The Right Thing (25 page)

Madeleine sat at the kitchen table and picked at her thumbnail. ‘I want to ask you something, and I don't want you to take it the wrong way. I mean I'm grateful, you've been really kind letting me stay.'

Kitty sat opposite her, reached across and took her hand. ‘You're not going? Not yet?'

Madeleine laughed. ‘What
now
? In the dark and the wind? No!'

‘Do you want to phone home? Is that it? I mean do if you want . . .' Kitty tried to smile and keep panic out of her voice.

‘No, well yes sometime soon. It's OK.'

‘You really should tell her . . .'

Madeleine scowled and drummed her fingers impatiently on the table. ‘Look, just don't bloody
fuss
!' Kitty flinched at the fierce tone. ‘She's used to me not being around, or even contactable. I
travel
, I've done Europe, America and Australia, backpacking, you know and Mum never once flapped like you're doing, just 'cos I didn't phone home every ten sodding minutes. It's cool between us and you're interfering.'

Kitty said nothing, waiting to feel inspired with the right words but Madeleine had moved on, eager to say what she wanted. ‘It's just, well George and me, we really get on. He's OK.' She shuffled a bit and looked pink. ‘And he's asked me, well I'd like to go and stay with him in the barn. You don't mind do you Kitty? He said I could be useful, making his phone calls and fending off his agent and stuff like that. And I'd rather be doing something than not.'

Kitty sighed, relieved but still with some nagging worry. This might be the beginning of moving out, leaving. She'd got a family she spoke of with fondness that might be casual but seemed to be genuine enough, and George himself would be leaving at Easter when the renting season was due to start properly.

‘It's not that I don't like being here in the house . . .' Madeleine was twisting the bottom of her sweatshirt in her hands. ‘But Glyn doesn't much like me being here and well, I like my own space.'

‘Well you'll have plenty of that over in the barn,' Kitty said, trying to be cheerful and hoping her words didn't sound as false as they felt. ‘Have you spoken to Lily?'

‘Yeah, she was cool. I said I'd watch her surf in the morning. Early she said, so can I borrow an alarm clock?'

There weren't many in the pub. The locals who frequented it tended to be farm-workers with early starts in the morning who got their drinking done soon after opening time. Later in the summer the evening trade would be brisker, with coast-path walkers happy to think they'd found an authentic local that nobody else knew about. Glyn passed a couple of battle-scarred Land Rovers in the car park on his way in, and noticed a gleaming black Porsche alongside like a smart yacht slumming it next to a couple of aged tugs. Early visitors, town sailors checking out the cream of the summer moorings, he assumed, pushing open the door.

‘Ah Glyn! Nice timin'! Bloke 'ere looking for your place.' Mick behind the bar was pulling a pint of Tinners ale and indicating with his head a man perched on a bar stool in front of him, sipping orange juice. Glyn's first impression was of a formal, uncomfortable suit among coarse jackets and sweaters, a city-pale face among harsh-weathered complexions. He couldn't be a writer looking for a room on the off chance, Glyn guessed – they always seemed to turn up in scrupulously clean denim – or even a journalist desperate for dirt on George Moorfield.

‘Is that right? Were you looking for me? I'm Glyn Harding,' he said. The poor man looked exhausted, as if he'd travelled half Cornwall searching for Treneath.

‘Oh! You must be Kitty's husband. I'm Ben Ruthermere – I think you've met my wife, Rose.' A clean plump hand was offered for shaking. Glyn shook it carefully. It felt rather like a latex Pink Panther bendy toy Lily had dragged around when she was little.

‘Can I buy you a drink?' Ben looked as if he was about to apologize, though there was no clue as to what for. Perhaps, Glyn thought, he was the type who seemed to be sorry for breathing. He had large greyish eyes that were mildly familiar and brown-grey hair with sweaty curled ends. He looked as if he'd been travelling for years.

‘Sure. Gin and tonic would hit the spot.'

‘Two large ones, please,' Ben Ruthermere asked Mick, who grinned past him at Glyn, booking an explanation for the next time he was in. ‘So,' Glyn ventured when the drinks were poured and Mick had been summoned down the bar to issue refills to the darts players, ‘what brings you here, and what can we all do for you?'

