And Isobel lay in bed that night and thought about a man who would use a word like ‘bewitching’. Not professional, not at all. She knew his wife by sight – they lived in the same neighbourhood – and his children. Two, she thought, or was it three?
Shame they were both married. Who knows what might have happened otherwise?
A week later she left work early, claiming a headache. She walked past his dental surgery around the time she knew he finished work, and when he didn’t appear she circled the block and passed it again a few minutes later.
Isobel. This time he was coming out, his jacket slung across an arm. Don’t tell me it’s time for another check-up already.
She smiled. Hardly. She indicated the café a few doors away. I was just about to get a coffee.
It was so easy. Men were transparent, most of them. Pity Con had turned out to be such a disappointment. Pity every one of them disappoints her eventually.
‘There we go.’
Damien shakes out the black gown and presents a mirror to the back of her head. Isobel thanks him and slips him the usual fiver, and he makes the usual show of reluctance before pocketing it.
‘Nice dress, by the way,’ he says, as he retrieves her coat. ‘Colour is great with your skin tone.’
‘Thanks.’
She wonders how Joseph will react when they meet, if he’ll make any comment about her dress. One forty-five: time to make her way to Stefano’s and find out. If he’s punctual he’ll be there by now, watching the door for a woman wearing orange.
Driving through the traffic-clogged streets, she feels the same mix of anxiety and anticipation that she experienced when she was meeting the other two. Those first few minutes, the sense that every word, every gesture, every hair on your head is being assessed … and seeing him for the first time can be disconcerting too, adjusting to a voice you’d maybe imagined differently, an accent you mightn’t have been expecting, a face that looks older or heavier or more pockmarked than you were hoping for.
She finds a parking spot and walks the short distance to the restaurant, the breeze cold against her face, the clouds packed tight overhead, full of unshed rain. A minute to two: perfect timing. As she approaches Stefano’s she unbuttons her coat, lets a slice of orange show through. She pushes open the door and walks in, feeling warm air, smelling melted cheese.
She stands on the threshold, taking stock. Less than half of the tables are filled, the lunchtime rush on the wane. Only two are occupied by men on their own, neither of whom resembles the photo on her laptop, neither of whom looks in her direction. One taps at a mobile phone, a cup sitting on the table before him; the other reads a newspaper.
A waiter approaches. ‘Table for one, signora?’
She hesitates. He’s clearly not here: she should leave. Permissible for the woman to be late, unforgivable for the man. Then again, everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt.
She indicates a vacant table to the rear. ‘Perhaps I could sit there?’ Visible from the front, but discreet enough not to attract particular attention.
‘Certainly, signora.’ He leads her across the room, takes her coat, hands her a menu. ‘You like a drink?’
‘A glass of Shiraz, thank you.’
She doesn’t normally drink during the day, would have chosen sparkling water if her date had been here. Now she feels she needs some ammunition.
She unwinds her scarf and drapes it across the back of her chair. She’ll give him a few minutes, bide her time – and if he turns up with a damn good excuse and sincere apology she may overlook this.
The Shiraz is fractionally too cold. She takes a tiny sip and glances towards the door – and sees an elderly woman whose face looks vaguely familiar entering the café and crossing the floor. Who is she? Grey padded jacket above what looks like the bottom half of a tracksuit, hideous trainers beneath. The woman goes through to the Ladies – and as soon as she vanishes, Isobel remembers.
Just her luck to pick the same café as Daphne’s mother-in-law for lunch. What is she called? Some funny little name that escapes Isobel just now. Always looks grimly determined.
She opens the menu. Better not be spotted when the woman emerges from the loo: she may feel she has to come over and say hello, and Joseph may arrive in the middle of it. Awkward.
Bruschetta, carbonara, ravioli, pizza: as predictable an Italian menu as a politician’s election promises. Her appetite is fading anyway, along with her expectations. Five past two now, twenty minutes late. She’ll give him five more minutes.
