'Debatable.' He continued to watch her, pushing his food around.
'Then I owe it to myself.'
'You couldn't make your enquiries from England?'
'Probably. And it would prove to be frustrating and unsatisfactory. Also, Richard rang last week, he's organising his retirement. If I'm not going back to the business, he wants to buy me out, so he can pass Richard Morgan Estate to his children.'
'But you have the option to keep your stake? Reclaim your old desk?'
She chewed mechanically, picturing herself back at Richard Morgan Estate with the constant flow of traffic beyond the window, and the sea beyond that, bobbing with small boats at anchor. God, sometimes she felt driven to go back, feel the warmth again, smell the sea. And now to add to the mix was her unquiet conscience. 'I could pretty much reclaim my entire old life.'
He paused, thoughtfully. 'Except Giorgio.'
She swallowed. 'Except Giorgio. But it's not just him. I miss Malta. I miss the sea, the people and their approach to life. I miss hot days and warm evenings, the food, the beer, the fireworks at festa time, the amazing amount of traffic in the tiny streets. I even miss the storms.'
'But you'd feel closer to him, there?' He laid down his knife and fork.
She flinched. His calm couldn't disguise the hurt in his eyes. She should have organised this conversation earlier, not when they'd been to bed together. It was... uncaring. And still he remained the same decent Adam, he didn't bawl or glower or throw things or crash his fist on the table to make her jump.
She tried to be candid, but gentle. 'I don't know. It might be comforting. Or it might be torture. I'll find out.'
He abandoned his meal altogether. His brows cut thoughtful lines above his eyes as he helped her stack the dishes into the washer.
Then he leant against the table and folded his arms. 'Can I go with you?'
She knew her expression must be ludicrous with surprise. 'To Malta?'
'For a couple of weeks. I realise you might stay longer. Months. For ever. But I think you could do with someone for a while, a friend. I'm your friend. You know that?'
She nodded, swallowing a lump.
She picked up his hand, the one with only finger and thumb. Turned it over to examine the white scars and the pink knuckles. Casually, he changed hands so that he could curl a full complement of fingers around hers.
'You're one of the kindest men I ever met,' she said, looking up into his eyes. 'No one treats me with the same consideration that you do, no one else is quite so much in my corner. It's probably harder to find a friend like you, than a lover.'
He stiffened. 'Suggesting that I ought to be pleased to be your friend rather than your lover?'
She fidgeted, subdued by his unfamiliar anger. 'I'm not trying to organise your feelings. But let's think of you for a minute. What do you want? Where are you on the road to recovery? What comes next? Forget making me happy, tell me how you'd arrange your world, if you could.'
He squeezed her hand, his expression softening, lines shifting so that they edged his fine eyes. 'I'm ready to go forward. I wish we could do that together. But, so far as I can see, I'm still travelling on my own. I'll settle for dawdling for a while. See how steep you find Recovery Road.'
'I might never catch you up.'
'You might even turn back. I'd have to give up on you.'
'It seems a bad bargain for you, because I can't offer much.'
'I don't expect much. Are you going to Malta immediately?'
She dropped her eyes. 'Not straight away.'
With one finger, he lifted her chin. 'Because you'll be like a dog with a tick in its rear until you find out something about Kieran and Bethan?'
She grinned, viewing him through a sparkle of tears. 'You reveal me.'
The pad of his thumb wiped gently beneath her eye. 'By the way... I would.'
'Would?'
'Would like to make love again this morning.'
She blinked away her tears and slid her hand deliberately onto his thigh. 'Bring it on.'
The winter ground along, wet, cold, windy, and for ever.
Judith didn't get any fonder of it, and Adam declared that she'd need surgical intervention to prise her from her cocoon coat when the warmer weather eventually arrived.
He was quieter, these days.
His boys' lives were diverging steadily from his. Matthias and Davina had moved into an apartment in a building that used to be a Victorian factory, in Kettering, a market town deeper into the county. Adam helped them to decorate what he deemed upside-down rooms - spice-coloured ceilings and white walls.
And Caleb, to everyone's surprise, landed an advertising job and bought a grey suit and five white shirts. Then put cobalt blue streaks in his hair to celebrate becoming a London commuter.
Judith knew how troubled Adam was that Shelley put her heart on the plate with the fresh cream cakes she bought when she knew he would be dropping in, and asked him to go back to her. Something, he told her, that he couldn't do.
Judith felt sorry for Shelley. But couldn't help being glad, for herself.
However, to Judith's dismay, Adam took a unilateral decision to return his relationship with Judith to platonic. It wasn't a decision he voiced before he put it into practice, but, nonetheless, he stepped back into the old ways, without touching, without sex. 'Less confusing, for the time being,' he explained, when Judith frowned over his resolution.
He wavered only once, when Judith found an old cannabis stash of Caleb's tucked into the frame of the spare room cupboard, and tried to dispose of it by tipping it on the fire. Adam flung himself full length to snatch it from her hand. 'Are you mad? What are you trying to do, Jude? Get the entire street stoned?'
And he laughed so much that he went weak, and somehow she ended up in his arms on the floor, her shirt open to her waist and two of the buttons on the floor as a testament to his impatience with his own lack of dexterity. They threw the cannabis in the wheelie bin, later.
But that had been their swan song.
Their old friendship was intact, but that didn't keep Judith warm these frosty nights. She knew that she wasn't being fair to want a loving relationship to comfort her while she decided what to do with a life that may or may not include him. But that didn't stop her wanting it.
