About Last Night . . .

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘I was there just a minute ago, having a meeting with him. Daniel tends to get a bit flummoxed with the commercial side.’

  ‘Ah. Well, that’s what fathers are for.’

  They smiled at one another.

  ‘Well, Henri, it was lovely to see you,’ I said, breaking the silence. My heart was pounding.

  ‘And you too, Molly.’ He gave me a steady gaze. ‘Perhaps we’ll see each other again?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I breathed.

  ‘You know where I am.’ He inclined his head back towards his shop’s façade. He gave me a last, searching look and, with that, he turned and walked back into the heart of the party he was clearly hosting, no doubt to launch his latest finds, all exquisite and critically acclaimed. I wondered if I’d read about them in the arts pages of the Sunday Times. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d sat at my kitchen table and devoured a review of one of his exhibitions. I watched him go.

  ‘So,’ said Felix jovially, taking my arm. ‘Shall we go?’

  I nodded, finding myself unable to speak. From the direction of Grosvenor Square a taxi appeared, yellow light shining, heading towards us. A doorman at Scott’s further down made his way towards it but Felix was quicker: he shot his hand in the air and walked to the kerb, keeping his eyes on it, making sure it had seen us. It gave me a few moments. We climbed aboard, and inside its black leather depths – like the inside of a camera, I always felt, windows like eyes on to the world – I steadied myself, listened to Felix’s chatter about his day, and smiled and nodded appropriately.

  London passed by. Within moments we were purring out of the quiet, prohibitively expensive world of art and antiques housed in grand, red-brick former homes into the bustling and more transparently commercial streets of Piccadilly. From there we headed south, down towards the river, to trundle along the Embankment and across a bridge and beyond. At length I joined in the conversation, and we kept up a light social chit-chat. I even threw back my head and laughed on occasion. But I was badly jolted. Seeing Henri had knocked the stuffing out of me. Blown out my flame. So many latent emotions, buried deep, had been stirred. Emotions about him, Henri, to be sure, about how I’d felt back then, but also about David. I opened the window for some air. Felt the breeze cool my hot cheeks and ruffle my hair.

  I wondered what he’d think of me, my husband: sailing off to have my supper cooked for me quite a long way from home – the unfamiliar surroundings of Brick Lane, the warehouses, the edgy and alternative shops flashed by – tomorrow’s knickers in a carrier bag. I gulped and for a moment was transported back to a time when, at this stage of the year, the Easter holidays, we’d be at Daymer Bay in Cornwall, in a rented cottage on the cliffs overlooking the beach. We found it too crowded in the summer so always went then, and sometimes had blissful weather, like we were having now. At the fringe of the beach David would have Nico on his shoulders, negotiating sharp rocks to find the best pools where he knew there’d be crabs – he’d already found them on our stroll along the beach together the previous evening whilst the children had been asleep but would pretend he’d found them with them. I’d be holding Minna’s hand and Lucy would be running ahead. Very happy days. Days before I’d taken all that for granted, played the bored housewife, taken another man, soured our love until it curdled badly, and suddenly, he wasn’t just lost to me in my heart – we both knew it wouldn’t be the same again, hadn’t he said so in our Wandsworth kitchen? He was dead. David was dead.

  Perhaps I hadn’t done enough time, I thought with a lurch, clutching the taxi-door handle and sucking in the fresh air. Perhaps six years wasn’t sufficient for what I’d done; maybe I hadn’t completed my penance. I glanced at Felix’s profile as we drew up outside an austere grey terraced house. He leaned forward to open the taxi door. On the other hand, all I was doing was having supper with a very nice man – something I knew David would thoroughly approve of after years on my own – calling a taxi, and going back to Earls Court. To our daughter’s flat. Yes, of course. I felt a bit better, calmer. I even gave a genuine smile as Felix helped me out of the cab. I felt my equilibrium return.

