‘It’s at times like this I wished I smoked,’ he remarked, half turning to acknowledge her approach. ‘At such moments a man needs a pipe, don’t you think, something to lend a philosophical air with which to contemplate the stars.’ As he talked, he gently took her hand and slipped it into his jacket pocket. ‘Sorry. I know I screwed up. Something clicked and I couldn’t help myself.’ They interlaced fingers, hers warm, his icy cold.
‘Oh, sod the Taverners.’
‘Do you think if I hung around for twenty years they might get to like me?’
‘It wasn’t that they didn’t like you. They don’t know you.’
‘He wasn’t so bad – when he could get a word in. But as for her –’ he rolled his eyes – ‘or was I imagining things?’
‘No, you weren’t,’ she admitted. ‘Libby was disgraceful. But so were you.’ Frances giggled suddenly, remembering the look of horror on Libby’s face during the course of Daniel’s parting remarks. Daniel began to laugh too, until the pair of them were doubled up helplessly, clinging to the gate for support. Overhead a screen of grey drifted across the face of the moon, like a scarf muffling a smile.
Chapter Twenty-Six
After worrying about it half the night, Frances decided that the best – the only – tactic for coping with Libby was to confront the matter head on.
‘Thank you again for dinner – I’m afraid Daniel found the whole experience somewhat intimidating,’ she burst out, with the door jingle of the shop still tinkling behind her.
‘It was never our intention to frighten him,’ Libby replied dryly, wanting to make light of the matter, but the edge in her voice betraying harder, deeper feelings with which she was still trying to come to terms. That her expectations of a twitchy academic with a mousy bush of hair and acne scars had been cruelly disappointed was not a matter she felt prepared to discuss with anyone, least of all Frances herself. The lean, striking looks of Daniel Groves had thrown her off balance from the start. He was like some George Clooney of the Home Counties; the kind of lover most middle-aged women would not even presume to include in their fantasies, let alone stumble across in real life. Glimpsing the two of them standing together at the far end of her sitting room, Frances, as radiant as a recently deflowered virgin, pressed into the curve of his arm as if her body had been moulded solely for that purpose, had given Libby quite a jolt. A part of her had wanted to protest out loud at the almost tangible sense of their shared intimacy, the horrible, excluding intensity of it.
‘It was bound to be awkward at first,’ ventured Frances. ‘Especially with Daniel feeling so shy—’
‘Yes, I suppose it was,’ cut in Libby. ‘Never mind. Think nothing of it. I’m sure he’s a thoroughly nice…man.’ Libby only managed to stop herself saying ‘boy’ at the last minute, acknowledging that her motive for using such a term would have been pure unkindness. In spite of the many flaws of their recent encounter, it was clear to her that Daniel Groves was perfectly adult, both in his intellect and his appearance. That he had drunk an enormous quantity of alcohol was not something which Libby felt in any position to judge too harshly either. The next morning Alistair felt so bad he had decided to take the day off, while she had filched two of his extra strength migraine painkillers before being able to face the mêlée of family breakfast. When the girls declared that their ailing father had given them permission to use his car for a shopping expedition into Hexford after school, instead of ranting about homework she gave the most cursory of mumbles about obeying the Highway Code.
As Libby’s headache receded, images from the previous evening came back to her more clearly, sharpening her understanding of why she had felt so affronted and bringing little comfort in the process. Daniel’s early silences and subsequent outspokenness may well have derived from shyness; but behind that Libby, in her fatigued and anxious state, felt sure there had lurked a desire to mock his hosts’ middle-aged mundanity. As if he knew that mentioning sex like that would cut to the bone. As if he wanted to make her feel even worse about the fact that recently she and Alistair made love twice a month if they were lucky, and even then performing the act in a shameful blur of exhausted detachment. A part of her wished she had possessed the courage to scream that once she and Alistair had shagged every night too, but that things changed, that worries about money and children blocked paths to pleasure with all the deadening efficacy of the most potent anaesthesia. Staring after the pair of them as they left the kitchen, such thoughts had for a brief moment, crystallised into pure, debilitating envy. When Alistair returned from seeing them to the front door, she did not dare to look at him, out of shame, and a small fear that the sight of the familiar, deepening lines on his face might prompt not fondness, but powerless dissatisfaction. Soured by the guilt of such unedifying and uncharitable sentiments, she resisted a meaty post mortem on the evening’s events and told him off for not helping her enough instead, for failing even to stagger towards the kettle with the cafetière. Whereupon Alistair had added to her state of aggravation by meekly apologising and proceeding not only to help stack the dishwasher but to commit the virtually unprecedented act of rinsing the plates under the tap before he did so. The subject of Frances and Daniel wasn’t broached directly by either of them until they were crawling into bed, when Libby could not resist opening proceedings by saying smartly, ‘Of course, it can’t last.’
