Miranda. She passed glittering shop windows where clusters of satin and sequinned dresses turned the winter streets into the anterooms of a silent and static party, but she didn’t notice any of the displays. The three of us, she was thinking. We could almost be three women friends in a feel-good film, except that by this time of our lives you’d imagine there’d be nothing much to look forward to apart from the final credits. The audience blinking hard and blowing their noses before the lights come up to reveal their tears. But now it turns out that there’s a twist, and another twenty minutes of the movie yet to run.

She was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she walked right past the bar Miranda had chosen. She stopped several yards further on and retraced her steps. In the doorway she hesitated, peering into the throng. She noticed a slick waiter passing with his loaded tray of drinks and an eyebrow cocked at her as if to signal
Please, not in here. You look all wrong. Couldn’t you find a nice teashop?

In defiance of him she lifted her head and marched into the thick of the crowd, searching the room for Polly and Miranda but finding no sign of them. She was the first to arrive.

It was a stroke of luck that four young men in dishevelled suits and no ties stood up just as she reached the far corner. She ducked behind one of them and secured the vacated table. As she sat down, a different waiter removed the empty glasses and swiped his cloth over the surface. He placed a long thin menu in front of her. The table was wedged beside the Christmas tree, and the lights were flashing on and off in a migraine-inducing way, but she found that if she twisted away and stared in the opposite direction she could just about exclude it from her field of vision.

So she saw Miranda as soon as she came in through the door. Of course Miranda didn’t hesitate even for a second. Several heads turned to watch her entrance, even now. Katherine waved to her, and Miranda lifted her elbows in acknowledgement. Her wrists and hands were loaded with carrier bags. She used the burden like a snowplough to open up her path through the mob.

‘Here you are,’ she gasped, letting fall the shopping. They hugged for a long moment, wordlessly touching cheeks, and then leaned back so they could study each other’s faces.

‘Here I am,’ Katherine agreed.

They squeezed hands and separated. Miranda sank into a chair.

‘How’s Joyce?’ Katherine asked quickly.

Miranda reported that Joyce was now sitting up in her hospital bed and telling anyone who passed by that before this she had never had a day’s illness in her life. The doctors were sure she would be well enough to come home for Christmas, and Miranda planned to bring her straight back to Mead.

‘So I took the opportunity to rush down here first, to buy presents, but mostly to see you, of course. And now that I
can
see you face to face instead of just listening on the phone, will you please tell me how you are?’

Their eyes met.

Katherine was touched and pleased that this cocktail meeting had been arranged, but she also felt awkward and quite distinctly exposed. As if she were standing up in her underwear, for the others’ scrutiny.

‘Let’s wait until Polly gets here,’ she demurred. She handed Miranda the menu to look at and they joked about the outlandish concoctions of Baileys and cinnamon and Kahlua and apple vodka. Miranda wondered if it would be completely unacceptable to order a plain gin and tonic.

‘Probably. I’m going to have a Long Sloe Christmas Screw,’ Katherine said.

Miranda looked startled. She wasn’t sure if Katherine was joking, or making a sly allusion. She wasn’t sure whether she actually knew Katherine at all.

Katherine reassured her. ‘I really am going to. It’s got sloe gin instead of vodka, and cranberry instead of orange. Don’t you love that?’

They looked up as Polly leaned over them.

‘I’ll have the same. With a sprig of mistletoe, if possible.’

She manoeuvred with difficulty into the confined space between the table and the flashing tree. She greeted Miranda with the lightest touch on her shoulder, then kissed Katherine, who had stood up to make room. Just as Miranda had done, Polly held her warmly and then studied her face. Katherine suffered this, understanding that her two friends were concerned for her and needed to reassure themselves that she was neither deeply miserable nor mad.

‘You look all right,’ Polly judged, after the scrutiny.

‘
I
am. How does Amos seem?’

Polly reached for one of Katherine’s hands and gripped it.

‘He’s hurt. And so are you, I should think. It’s the most painful thing that could happen.’

Miranda twisted sideways and found herself studying the tree and the plastic crystals suspended from fir branches to mimic icicles. The lights chased up and down the branches, ripples of red and purple and blue.

‘But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have done it,’ Polly murmured.

The waiter came and took their order. Miranda used the opportunity to collect herself, and turned to face Polly again. This was the first time they had seen each other face to face in almost two weeks, since Polly had left Mead to visit her children in London and the afternoon in Jake’s study had intervened.

When the drinks arrived, Katherine lifted her glass. It was decorated with a plastic sprig of holly.

‘Here’s to you both. Friends in need.’

‘Here’s to the wives,’ Polly responded.

They took a sip apiece and sat back.

‘I’m so sorry to sabotage everything. Your great scheme for Mead, Miranda,’ Katherine began. ‘Before we moved, Amos and I, I’d have said we were fine together. Not wonderful, I couldn’t have claimed that. Which of us could? I’m not asking you to tell me,’ she added hastily. ‘But I thought we were all right, otherwise for all our sakes I wouldn’t have risked selling up and coming to Mead. Anyway, you know Amos.’

They knew him very well. Polly nodded and Miranda twisted the holly sprig in the ruby-red depths of her drink.

‘After we came to live at Mead, our marriage changed. Or probably it would be more accurate to say that
I
changed.’

