‘Probably.’
‘I expect you want a drink.’ To go with the fourteen I clearly had inside me.
‘Well…’
Cliff came in. While Sandra asked him if the pub had been fun and he told her it had been, thanks, I watched him notice, wonder what he had done, think of something, think surely not for Christ’s sake, and resign himself. He widened his eyes at me but said nothing. I said nothing. In fact all three of us said nothing, pretty near literally, until Sandra went out to the kitchen. When he was sure she was clear he opened his mouth to start, but the phone rang first.
He went across the room and answered it. ‘Yes,’ he said, and held the handset out to me with a completely blank and completely informative face.
‘Oh Stanley, thank God you’re there,’ said Susan’s voice, strained but calm. ‘I was going to give up if you weren’t. Can you ever forgive me?’
‘What for?’ I said.
‘Well, those terrible things I said to you.
‘Oh, those.’
While she hurried on about having been so desperately frightened and upset and one thing and another I turned towards Cliff, who did the brief lift of the chin South London people use to mean Told you so or Here we go again or Wouldn’t you bleeding know. People elsewhere too, I dare say. Perhaps all over the world.
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