‘Actually, I'm looking for my wife. I know it sounds pathetic, don't tell me. I thought she might be with you?' Glyn grinned, catching on. Of course, the runaway Rosemary-Jane. So this was the poor sap she lived with, co-custodian of a giant poodle and ex-boyfriend of Kitty. So this, this defeated-looking stranger he was having a comfortable drink with, was Madeleine's father.

They were really too big for Ben's car. As he lowered himself carefully into the leather seat and sought space to arrange his legs, Glyn wondered what kind of man would buy himself a Porsche when he'd got to the age and size where getting in and fitting behind the wheel could only be an effort and an undignified squeeze. Ben Ruthermere wasn't overweight and neither was Glyn, but with the extra substance that accumulates with age they both bulged beyond the edges of the snappy little sports seats till their shoulders almost touched and the silly stubby gear stick was uncomfortably close to their knees. To choose to drive like this, to fold himself up and puff himself into place, a man had to be feeling pretty unsettled about something. Glyn presumed it was the classic cliché sexual thing, along with an attack of the middle-age insecurity terrors. He could only sympathize, when he thought about it, but was glad that his own confidence-boosting indulgence in decent designer clothes (long-run bargains, as women usually argued) didn't involve four-figure insurance.

‘It's up here on the left, watch the bend though, the wall sticks out,' Glyn said. They were roaring past Rita's. There were no lights on now and he hoped she wasn't lying awake and weeping. Perhaps he should drop Ben off there, then the two deserted ones could snuggle up together and soothe away their various miseries. Ben wasn't at all bad-looking, Glyn thought, trying not to chuckle at his idea, Rita would think it was all her birthdays at once. Ben, though, might not.

‘Are you sure this is going to be OK?' Ben asked for the third time.

‘Absolutely. Kit will be delighted to see you, I'm sure.' Glyn wasn't at all sure but the poor man had driven an awfully long way, straight from a city office by the look of his smart but crumpled suit, and could hardly start searching for a hotel room in Penzance this late in the evening. And besides . . . a terrible demon in him could hardly wait to see Kitty's face. Madeleine would be there. There would be Kitty, Madeleine and Ben – with luck they'd all sit in a row on the bigger of the blue sofas, two of the three not knowing that together they made up a family. A family of sorts anyway.

‘I should have phoned,' Ben was saying as they pulled into the yard. Yes you should, Glyn agreed silently, just as Kitty had thought about Rose when she'd turned up weeks ago. ‘But the mobile doesn't seem to work here,' Ben continued as they freed themselves rather stiffly from the baby car.

‘No, well, this is a primitive outpost of the empire. We tend to rely on carrier pigeons and semaphore.' Ben squinted through the dark, trying to make out what Glyn was talking about.

‘For communication?' Glyn said. ‘It's OK, it's a joke . . . well nearly.' He headed for the door, realizing Ben was more tired than he'd thought. ‘This way, come on in.'

Kitty's face was exactly the gratifying picture of gob-smacked astonishment that Glyn had anticipated, but disappointingly Madeleine wasn't in sight. He assumed she'd gone up to bed. Even for someone as young as her, being that pregnant must take its toll.

‘Ben! How lovely to see you!' Kitty's social graces took over quickly from her surprise. She and Ben kissed politely, like a dinner-party pair. ‘Is Rose with you?' she looked behind him as if expecting her to be hovering behind the door. As if, Glyn thought. She was hardly the sort for shy hanging-back.

‘I found him in the pub, looking lost,' Glyn said.

Ben laughed. ‘Well, you might as well be lost in a pub as anywhere else.'

‘Er . . . where's Madeleine? Gone to bed?' Glyn tried to sound casual.

‘Actually, she's moved across to the barn. I went across and helped her make up the bed in room six. She and Lily both need the space, Madeleine needs more than a single bed, and George needs a helper, so it seemed a good idea.'

