by Sue Welfare
Kate looked at him; it didn’t seem likely. Having moved on from Maggie, Malcolm was currently substituting for Julie in the nibbles department, manfully shouldering his way through the throng, wielding a dish of Pringles, closely marked by Keith who appeared to be in charge of the dip and paper plates.
‘Really, and what does Malcolm do?’ Kate said, wondering if the sarcasm she could hear inside her head was as obvious on the outside.
‘Laser microscopy, he’s involved in a government research project, it’s all very hush-hush. Near Cambridge. Although he’s been spending a lot of time in London recently, lecturing.’
Kate looked again across the patio at their host. Seems that she hadn’t been far out after all. Malcolm looked like just the kind of little boy who used to set fire to ants with a magnifying glass.
‘I think I’d better go and give him a hand. We really must catch up some time,’ said Julie.’ How long are you home for?’
‘Just until the end of the week.’
‘Right, I’ll try and pop in before you go then. Can I get you anything to drink? A little white wine? Or how about a nice cup of tea if you’re driving? We’ve set up the bar in the utility room – through the back of the garage and turn left.’
Kate waved her away. ‘It’s okay, I’m sure I can find it. You go and help Malcolm, I’ll be fine, honestly. I’ve got to go and get Mum’s crutches. I’ll get a drink when I come back.’
‘If you’re certain.’
It was one of the few things in life Kate was certain about. She smiled. ‘Honestly.’
Julie, beaming with gratitude, hurried back into the fray while Kate took a long hard look around before heading back towards the gate, wondering again why it was she had come.
Julie’s new home was large, rectangular, built in the mid seventies in the pale yellow brick pre-feature era. There wasn’t a plastic Doric column, a fake beam or a fibreglass coping stone anywhere in sight, just a rather bleak utilitarian box faced with UPV windows and an air of expensive practicality. The estate they were on, Church Pines, consisted of ten or so large individually designed houses and about the same number of big sprawling bungalows, which now would have been called executive dwellings, and had been built when Kate was a kid.
She remembered being invited to a birthday party in the house across from Julie’s that belonged to her dad’s bank manager and it was still those kind of people that were attracted to Church Pines, although it wasn’t a place that was naturally attractive to children. Arranged around a neatly winding cul-de-sac two sides of estate abutted the churchyard at the back and to the right, with an old people’s home across the road in front of it, Victorian carrstone town houses were strung out along the remaining side.
The people who lived there then and now were quietly, discreetly wealthy professionals who had got keeping themselves to themselves down to a fine art. The planners had managed to retain all the mature trees which for some reason added to the air of genteel exclusivity. Just the place for a laser expert, thought Kate, picking her way towards the back gate across the grass and sunken stepping stones. High heels hadn’t been such a good idea either.
She nodded and smiled her way through Julie’s guests but didn’t hold eye contact for more than a few seconds, which seemed to work, certainly nobody came over to ask her how she was or who she was or try to engage her in conversation. It wasn’t that Kate didn’t recognise any of the faces, more that she couldn’t be bothered to talk to them and play join the dots to connect up the last eighteen or so years of their different lives.
‘So what did you do at uni? Did you get married to What’s-his-face in spite of that thing at the leavers’ ball? Oh, you were that thing at the leavers, ball,’ all seemed a bit superfluous bearing in mind her whole life was hanging in shreds.
When she got back a few minutes later, Maggie was still enthroned beneath the awning and seemed happy enough. Painkillers or no painkillers, she was hitting the Cab Sav like there was no tomorrow and was talking to some tall, good-looking man, who was managing to look distinguished and important while wearing a baggy grey tee-shirt and jeans.
Despite his white hair it certainly didn’t look as if they were talking about hernias and haemorrhoids and heartburn. He was laughing at something she’d just said. Maggie too. Maybe the exchange of medical notes came later.
Kate sighed, slipped her the crutches and went inside. Ten minutes into the party and already her mother was flirting outrageously and partying like she was born to it; there was just no stopping some people.