From the corner of her eye she sees the toilet door open. She keeps her head down, prays she won’t be spotted – but to her dismay the woman turns and looks straight in her direction, and approaches. Lord, can she be about to suggest that they eat together? What then?
The ensuing conversation is awkward. Isobel, preoccupied with dread that her date is suddenly going to appear, struggles to find the polite small talk that usually comes so easily to her. In consequence, when her companion makes a reference to Una’s birthday, Isobel enquires unthinkingly about a party.
She’s immediately mortified – sounds like she’s forgotten Finn’s anniversary – and judging by the other woman’s tart response, that must be exactly what she’s thinking too. How clumsy, how badly done – and too late now to offer sympathies, which would sound horribly belated.
Flustered, Isobel makes some inane remark about the weather, and how the wine is an attempt to warm herself up – now she sounds like an alcoholic making excuses. Thankfully, the other woman takes her leave at that stage, obviously having had enough.
Isobel watches as she heads straight for the café door: not staying to eat after all, then. Bit cheeky, coming in from the street just to use the loo. And the state of her: you’d take her for homeless if you didn’t know her. Granted, she’s had a lot to cope with – Finn, the husband with Alzheimer’s – but, honestly, she could take a bit more care with her appearance.
After another minute or so Isobel gets to her feet: enough of this. She raises an arm and catches the eye of the waiter who took her order. ‘My coat,’ she says, ‘and the bill.’ She pays and walks out, leaving most of the wine behind. Let him think what he likes.
Making her way back to the car, she feels horribly conspicuous. She wonders if Joseph, or whatever he’s called, is parked somewhere, watching her. Maybe he’s been there all the time, waiting to see how long she’d wait for him, getting his kicks by observing her humiliation.
She drives to a multiplex cinema and chooses the least offensive of the offerings. She sits in the dark, each small movement of her head bringing a waft of the honey-scented conditioner Damien uses.
She thinks about being stood up at the age of fifty-nine by a man who calls her Amanda.
She thinks about her only child, and the distance between them.
She thinks about living every day with someone who feels nothing for you, and who would not be at all heartbroken if you died.
Jack might miss her if she died. Oh, not in a my-world-is-going-to-end kind of way, not any more, but it might affect him on some level. In the middle of doing something else – driving to pick up a customer, maybe, or grilling a chop for his dinner – he might find himself thinking about her; he might remember a time when they were happy together. It might cause him a momentary pang.
She wonders if Daphne would miss her at all.
A little bell tinkles as she enters the florist’s. It’s a few minutes after four. ‘Something to put on a grave,’ she tells the plump young woman behind the counter, ‘whatever you think’ – and the woman gathers together a collection of white flowers and a bit of trailing greenery.
In remembrance, Isobel writes on the card for a man she barely knew, and about whom she remembers very little. She places the bouquet in the boot of the car and drives the short distance to the cemetery.
Almost a year since her last visit. She pictures the group they made that day as they stood around the freshly dug grave, Finn
’s coffin lying on the grass beside it. Daphne, drained and hollow-eyed, the tears running silently down her face while Jack holds her about the waist. Una sobbing continuously, clinging to George. Finn’s mother dry-eyed, glaring straight ahead at nothing. A huddle of Daphne’s work colleagues, a scatter of friends, relatives, neighbours.
Susan Darling, Isobel reads on the headstone that was already in place when Finn was buried. Beloved wife and mother – and, beneath it, Finn’s name. How hard it must be for Daphne to read that every time she comes here, to see them coupled on stone, husband and wife in perpetuity. Where will his second wife lie, when her time comes? She must have thought about it.
Isobel lays her bouquet on the grassy mound, alongside the bunch of beautiful yellow roses wrapped in pale green tissue already placed there. From Daphne, no doubt.
She stands at the foot of the grave, hands pushed into her coat pockets. It began to rain lightly a few minutes ago, as she made her way down the gravel path towards Finn’s section, and it’s getting heavier. She left her umbrella at home, her head is uncovered. Damien’s careful blow-dry will suffer, but it hardly matters now.