‘True. We all need space.' Kitty gave Glyn a hard look. He was looking too pleased with himself, too pent-up with suppressed glee. ‘Drink, Ben? There's a bottle of white open in the fridge. I think, well I hope, it's just about good enough to serve to a wine merchant. I'll fetch it.' Glyn left the room, whistling cheerily. Kitty and Ben sat on sofas opposite each other, each waiting for the other to say something. Kitty tried a sort of welcoming how-lovely smile and felt her face collapsing into what must have looked like a uselessly empty grin. What was she supposed to do with him? Ben was leaning forward, his tired hands drooping like big empty gloves in front of him. Any moment, she felt, he might drop to his knees at her feet and plead to be told where his wife was.

‘Rose isn't here you know, Ben. Hasn't even called in, or phoned,' she said eventually.

‘No. Well I gather that. But you do know where she is and what she's up to.'

‘I know she's making her programme near St Austell, that's the last thing I heard. I can't tell you where she's staying because I haven't a clue.' And I don't give a flying fuck, she added in her head.

‘She's with Tom Goodrich. They've been at it for years.' He sounded weary. ‘I'll go over there tomorrow and see what it is she wants to do about us. About her and me. As if I didn't know.' Kitty didn't know what to say. Ben looked, just now, more angry than defeated.

‘Well if it's a divorce, why not just go for it?' she suggested gently. ‘I mean, it's not as if there are children involved.' Put like that it sounded horribly insensitive.

‘No. No it isn't,' Ben said, with a wry grin. ‘That's some of the problem. She wanted some and couldn't have any. So she started wanting someone else's. Antonia's would do as well as anyone else's, especially when they came with such a plum of a father and a gem of a house.'

‘She got used to taking stuff from Antonia round about the age of eleven,' Kitty said. ‘Her Conway Stewart pen, her Latin homework. Rose even stole a pair of grotty unwashed gym socks when she'd forgotten her own. It was easy, just a nasty habit.'

‘OK, drinks all round,' Glyn interrupted. He looked strangely jolly. He was enjoying himself. Kitty glared at him and stood up, deciding she wasn't up to playing social piggy in the middle for this pair. ‘You two finish the bottle. I'll make up the studio sofa bed for you, Ben, and Glyn will show you where everything is, but for now I'm afraid I just have to go and sleep. See you in the morning, we can talk then.'

Petroc had thought there were only a certain number of times you could see reruns of movies you've enjoyed with someone else. The first time he'd seen
Blue Juice
had been about four years before with twelve others skiving a Wednesday-afternoon games session. There were far too many of them, more than a football team's-worth, for their absence to pass without comment and his stomach had been cramped with nerves anticipating his father's wrath. He wouldn't be picked out or made any kind of embarrassing example at school, that hadn't bothered him, but at home there'd be that disappointment thing that parents went in for. Parents like his who went in for Personal Trust specialized in hurt silence and the tight-lipped ‘We didn't expect this,' as if that could be even halfway true – if you've got a teenager you get trouble, it's the way life's arranged. What had made
that
particular afternoon blissfully worthwhile had been that, in the scramble for seats, Amanda Goodbody had somehow ended up sitting next to him. Her thigh was squeezed against his in the dark, only an accidental brush of the hand away from being flesh against flesh that back then had only recently started doing serious lusting. He hadn't, now he came to think of it, really entertained the thought of anyone else as a serious object of adoration since then.

This time though, for the rerun of
Blue Juice
, he was in Hayley Mason's bedroom. Propped up on a heap of pillows in Hayley Mason's single bed, watching her video and sharing Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice-cream straight from the tub. He was contentedly sated from sex with the never-before-considered, all-enveloping Hayley, a girl with warm welcoming flesh that had moved about softly beneath him like feathers in a plump new duvet. If Amanda Goodbody walked in now, all long, hard-muscled thighs and a waist as bony and thin as a violin body, declaring undying love and lust for him, he could honestly say she'd be told to go away and forget it. Hayley had no complications, no complexes, no self-doubts. She was friendly and direct. She had a taste for beach life, detective novels, football, sex and some, but not all, of the bands that he liked. She planned a year off after A levels (no
angst
about failing: you worked, you passed) with a six-month job in London and four months visiting relations in Australia, followed by teacher training. She did not yearn for fame, a life more thrilling, men not attainable, hair that was blonder or a size ten body. Petroc, licking the spoon and passing it over to her, thought that this time it just might be love. Restful, peaceful, blissful love.