Alistair stretched, emitting a sleepy groan. ‘Why ever not?’ He turned on his side and pulled his pillow round his face. ‘An impudent bastard, but somehow I couldn’t help liking him. Not what I was expecting at all. Bloody good show for Frances, that’s what I say – there’s clearly more to the old girl than I thought.’ He closed his eyes, adding dreamily, ‘Rather them than me, mind you, no plain sailing…’ As he spoke he groped across the bed for the familiar frame of his wife, fondly patting the round of her stomach when he found it and then looping his arm companionably through hers. ‘Put the light out, love.’ Libby obeyed, disengaging from his embrace and then lying on her back in the dark with her eyes open, listening to the familiar small sounds and movements that accompanied her husband’s drift into sleep.
‘Daniel is sorry too,’ persisted Frances, seeing from the dazed expression on Libby’s face that her earlier comments had barely got through. ‘He’s going to write to you about it.’
Libby waved her arms dismissively and began checking the till. ‘There’s really no need.’
‘It’s not just the sex,’ said Frances quietly.
‘Of course it isn’t.’ Libby slammed the till drawer shut. ‘I never thought it was,’ she lied. ‘You’re clearly very fond of each other. I’m very happy for you,’ she continued, not sounding happy at all and disappearing into the stock room.
The explanation, when it dawned, was so obvious, that Sally dropped her mouth at her reflection, freezing in a moment of gormless horror. She was in the changing cubicle of one of her favourite boutiques in Hexford, with a pile of variously coloured trousers strewn around her feet and Beth waiting patiently outside. They were spending the last of their extremely generous Christmas money from Uncle Jack. Beth had bought some shiny black shoes and a set of blue eye shadows, arranged in a circle like the petals of a flower.
Everything was too tight, not just round the waist and hips but across the chest too. How could she have been so dumb, so naïve? Punching viciously at the new thickness round her hip bones, Sally performed a frantic mental calculation about her periods, never punctual at the best of times. The last one had been just before Christmas. Remembering her encounter with Felix in the attic she let out a moan of horror, grimacing at her reflection with fresh misery.
‘Everything all right in there?’ Beth’s face appeared round one side of the curtain. ‘Do you want me to find anything else?’
‘A shirt,’ said Sally quickly, putting her hands protectively across her chest and sucking in her stomach, wanting only to be rid of her. ‘Anything dark and…er…baggy.’
Her elder si
ster raised an eyebrow. ‘No trousers then?’
‘No, I hate them all. I want a shirt, size twelve. Or maybe fourteen.’
Beth burst out laughing. ‘Fourteen? Are you mad? You’ll drown—’
‘Please?’
Something about her sister’s tone deterred Beth from protesting any further. Clothes were personal things, as she well knew. There was only one friend whom she really trusted to say the right things in changing cubicles. Back behind the screen of the curtain Sally quickly pulled her school skirt back on, leaving the top button undone as she always did these days, and slumped down on the stool. When Beth returned with three loose-fitting, long-sleeved shirts, she took them in a daze, finally choosing a charcoal grey one with long flapping panels that hung almost to her knees.