Kate took a long pull on the drink she had found in the utility room being ladled out by someone’s elderly aunt and looked long and hard at Maggie. Maybe maturity wasn’t such a bad deal after all. As Mr Tall and Distinguished topped up Maggie’s glass Kate glanced down at her own, half full of a lurid pink non-alcoholic punch. It would be really good to go out and get totally and utterly wasted. Kate couldn’t remember the last time she’d done anything even mildly outrageous.
‘Are you all right?’ Maggie mouthed as their eyes met.
Kate mimed a gesture that implied she was choking.
Maggie raised a single eyebrow and for the millionth time in her life Kate wished she could do that. It was the perfect comment, the perfect exclamation point, for so many social situations.
The garden – or at least the paved terrace around the house – was slowly filling up with guests. Kate recognised Julie’s parents, who probably still couldn’t believe their luck that their tearaway teenager had finally grown up, got a job in the NHS, and married a man who zapped things with sharp pointy lights and was quite obviously earning a mint.
Beyond the strings of lights slung under the awning, the rest of the garden was very gently slipping into soft golds of early evening. Kate headed back down the garden to where she and Maggie had come in, making out that she was exploring what passed for the grounds. The garden was large and had been professionally landscaped at some stage; no one but a pro would build raised beds like that, all swoops and banks and French curves, full of cleverly arranged multi-colour toning and/or contrasting scrubs.
There were a couple of rustic benches at the bottom tucked out of the way in carefully contrived arbours. As Kate headed towards them, she noticed, tucked away amongst bushes and creepers, that there was a gate in a much older side wall on the boundary. It just had to lead into the churchyard.
It was too good a chance to miss. Kate glanced back over her shoulder; the evening breeze carried a low babble of voices towards her like a bank of fog. It would be bliss to slip away, and let’s face it, she thought, easing the gate open, no one other than Maggie would give a shit where she was.
It was a bit of a struggle to get the gate to run over the grass behind it, although presumably there had to be a right of way, as someone in the not too distant past had mowed a path right up to the door into the garden. Kate couldn’t quite close the gate but surely that didn’t matter either.
Beyond the garden the burial ground, surrounded by ancient yews and Scots pine and the overhanging branches of trees that Kate couldn’t name, was totally silent, the air heavy with the smell of pine resin and the accumulated heat of the long hot day. Here the graves were so old that someone had decided to give up the fight and let the area run wild.
Grave markers and tombs weathered down to standing stones sprang up between rills of tall swaying grass, dog roses clambered up over fallen trees and tombs alike. Here and there groups of stones had vanished entirely beneath a carpet of green, parcelled together by great plaits of pale pink convolvulus, morning glory, its eyes already closing against the fading light.
It was exquisite. Kate walked for a while until she found a place that suited her mood. Off the mown path, under the spread of an ageing conifer, she sat down on a low tomb, dappled with patches of lichen, and tipped her face up to catch the last rays of the sun. She took a deep breath, feeling the tension ebb out of her body. No phones, no old friends, no Joe, no Maggie, and a
s the heat and stillness of the day brought her to the very edge of sleep, no thoughts. Remarkable. Peace at last, just the sound of her breath rising and falling. Bliss.
Kate had no idea how long she had been sitting there like a lizard on a hot rock, when she heard a noise, a rustling close by, and then a male voice. ‘Whoops. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
Kate opened one eye, very slowly.
There was a man standing directly in her sunlight. He was tall and, back-lit, had taken on a celestial corona, although one thing Kate was pretty certain of was that this wasn’t the angel Gabriel unless he had taken to wearing Bermudas and trainers on his days off.
‘Are you okay?’ he said pleasantly.
Kate opened the other eye. ‘I was until you came along.’
His face looked familiar in that terrible been-to-school-together, old friend of the family sort of way.
He grinned; it seemed that he recognised her too. ‘Hi, how’re you doing?’
Kate looked him up and down. ‘Have we met before?’ she said, the effort of remembering making her frown.
The grin broadened out a notch or two. ‘You could say that we ran into each other earlier in the week.’