And then, without warning, she feels a tear roll down her cheek. What’s this? Crying for Finn? She hardly knew him.
Another tear follows, and another. They roll one by one down her face. She finds a tissue in her bag, presses the tears away but there are more, and now she’s really crying for the first time in God knows how long, and it’s not stopping, she’s sobbing into the tissue, her shoulders are heaving, it’s all coming out now, all the loneliness and sadness and regret, all the wrong turns she’s taken, all the mistakes she’s made, Jack and Daphne and Con and Alex, all the pain she’s caused, all the hurt she feels, it’s all pouring out now, here in the middle of a cemetery on a chilly wet April afternoon, and she is powerless to call a halt to it so she lets it out, lets it all out as the rain pours down on her, uncaring.
Eventually, she has no idea how much later, the tears lessen, and she is able to draw a deep, shuddering breath, then another and another. She blots her swollen eyes with her drenched coat sleeve, the tissue long since sodden and useless. She lifts her head and looks around. Nobody is nearby, nobody has witnessed her falling apart.
She pushes up her sleeve with a hand that trembles lightly, and sees a quarter to five on her watch face. Better get home, put on the dinner. Grilled mackerel with tomato salad, lemon posset in the fridge since this morning. Cheese and biscuits to follow, and port for Alex. Port gives her heartburn.
George isn’t eating with them, some end-of-term event at the school, some theatrical performance by the little children he teaches. Don’t count me in for dinner, he told her yesterday. I’ll do my own thing.
She feels shaky and tender and emptied out, as if she’s come through a long, debilitating illness. Her eyes burn, her cheeks are tight with salt: she tilts her face up to the rain, feels the plash of the drops as they land on her skin. Their coolness is welcome.
The rest of her is cold. The rain has soaked through her coat, her shoulders are damp, her hair ruined – but she’s past caring. She makes her way slowly out of the cemetery, her steps fragile on the gravel. She reaches the car, gets in and sits, watching the rain trailing down the windscreen, blurring everything beyond it.
She thinks about what just occurred, turns it over and looks at it. It didn’t come out of nowhere: it’s been inside her for a long time. It’s been sitting there quietly, feeding on her sadness and isolation, growing fat on her failed attempts to find forgiveness, to be loved – and today it all spilt out.
And now, curiously, she feels … unblocked, as if the tears have dislodged the mass that was clogging her thinking, as if they’ve washed it away, left her seeing things clearly for the first time in years. She knows what must be done now, and she must find whatever courage and strength is needed to do it.
As she’s driving home, the name of Finn’s mother pops abruptly into her head: Mo, like something out of The Three Stooges.
‘The little guy I picked for the main part, his name is Josh – he had a strop yesterday when we did a dress rehearsal, refused point blank to use his own teddy. His mother promised to get another one today.’
He’s talking more than normal. He’s wound up, she thinks, about this school concert. Taking it so seriously, putting his heart and soul into it, bless him. She watches him slapping butter on a slice of brown bread, topping it with ham, slathering a second slice with wholegrain mustard and pressing it down.
‘There’s cheese,’ she tells him, ‘I got nice vintage Cheddar’ – but he shakes his head as he cuts the sandwich in two. He takes an enormous bite and reaches for his glass of milk. She likes to watch him eat: there’s something touching about the vitality he imparts to it.
‘Starving,’ he says, his mouth full, and she smiles at him.
He was here when she got home; she heard him moving about in the kitchen but went straight upstairs and stood under the shower until she felt able to face him. She’s dressed now in loose trousers and a cable-knit cardigan. She wears no make-up or jewellery, and her hair is still damp from the rain because she didn’t bother drying it like she normally would.
She feels at peace now, and very calm. Very calm. Beyond being hurt now, beyond lies and deceit now. It’s a good feeling. She refills George’s glass without being asked. She likes looking after him.
‘Looking forward to the holidays?’ she asks.