  Inside the rather dark, narrow townhouse, Felix got us both a drink and I glanced around the sitting room while he was in the kitchen. I knew I’d normally pay much more attention to the canvases on the walls, the huge swathes of colour and the dramatic lighting, the minimalist décor, the plain white brick walls, the spiral staircase, the fresco at one end, the studio across the hall which I barely even poked my nose in, just glimpsed all sorts of strange and wonderful creations divined from what looked like copper piping and black tubing. I’d dreamed of drinking in every detail, every nuance, comparing and contrasting later with my books at home, but my thirst, together with my curiosity, had dissipated. Temporarily, of course. It would return. I was just a bit out of sorts, that was all. A bit bouleversée, as someone, not a million miles away, would put it.

  Felix returned with two glasses. Champagne again, I noticed, although I determined not to drink too much. We sipped and we smiled and we chatted. After I’d asked a few polite questions about the fresco on the back wall and we’d walked across to study it – one of his, obviously – I followed him into the kitchen and sat on a stool whilst he chopped garlic and sliced chicken breasts. I even did a bit of chopping myself and together we assembled the wherewithal for a stir-fry. Nothing too fancy, I was pleased to note: no three-course meal complete with candles and mood music, just something simple to eat at the small island, side by side, together with a bottle of red wine.

  ‘You’re distracted,’ he said eventually as a pause ensued for longer than might be deemed entirely comfortable.

  I came to. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Since you saw Henri Defois?’ he ventured gently.

  I thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yes. Henri and I were lovers. I haven’t seen him for five years. I nearly broke up my marriage for him. In fact … I did break up my marriage. Indirectly.’

  Felix didn’t say anything. He watched me with interest. At length he spoke. ‘And his marriage?’

  ‘Well, that’s the strange thing. I learned tonight that his wife has left him. Long ago. For a friend of ours. I never knew.’

  He nodded, pensive. ‘Ah. So he is single. Is that what you were thinking in the taxi, and now, as you sit having supper with me?’ His eyes were kind: teasing, almost. Beautiful green eyes flecked with gold. Like a tiger’s.

  I smiled back. ‘Of course not, Felix. It was years ago and I’d never go back. I genuinely wasn’t thinking that. For complicated, personal reasons I could never go back, but it certainly jolted me.’

  ‘Seeing him, or hearing his wife had left him?’

  I considered this. ‘Both. I’d always felt a huge amount of guilt about Caroline, but it seems it wasn’t necessary.’

  I remembered how it had threatened to consume me at times: my betrayal of my dear friend down the road. I wondered how consumed Caroline had been for her dear friend Susie? No less than I was, for certain. Caroline was a sweet girl. God, we’d all been at it, I thought with a stab of horror. An evening at our house in Bolingbroke Road sprang to mind: a barbecue, at the height of my infatuation with Henri, just before Paris. Susie and Giles, Caroline and Henri – they’d all been there. I remembered tripping back and forth from house to garden with salads and sauces, feeling both on fire and terribly guilty. So Caroline had been feeling the same. With Giles beside her. Had she guessed about us, I wondered? About me and Henri? And did it suit her to ignore it? Or did she have absolutely no idea? I recalled the six of us, laughing around a candlelit table at the bottom of the garden in the long grass under the two cherry trees, the ones I’d hung with tea lights and laughingly called The Orchard, where I’d sown wild flowers and placed an old white beehive I’d found on eBay: empty, of course, the beehive, just as the laughter had been around that table. Empty friendships. Rotten lives.

  ‘Well, as you saw, I don’t know Defois well, but I know of him and I can assure y
ou he hasn’t been that lonely since she’s gone.’

  I returned to the present: glanced at Felix, startled. ‘Oh really?’

  Felix made a face and shrugged expansively. ‘For sure, why not? Your wife leaves you, you’re a good-looking Frenchman, you have a point to prove. There are lots of very attractive women in the art world.’

  ‘Anyone in particular?’ I thought of his purported lack of Significant Other.

  ‘Well, Françoise Courbet for a bit, but listen, I’d be spreading gossip to say I knew more than that. Jemima Warburton too, very glam, but hey, he’s a single man. What d’you expect? Five years of sackcloth and ashes?’

  I smiled. ‘Of course not.’ I resumed my meal, although I wasn’t terribly hungry. As I ate, I caught sight of a bundle of papers on the island, tied with a familiar pink ribbon like the ones that habitually bound David’s cases. A brief ribbon.

  ‘Got a court case?’ I asked with a smile, changing the subject.