Oh God, oh yes, she had it now. Had her memory got that bad? ‘Andrew Taylor, the crazy vet,’ Kate groaned, without thinking.
‘Kate Sutherland, the mad angry woman,’ he retorted. It was a brave thing to say and just the right thing because it made Kate laugh.
He indicated the tomb next to her own. ‘May
‘Help yourself, although I’m not sure that it’s me you should be asking,’ she said, rubbing the weathered letters on one of the side panels. But the vet sat down anyway.
‘I didn’t expect to see you here. Have you kept in touch with Julie since you left school?’ he asked, nodding back towards the house.
‘Me? No, good God no, I ran into her yesterday while I was in town.’
‘Driving were you?’ he laughed.
‘No,’ Kate growled.
‘Joke,’ he said, holding his hands up in surrender.
‘How about you?’
‘No, I barely knew her at school,’ he said. ‘Julie came down to register her pets for inoculations and to buy some worm tablets and stuff a few weeks ago. She’s been down to the surgery a couple of times since then. To be honest, I didn’t recognise her until she told me who she was. She remembered me though and one or two things about me that I’d prefer to forget.’
‘And she invited you to her house-warming?’ asked Kate incredulously. Maybe Julie hadn’t changed her spots after all. Andrew was good-looking in a James Herriott-ish way and despite the quickfire replies there was something slightly selfconscious about the way he spoke and moved, a kind of endearing boyishness that Kate could see was very attractive, if you liked that sort of thing.
Kate resisted the temptation to ask him if he played any team games.
Andrew reddened. ‘No, well not exactly. It turns out by pure coincidence that I was at college at the same time, same place as … as … What’s-his-name.’ He screwed up his nose. Seeing that moment’s hesitation told Kate everything she needed to know. He and Malcolm were far from bosom buddies, which oddly gave Kate a real sense of relief. In fact, from the expression on Andrew’s face, he could barely remember Malcolm at all or better still perhaps had loathed him. Presumably Julie had put two and two and a veterinary certificate on the wall together and come up with some warm fuzzy connection.
‘Malcolm,’ Kate offered.
He nodded. ‘That’s it, Malcolm. I’m not very good with names.’
There was a few moments’ silence and then he said, ‘Sorry, I’m not very good at social chitchat either really – better with hamsters. Do you want to talk? Did we catch up the other day? Did you tell me if you were married or what you did or anything?’
Kate shook her head. ‘God no, I was way too angry to exchange any of the social pleasantries.’
‘Right, I thought so,’ he said and extended the hand that didn’t have a glass in it. She noticed that he too was drinking lurid pink pop. ‘Hello, my name is Andrew Taylor. I’m a local vet.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Andrew. I’m Kate, Kate Harvey. I’m in PR, freelance, two kids, a large mortgage and a black Golf.’
His grip was as warm and strong as it had been before. He smiled pleasantly, obviously waiting for her to say something else. Kate took a sip of punch, playing for time. Did she go for the nice weather we’ve been having, isn’t it a beautiful evening conversation or …
‘You look absolutely knackered,’ he said.
Kate glared at him. Bloody hell and after all the time she’d spent in the bathroom with the concealer stick and light-reflective foundation. ‘Well, how very kind of you to notice,’ she snapped.
‘No, I didn’t mean it like that.’ He reddened again. ‘What I meant to say was are you okay? I wondered if you weren’t feeling well or something.’
Kate’s expression held. ‘What – were you planning to rub my belly and look to see if my nose was cold?’
He shrugged. ‘It works on most of my patients,’ and then added, ‘No, it’s just that you’re sitting out here all on your own, not at the party. I just wondered,’ his voice tailed off, ‘you know.’
‘You aren’t at the party either.’
‘I don’t really know anybody,’ he said lamely, sipping the lurid pink punch.
‘Me neither.’ Kate paused for an instant. ‘Actually, that’s not strictly true. We both know a lot of the people here or at least I used to know a lot of them, a long time ago when life was simple, when the days were long and sunny and the winters short sharp and snowy, but I’m not really in the mood for small talk tonight. I brought my mum. I thought it would do her good to get out of the house for a while.’ Kate didn’t add she was running away from the phone.