With Beth – freshly through her driving test – negotiating the road with all the panache of a turtle, the journey home was tortuous. Sally kept her head turned to the window, staring at the dull greens and browns of the passing landscape with bleak eyes. After a few attempts at conversation Beth gave up, partly because it was rush hour and she needed to concentrate and partly because experience had taught her that her younger sister in a bad mood was unassailable.
Once home, Sally locked herself in her room. She would have to tell Felix of course. Dreadful though it was a part of her even relished the prospect. He had thought he could just drop her, that he could run off to his new life without a backward glance at all the suffering she had been forced to endure. Well now there would be some suffering for him too. She would have an abortion of course, but not without putting him through a few hoops of misery in the process. Like where such a thing could be done, how much it would cost. At the thought of money Sally’s throat went dry. She had twenty eight pounds in the bank and seven pounds fifty in an old post office savings account her mother had opened for her when she was a baby.
Tearing a piece of paper roughly from a pad, she began to write quickly, not caring that the Biro was smudging one word into the next.
Felix,
Sorry to interrupt your fun. But what seems to have been our farewell screw amongst the mothballs has left me pregnant. Like a sick joke, isn’t it? Though I don’t see Mum and Dad laughing somehow. I haven’t yet decided whether to tell them. Like I haven’t quite decided what to do about it either. Having a baby would get me out of GCSEs at least. I look forward to hearing your views.
Sally.
That would make him stew, she thought viciously, sealing the letter and slipping it into her satchel. After motoring through her homework, she crept into the kitchen and treated herself to three pieces of stale shortbread from a Christmas tin sent by a Scottish aunt. She was eating for two, after all, Sally reminded herself, skipping back upstairs to put on her new shirt and feeling a wonderful sense of reprieve at the way it masked the flab round her midriff.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The jigsawed terrain of south-east London streaked past the train window, playing fields and concrete, dotted with the occasional speck of colour: a pair of pink trousers flaying on a washing line, a yellow plastic slide, a purple fuzz of early crocuses. The sky was a sheet of white, flecked with pearly grey, sunless but bright. There was something noble, glamorous even about the journey, Frances decided, not just because of the train’s magnificent speed, but because it was heading for the Continent, destined to zip under the Channel courtesy of engineering feats which she could hardly begin to comprehend. With every swagger of the carriage, her body swayed slightly across the seat-divide, reminding her of the improbable presence of Daniel, whose relentless pleading had finally worn the last of her resistance down. When she said it was too soon to think of introducing him to Daisy, he assured her that there were innumerable useful things he could do in Paris on Signorelli’s behalf, and that any secret rendezvous with her would be icing on the proverbial cake.
‘What I don’t understand is how they kept back the water while they were digging,’ Frances murmured, as they slid into the muffled darkness heralding the start of the tunnel.
Daniel glanced up from the Paris street map spread open on his lap. ‘By digging very deep I suppose.’
‘Very deep.’ She gave an involuntary shudder at the invisible universe of icy wet darkness stretching over their heads, thinking in the same instant of poor Mrs Brackman and Joseph. Her neighbour had slipped back into his own world, she realised, recalling the peculiar flurry of their friendship and experiencing a now familiar flutter of guilt at having allowed it to lapse. ‘I told Daisy not to meet me – said I’d take a taxi to the flat.’
‘Yes, you said.’
‘So we’ll say goodbye at the station.’
‘No need for that. We could share a taxi. Look, my hotel is only a stone’s throw from Rue Lyonnaise.’ He held up the map with a smile of triumph. ‘You’ll be able to pop in and see me whenever you want.’
‘I thought you were going to spend your time beavering away in libraries and museums,’ she remarked dryly.
‘Well, some of my time. It doesn’t stop you leaving messages at reception.’ He pretended to read a note on the palm of his hand, ‘Darling Daniel, near death from deprivation of love and passion, require urgent meeting – that sort of thing.’
Frances smiled, but continued to look doubtful. ‘It all sounds fine in theory, but I suspect we won’t end up seeing too much of each other.’
‘Unless you change your mind and decide to declare my existence officially, of course. Your children have got to find out some time,’ he added gently, folding up the map and stowing it in the side pocket of his leather hold-all.