  ‘Hm?’ He followed my eyes. ‘Oh, that. Lord, no, it’s just a document. I had it drawn up about the house.’ He looked serious for a moment. Put down his fork. ‘I want it all to be signed and legal for your sake, Molly. I don’t want any loose verbal agreement that you suddenly feel panicky about. I want you to know exactly what you’re doing, what you’re letting yourself in for, with no bullshit.’

  I smiled, touched. ‘That is so kind.’ I reached out and drew the document towards me, turning it round so I could see: it was indeed headed ‘32 Lastow Mews’.

  ‘And also you need to know that you can change your mind at any moment. But now is not the time.’ He pushed it away.

  I pulled the document back. ‘No, now is the time, actually, Felix.’

  I knew why, too. Suddenly I was feeling a bit shabby. I wanted to do something good. Prove to myself I was a decent person, not one of those philandering adulterers in the moonlit back garden with their false smiles and their treacherous laughter, as artificial as the rus in urbe I’d created. I thought of Susie and David, neither of whom would have dreamed of being duplicitous. They just didn’t have it in them. They were good people. Decent people. I wanted to be like them. And now that I knew David had been fond of Cuthbert, had supported him despite his father, I absolutely knew he would have wanted me to do this.

  ‘Where do I sign?’ I flipped through.

  He laughed. ‘Nowhere, until you’ve read it. You really want to do this now? Tonight?’

  ‘I really do.’

  He shrugged. ‘OK. You win. I’ll make some coffee and you have a perusal. If there’s anything at all you don’t understand, just shout.’

  He slid from his bar stool and went to administer to some complicated, hissing machine in the corner, the like of which all urbane folk seem to possess these days. No doubt I’d have had one too had I stayed in London, but instead, like a lot of life, it had passed me by. Time to catch up. I turned to look at the document.

  It wasn’t long, only about six or seven pages, and not hard to understand. It just rambled on about how the house was only to be rented at such a low rate during Robert’s lifetime, and how I, Molly Faulkner, had authority to call a halt at any time to the arrangement, should I so wish. There was nothing terribly binding at all, and it was all very much slanted in my favour, which was sweet of him. Naturally the biro I managed to find in my bag didn’t work and as I rummaged for another, I drew out the tampon case Lucy had given me years ago. Embarrassed by her mother producing items of an intimate nature instead of pens, she’d given me the plastic cover. My sensible daughter. Hm. Perhaps she should take a look at this? Robin, even. He was a clever boy and I knew he drew up loads of contracts. This wouldn’t be a problem at all. And perhaps, I wondered cravenly, I could ask Robin, without alerting Lucy? No, that would be going round her. I couldn’t do that. I remembered the tweedy, convivial solicitor in South Kensington and narrowed my eyes thoughtfully.

  ‘Pen not working?’ Felix turned from the cafetière in the corner.

  ‘Oh – hopeless, no.’ I flourished the broken one. ‘But—’

  ‘Here.’ He tossed me another one from the side.

  ‘Thanks.’ I looked at it doubtfully. ‘But actually, I was thinking … do you mind if I take it away? Show my bossy daughter, perhaps?’ I rolled my eyes and grimaced.

  ‘Of course not. God, there’s no rush at all, I was only thinking of you.’ He came across and stood close to me, a coffee in each hand. He put them on the island then ran a fingertip down my cheek. ‘You look lovely tonight, Molly, did I even manage to mention that?’

  I felt my heart pump like a teenager. ‘Not … in so many words.’

  ‘Well, you do. And don’t worry about the document. I’ll run through it with you later, if you like. Why don’t we take our coffee next door?’

  He picked up the tiny mugs and led the way through into the drawing room, where, opposite the fireplace, a huge, claret-coloured sofa loomed under dim lights. This, I supposed, was more what I’d expected, but by now I’d drunk quite a lot of champagne and more red wine than I’d intended and I wasn’t going to object. Anyway, it was only coffee.

  We sat very close on the sofa and sipped our espressos and talked in low voices, almost as if people were listening. At length he slid an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. I turned my face up to his and he kissed me, gently, as he’d kissed me in the club, pausing occasionally, as if to register my reaction as he looked into my eyes, which was sweet and considerate, but as I say, it was exactly as he’d kissed me in the club. And somehow, because of that, it felt slightly practised. A bit like a routine. Certainly it had none of the urgency and passion of … damn. I drew back a moment. Felix smiled.