‘Yeah, the break’ll be good. I’ll do some house-hunting.’
‘You should ask Daphne: she might find you something.’
‘I will, yeah.’
It pleases her, the friendship that bloomed between her daughter and her stepson when they became siblings after a fashion. Nine years between them and no mutual parent, but they’ve found a connection. Isobel has no idea who instigated it, or how; all she knows is that they’re often in contact – they meet up for lunch or coffee.
She knows this through chance remarks of George’s; Daphne has never mentioned their friendship.
‘I went to the cemetery,’ she tells him now. ‘I visited Finn’s grave.’ I broke down: I cried my eyes out in the rain.
‘I should have gone, never thought of it.’
‘No – you were busy.’
She takes the two mackerel from the fridge, already gutted by the fishmonger. She washes them and pats them dry. She slices vine tomatoes and drizzles them with oil, and sprinkles sugar, salt and pepper over them.
George brushes crumbs from his jumper, picks up the second half of his sandwich. ‘Tough on them today, Daphne and the others.’
‘Yes, it is.’ She takes crusty bread from the press and cuts slices from it. ‘Poor things,’ she says, arranging the slices in a basket. As she puts it on the table she hears a key in the front door. She glances at the wall clock: five to seven, punctual as ever.
The kitchen door opens and Alex appears. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘All well here? George, you set for your big night?’
‘I am, all set.’ He eats the last of his sandwich, gets to his feet and places his glass and plate in the dishwasher.
‘Dinner in fifteen minutes,’ Isobel says to Alex. He nods, disappears. They hear his tread on the stairs.
‘There’s lemon posset,’ she tells George. ‘It’s in the fridge.’
‘Might have some later, thanks.’ He pats his pockets, finds his phone. ‘I’ll be off, just give Daphne a quick call before I go.’
‘Good luck,’ she says – but he has already left the room. She takes a bottle of wine from the fridge and opens it, remembering the glass of Shiraz she left largely untouched earlier. This is French, a white Bordeaux full of baked-apple creaminess. She prefers the lighter zest of a Pinot Grigio, but Alex buys the wine.
After her shower she closed her account on the online dating agency. There were two messages sitting in her inbox. She didn’t open them or look to see who’d sent them.
She hears water running upstairs. She
turns on the grill and sets it to high. She lays the table, lights the candles. She brushes the fish with oil and slides it under the grill. She snips chives for the tomato salad.
She stands by the window, watching the day seeping from the sky. She sees two birds in the distance and admires the grace of their flight before she realises after a few seconds that they’re not birds at all but kites, swooping and dancing together in the fading light. Too far away to make out the colours, their twin tails barely visible, fluttering along behind like tin cans racing and tumbling after the car of a newlywed couple.
She drinks wine. She feels the icy stream of it running down inside her. She thinks about what lies ahead, and fear courses through her, every bit as cold.
She waits until he has finished his fish, until he has mopped up the last of the juices with his bread.
‘Alex,’ she says, her hands in her lap, two glasses of wine and not much food making her head feel light, ‘I have something to say.’
He looks at her.
‘I’m not happy,’ she says quietly, aware of a quickening inside her. ‘I haven’t been happy for a long time.’
There. No going back now.
A small crease appears in his forehead, in the inch of skin between his eyebrows, but otherwise his face remains unchanged. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘This,’ she says simply. ‘Us. We’re the matter.’ Her hands curl of their own accord into fists. Her toes press against the soles of her shoes. ‘Aren’t we?’
He tilts his head slightly, examining her as if he’s trying to puzzle her out. She imagines him making the same face when he talks to clients, when he’s preparing them for their upcoming trials, and trying to decide how much of the truth they’re telling him.
‘We’re not working,’ she says steadily. ‘Our marriage isn’t working.’
The eyebrows lift. ‘Working?’ A world of disbelief in the single word. A tiny movement of one side of his mouth, the smallest suggestion of an incredulous smile.
Two Fridays in April Page 14