‘Yes, I know they have.’ Frances sighed. Daisy and Felix would be shocked enough at their mother acquiring a new partner, let alone one young enough to be their older brother. The thought prompted her to work out whether this was in fact the case. Forty-three years minus twenty-eight. To have a child Daniel’s age she would have to have been fifteen at the time of conception. Sally Taverner’s age. Inadvisable maybe, but highly possible.
‘Don’t worry about it now,’ he urged, seeing the troubled look on her face and wanting to erase it. ‘I’m a great believer in things working out, in there being a sort of pattern to life that’s only detectable afterwards.’
‘In seizing any excuse to take no action at all, you mean,’ she teased, linking her arm through his and letting her head fall onto his shoulder, where it stayed for the remainder of the journey.
As the crowd swept them towards the ticket barrier at the Gare du Nord, Frances could not help nervously scanning the forecourt for glimpses of Daisy’s brightly bleached head, fearful that her daughter might have decided to meet the train after all. Getting as far as the taxi rank without being accosted was something of a relief, as was the unfolding view of Paris, dirty but defiant under the glare of afternoon spring sunshine. In spite of the cold, scores of brave souls were huddled round tables of pavement cafes, hunched over steaming drinks in overcoats and sunglasses.
Saying goodbye to Daniel on a street corner felt both absurd and sad. ‘Come and see me soon,’ he whispered, brushing his mouth across her cheek one last time.
On the second storey of an apartment block a few hundred yards further down the same street Daisy was putting the finishing touches to her make-up, standing with her hand-mirror facing the bedroom window so as to make the best of the light. A new, heavy foundation, bought the previous week, did a wonderful job of concealing the faint dirty yellow round her cheekbone, while the fading violet in the eye socket had taken a little more artistry with some of her heaviest eye shadows. Though her jaw still ached, the crack in her lip had healed remarkably quickly, to the point where it looked more like the remains of wind-chap than a wound. Seeing the end result, Daisy grimaced with satisfaction.
Having no idea of her mother’s state of mind was making her nervous, she realised, doing a last tidy-up of the flat and reminding herself of the importance of appearing strong. She patted the dents out of the sofa cushions an
d emptied that morning’s cigarette butts from the largest of the ash-trays, a heavy pewter saucer which Claude had lifted from an English pub. Absently lighting a fresh cigarette, she went to stand at the sitting-room window overlooking the usual urban frenzy in the street below, which these days barely even receded at the weekends.
It was only after several moments of tracking an elegant fair-haired woman striding down the pavement on the opposite side of the road, that Daisy realised she was staring at her mother. Her hair had grown considerably since she had last seen her and bounced prettily over her shoulders. Instead of the sombre appearance Daisy had been expecting, she was wearing a knee-length green dress and a long honey-coloured coat that reached to the ankles of her leather boots. A velvet green scarf was flung casually round her neck and over one shoulder, where it flapped stylishly in the breeze. Her small brown suitcase looked smart and weightless, swinging in her right hand, as did her handbag, strung diagonally across her chest like a neat satchel. Daisy stepped back from the window, something inside her withdrawing at so unexpected – and somehow so daunting – a sight. Dropping her cigarette into a half-drunk mug of coffee, she pulled the cuffs of her thin grey jumper – shapeless from being tugged in a similar fashion innumerable times in the past – down over the palms of each hand and then crossed her arms, pressing them against the ridges of her ribs. The woman in the street looked like a stranger, she reflected miserably, letting go of a last, hitherto acknowledged, hope of confessing that Claude had been a wrong turn after all. For weeks she had been telling herself that the need to bury this truth stemmed from a charitable unwillingness to burden her mother’s fragile mental state with fresh woes. Yet the notion of revealing her predicament to the unfamiliar, self-assured creature striding towards her front door felt just as impossible. Not even a chapped lip would do, Daisy decided frantically, rushing back into the bedroom and coating her lips in sheeny scarlet. She was still tidying up the edges with her fingernail when the doorbell rang.
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