  ‘Something wrong?’ he breathed.

  ‘No, no.’ I went back for more. But there was that routine thing again, the pause between the soft, fluttering kisses to gaze into my eyes, and there was that man again. Cropping up when I didn’t want him. With none of the urgency and passion, I’d been thinking, not of Henri, and certainly not of David, but of that irritating incident back home, when I’d been clasped so fiercely and kissed so very comprehensively by that bloody man in his bloody pickup truck. Bloody Paddy Campbell.

  18

  Felix regarded me quizzically, his green eyes very close to mine. ‘Something wrong?’ he murmured.

  ‘Sorry,’ I breathed. ‘Something – just came to mind. It will go.’ I willed it away, or rather them away. Paddy Campbell’s eyes. Dark and intense.

  Felix nodded understandingly. ‘Your husband?’

  It seemed prudent to lie. Not say no, another man, to which Felix would say ‘Henri Defois?’ and I’d have to say, no, another one. So many men. An embarrassment of menfolk. What was the collective noun, I wondered? Not a harem, obviously … a machismo?

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ I gulped.

  ‘It’s too soon,’ he said gently; he stroked a line down my cheek with his fingertip, which was nice, but again, a bit considered. He’d done it in the kitchen. Well for heaven’s sake, he was bound to have his share of moves, wasn’t he, at his age? Even I had some moves. Couldn’t quite remember what they were right now, but I had some. Up my sleeve. For later. Yes, later, because disappointingly, and all my fault of course, the moment seemed to have passed. Certainly for Felix. He was disentangling himself from our embrace and leaning forward towards the coffee table from where, on top of a pile of glossy art books, he plucked the document, which seemed to have shed its pink ribbon and made its way through from the kitchen to join us. He sank back into the sofa with it and smiled.

  ‘Tell you what, let’s look at this instead, and you tell me anything you don’t understand.’ He drew a pen from his top pocket. ‘If there’s anything at all, I’ll put an asterisk by it for you.’

  ‘OK,’ I agreed, rather relieved by the lack of pressure on the seduction front. God, he was a nice man. No rush. In no hurry to get me into bed. We might not even make it there tonight; might take it much more slowly. So su
btle. Lovely. Obviously I hadn’t had sex for five years, but what was one more night?

  He put his arm around me and I curled up against him on the sofa, which was delightfully cosy and quite homely. And I mean, who knows, we might get friendly again later: plenty of time.

  ‘Incidentally, did I tell you I’ve had this looked over by my lawyer?’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘Oh yes, it’s all kosher.’

  ‘Oh good. That’s excellent, Lucy will like that.’

  ‘Here, here’s his card, you’re welcome to ring him.’ He drew a business card from his pocket and gave it to me. I felt embarrassed.

  ‘Oh no, I won’t do that. If you’ve had it checked, it’s fine.’

  ‘OK. Well, you read it through. I’m just going to bung those plates in the dishwasher.’

  ‘Oh – d’you want me to …?’ I made to get up.

  ‘No, no, you stay here.’ He kissed my forehead, smiled and got to his feet. ‘I’m a bit anal like that, on the domestic front.’

  As he withdrew and started clattering around in the kitchen, my phone buzzed in my bag on the floor. I retrieved it and glanced at the message. It was from Nico.

  ‘Any danger of you coming home so I can resume normal teenage life or should I resign myself to being a farmer?’

  I texted back quickly. ‘So sorry darling, I’ll be back tomorrow. Anything particular you’d like to do?’

  ‘Get shitfaced with my mates.’

  Presumably he meant tonight. Nico only thought in the moment. And presumably he meant at Derek or Jake’s house – neither boy had transport – which meant he’d be too pissed to drive home and have to stay over, and then wouldn’t wake up until tomorrow afternoon and none of the animals would be fed or watered. Although actually, it was just the dogs, I thought: the livestock were fine at this time of year, no hay or concentrate needed, and although Nutty and Tufty usually came in during the day, they wouldn’t mind staying out. And surely the dogs could cross their legs until I got back? Let’s face it, they’d had enough practice.