by Tessa Hadley
In her black-and-white coat, she must have flickered distinctively between the trees, if anyone was watching. A gang of boys in tracksuit bottoms and T-shirts were playing football; they weren’t very good, mucking about and joking, their language blue. You knew this was a whim and not a practice. One figure detached itself to stare at her: she didn’t stop, but he must have seen her turn her head, looking back at him. For long seconds he stared; of course anyone knowing her would recognise her, in that coat. His friends noticed, glanced over, weren’t interested (too old! – even at this distance), and cursed: get on the fucking ball! Kate carried on without faltering; she had to look back at the path so that she didn’t trip over the tree roots. It did seem possible that it was Jamie. He must have played football sometimes, in another life, with other boys.
When she looked back, she wasn’t even sure which one had stared; they were all running again now. Two of them were in black T-shirts; both, from this distance, had Jamie’s young grace and long hair. It could have been either of them. She hurried, looking at her watch (the park gates closed soon) into the second section of the park, with bowling green and tennis courts, the brook meandering under a mossy bridge like a stage set from an old operetta; she dropped onto one of the benches in memory of somebody or other who had loved this place. An intimate stirring and ticking sounded from all around and seemed like a subtle sign, a message for her, before she understood what it was: the first warning raindrops falling on shrubby evergreen groundcover. She ought to go. Could that really have been Jamie? She might have only imagined it. She could have begun to think she had imagined the whole thing, everything that had happened to her here, if it hadn’t been for the child planted inside her. The reality of the child was vivid for the first time, distinct as a ghost from the future approaching on the path, scrutinising her frowningly out of unknown eyes. It would be a girl, surely. She was bound to have a daughter.
And then the rain came down in earnest. Kate put up her umbrella and hurried on through winter suburban streets where the water ran noisily, purging and cleansing, rousing a perfume from the compost and the tarmac, gurgling into drains, backing up into pools behind blockages of dead leaves and pine needles, soaking her feet through her unsuitable shoes.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Shelagh Weeks, Richard Francis, Richard Kerridge and Sara Hayes, who read drafts of this novel, and whose advice was not only invaluable but also taken. And thanks to Dan Franklin and Caroline Dawnay, for everything.
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Epub ISBN: 9781446499917
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Published by Vintage 2008
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Copyright © Tessa Hadley, 2007
Tessa Hadley has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Jonathan Cape
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