‘Changed how?’ Polly asked, raising an eyebrow.

Katherine tried to explain. She had no sisters or daughters and it didn’t come easily, this opening up her most private feelings to other women, even to Miranda and Polly.

The other two listened, leaning forwards. Louder music had now started up and the noise level in the bar was rising, making it an effort for them to hear Katherine’s low voice.

She said that at Mead she had found her courage. Living there, she had fallen under a different influence. She said this seriously but glancing from one to the other, knowing that they would challenge her.

Polly did. ‘And whose influence would that be?’

‘I could say of the place itself. The spirit of it. Like falling under a spell.’

The princess was in all their thoughts, but they masked with smiles the idea that Katherine might be touched by her spirit. Miranda’s sceptical merriment was less pronounced than Polly’s, however. It wouldn’t have taken much to make her believe.

Katherine concluded, ‘Or I could just say that being closer to all of you finally opened my eyes. I stopped making the compromises that being Amos’s wife involves and decided to get a life of my own.’

‘And have you?’ This was Polly again.

She sighed. ‘I’ve hurt Amos, I’ve deeply upset our boys. I wouldn’t call wreaking such havoc a positive move, exactly. But it’s early days.’

The confession was unpractised but as honest as she could make it. Miranda had been twiddling her holly sprig, but now she lifted her head.

‘Is there someone else involved in all this? I don’t mean one of Amos’s. I mean for you?’

Polly had begun a laugh at this question, but it died away.

Two pairs of eyes fixed on Katherine, one astonished and the other unreadable. The floor now reverberated with the pounding music, and the lights chased each other in faster pulses.

‘There is! Tell us who it is,’ Miranda demanded.

Katherine enjoyed the moment of suspense. The other two sat on the edges of their chairs.

‘Christopher Carr.’

Their jaws dropped.

‘The archaeologist?’

‘Yes, him.’

Clapping her hands Polly cried, ‘Well, that’s good. Really good. The older you get, the better you’ll look to him.’

There was a beat of one second and then laughter exploded between them.

Miranda fell back in her chair, shaking with pure joy. With her face alight she looked twenty again. Polly’s features squeezed up into the noodle lady’s series of slanting lines and Katherine laughed too, thinking how good and nourishing it was to be with them both. Miranda’s theory of friendship was right, and her own musings as she walked from her office to the bar hadn’t been so far wrong.

Husbands, marriages, children, lovers, all these came and went. What you were left with was friends.

Their waiter saw them and was encouraged. This trio of sombre-looking old women were now acting like everyone else. Amazing, really, what just one drink could do.

‘Same again, ladies, is it?’ he called.

‘Oh, yes please,’ Katherine sighed.

Miranda dried her eyes with a folded cocktail napkin. Two girls wearing novelty reindeer antlers perched next to their table.

‘I want to hear more. Do tell us. Polly?’

But Polly’s broad face now made an arrangement of circles. Deaf to everything else, she was staring at someone across the room.

A girl was standing in three-quarters profile, listening without much of a show of interest to a boy who was commanding the attention of their group. When she shifted her weight it became obvious that she was about six months pregnant. Her tight black top was stretched over a prominent bump.

‘It’s her. There she is,’ Polly cried.

Katherine and Miranda turned their heads, not knowing who they were looking for.

For her size, Polly could move fast. She sprang out of her chair, almost colliding with the waiter. Reaching the girl’s side she grabbed her wrist and held it in an iron grip.

‘Nicola? Nic, what are you doing here?’

Nicola blushed dark red, then looked for a means of escape.

Polly blocked the way. ‘No, you don’t. You don’t have to run off. I just want to talk to you.’

Nicola now shook a curtain of hair across her eyes.

‘Why?’ she muttered.

The other people hesitated, trying to gauge what was going on.

‘OK, Nic?’ the leader of the boys asked.

‘Yeah.’

Still holding her arm, Polly moved to cut her off from her friends.

‘Just give me five minutes. Please?’ she begged, putting her mouth close to the girl’s ear so she didn’t have to shout over the infernal music.

‘What for?’

Polly took her other arm, turning her towards the door. ‘Come on. Come with me.’ She shuffled backwards, towing Nic with her so they looked like a pair of clumsy dancers.

‘Hey, stop that,’ Nic’s defender shouted. A dozen other people were now turning to stare at them.

‘It’s all right. It’s cool,’ Nic sighed over her shoulder. And to Polly, ‘Let’s go outside. Can’t hear yourself think in this place anyway.’

They emerged into the street and took up a position amongst the hardy smokers. Cold made a dark, damp shimmer on the pavement. Nic immediately began to shiver and Polly peeled off her thick cardigan and draped it over her shoulders. The girl stared at the ground and Polly chafed her hands, trying to rub some warmth and reason into her.

‘What is it you want, then?’ Nic demanded.

Polly wanted to know a hundred different things, but she made a start with, ‘Where have you been?’

She shrugged. ‘Around.’

‘Have you thought about Ben?’ Knowing how desperate he had been, Polly couldn’t believe the girl had not.

‘A bit, yeah.’

‘He thinks you probably had a termination.’

Nic winced. ‘He would. Well, I haven’t had an
abortion
. I’m going to have my baby.’