‘The woman on the patio in the wheelchair?’
‘You were introduced?’
‘Yes, by Julie, but I would have guessed anyway. You look very much alike, you know.’ He looked Kate up and down as if ticking off the similarities. ‘She’s an interesting woman.’
Kate snorted. ‘She most certainly is. When I left, she was flirting outrageously with some grey-haired bloke in a tee-shirt –’
‘My boss.’
‘Julie invited him too? Good God, there’s no stopping that woman. What excuse did she use on him? Do they use the same washing powder? Bump into each other at Tesco’s?’ Kate looked down suspiciously at the punch wondering whether maybe one of the old aunties had spiked it with a bottle of vodka. She wasn’t normally this grumpy or sharp.
‘No, I think Malcolm knows him. They are on some kind of rural development committee together.’
‘Right.’ Kate looked back towards the garden wall. There were no other signs of life, although she could just catch the tail end of a tune wafting towards her on the breeze, and just a hint of fried onions that suggested they’d finally got the barbecue fired up. ‘Couldn’t you persuade your wife to come along? Or is she up there manning the buffet, selflessly doling out the doilies?’
‘No. Actually I’m here on my own; I’m widowed. That’s one of the reasons I came back to England with the kids.’
It was Kate’s turn to blush. ‘God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.’
He waved her embarrassment away. ‘No reason at all why you should. She died seven years ago now, I still miss her – we’ve got two boys – twelve and thirteen. Makes me feel terribly old. How about you?’
‘I’ve got two boys too. Twelve and fifteen going on forty.’
‘And a husband?’
Kate looked up at him, knowing that she had hesitated for a split second too long before replying.
‘Sorry,’ he began. ‘If it’s painful, I’ll shut up – none of my business.’
‘No, no you’re fine, unfortunately he’s forty going on fifteen, all hormones, drink and misplaced lust, you know how it is,’ Kate said with a he
artiness she couldn’t quite sustain and then paused and caught his eye. ‘Sorry, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m in a weird place at the moment.’
They both looked round the deserted overrun graveyard, aware of the little squirm of awkwardness, and then Kate laughed and said, ‘Actually I suppose we’re both in a pretty weird place, or do you normally spend your evenings camped out on a tomb drinking liquid nougat?’ It was enough to break the tension.
Andrew laughed. ‘Not quite so often these days. How long are you staying in Denham for, a week? A month? The rest of your life? Your mum said you’d come up to give her a hand while her partner was away –’
Kate grinned. Guy was her partner now, was he?
‘I’ll be here till Friday.’ She saw a flicker of disappointment pass over his face which, although it surprised her, for some reason prompted her to add, ‘but I’m sure I’ll be back pretty soon. Mum’s going to have that cast on for a while.’
‘Good, I mean, I don’t mean good, not really. I was just wondering. I know this might sound a bit forward but …’ He blushed so hard that Kate leant forward to touch him.
‘What is it?’
‘I was wondering if you might like to go out to lunch with me sometime?’
Kate stared at him. She felt her jaw drop. ‘What?’ she snapped. It sounded rude and abrupt, but it was such a surprise. On the other end of the tombstone Andrew flinched as if she’d hit him.
‘Sorry,’ he blustered, standing up abruptly. ‘Bit insensitive of me. It was – just – I really didn’t mean to offend you, it was only a thought, you know. Sorry, sorry.’ He looked so uncomfortable. Kate was on her feet before she knew quite what she was doing and caught hold of his arm to stop him from scuttling back to the party.
‘Please don’t apologise, Andrew. That was unbelievably rude of me, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. Nobody’s asked me out in God knows how long.’ Kate blushed furiously in case she had misinterpreted him. ‘You were asking me out, weren’t you? That was a date thing, not just an invitation to a friendly, catch up let’s talk about school days lunch, was it?’ Kate looked up into his face for clues and saw nothing that was of any help whatsoever, so she pressed on. The words dried up in her throat.