Snow set into Northamptonshire, which Judith hated more than the rain. Trying to walk when it lay in a cottonwool-like six-inch layer had yesterday broken the heel of the only elegant pair of boots she owned, and today was putting white streaks in her new chocolate suede trainers as she slithered through the salted pedestrian area in town, the late winter afternoon as dark as midnight. It didn't cheer her any to look up and see Tom ploughing past in clumpy steel toe-cap work boots, looking dry-shod and certain of his step.
'Tom!'
Ignoring her, he flung through the aluminium-framed doors of the Norbury Centre.
She pulled a face after him. Awkward boor. Then went to reattach a hanging orange flier more securely to a post, one of many the Sutherlands had scattered through the town. Have You Seen Bethan? it asked. There was a picture of Bethan, laughing into the camera, in happier times, obviously. The posters were already shredding and blowing away.
They'd been a forlorn hope, at best. But parents soon got desperate as to the fate of their children.
Judith had received two visits from Nick and Hannah Sutherland. One hostile, when they refused to step over her threshold but bristled on the doorstep, insisting, 'You must know, you must know, you must!' The next conciliatory, accepting Earl Grey in the sitting room and being earnest. 'If you know anything, anything at all, if you can just reassure us that she's all right...'
Judith had shaken her head sadly. 'I've heard as much from Kieran as you've heard from Bethan. Nothing.'
She missed Kieran. A constant heartache, daily misery. Even when she'd lived in Malta they'd shared weekly phone calls, and e-mailed in between. God, she missed him!
She missed his trick of rushing
his words together when he had a good story to tell, the way he laughed so much he could scarcely get the funny bit out. And she couldn't help cocking an eye for him as she slid through the town centre, as if he might suddenly emerge from a shop, or a pub, laughing with friends as the cold pinkened his face.
No news is good news, it was said, she reflected, as she, not unexpectedly, failed to spot him. Well, whoever mooted such an optimistic view had never lain awake at night picturing her son sleeping rough, being beaten up for his cardboard box and left shivering in a shop doorway.
Trying to banish such images from her mind, she swung left at the edge of the precinct, stepping off the riven block pavers and onto the simpler flagstones of Henley Street as she made for Rathbone Leather, the leather goods shop that had been on the same spot ever since she could remember. Wilma had asked her to buy her a new purse.
'The zip's gone on this one,' she'd said. 'Can you get me a black one to match my bag, with a zip not a clasp - you know my hands - and a separate bit for the notes? But don't pay much, duck, it's not worth it. Go to the pound shop.' Wilma always insisted on buying the cheapest available, in case she didn't last long enough to get the wear out of anything of greater quality.
It was a habit that irritated Judith, and she had no intention of shopping for Wilma's new purse at the pound shop.
She got into Rathbone Leather just before they closed. The lady member of staff, smart in her maroon smock, slid a drawer full of black purses from beneath the glass counter. Judith fingered rapidly through them, selecting the one she thought Wilma would like most. Roomy, with chunky zips that should be easy to grip, supple and soft and smelling satisfactorily of leather.
Outside, she picked off the price tag, and discarded the thick, pale blue paper bag in favour of a thin, pink-striped carrier, knowing that was what Wilma would expect from the pound shop.
She felt like a teenager preparing elaborate lies to pull the wool over her mother's eyes, but Wilma was so staunch in her refusal to let Judith or Molly 'treat' her to nice things that a little subterfuge was called for, occasionally.
As she slithered through the slush to the car park, she sighed over the lacy fingers of the bare trees edging the pavements, and longed for spring to provide frothy dresses of pink blossom. After dropping her car keys and having to locate them by feel because the big orange lights of the car park weren't working for some reason, she drove to Molly's house with numb fingertips.
After two big mugs of Molly's 'real' coffee to warm her through, and biscuits to keep her from fading away, Judith was ready to take Molly on to visit Wilma. She and Molly would eat together later.
Molly tucked her mittened hands beneath her voluminous red cape. 'I'm glad you don't mind driving, because I just can't be doing with this white stuff,' she grumbled, shuffling down the path in crepe-soled boots and angling herself cautiously into the passenger seat of the car.
'Me neither,' said Judith, seriously, hopping into the driver's seat. 'I hope we don't crash, or have to get out and push.' She threw her head back and laughed to see her sister's horror. 'For goodness sake, Molly! Don't clutch the door handle, I was joking.'
But Molly hung on as if the car were a roller coaster about to dive down a precipitous slope, and actually shrieked as the car got into a skid in Northampton Road. Rotating the steering wheel rapidly to correct matters, Judith shook her head at her sister's feebleness. Driving in it was the only thing she liked about snow, still childish enough to be exhilarated by the odd skating moment.
Wilma waited in the residents' lounge that was set aside for receiving visitors. Her hair looked freshly 'done', and she was wearing passion-pink lipstick that didn't suit her, probably meaning that it came free on the front of a magazine. 'You made it without huskies and sled!' she beamed. 'Did you remember my purse, Judith?'
Judith settled into one of the high-backed chairs. They were the only visitors in the visitors' lounge, but there were several unaccompanied residents. Watching other people's visitors was a bit of a spectator sport when there was nothing good on the telly, and so there were several grey-haired ladies craning to watch Judith hand over the carrier containing the purse.
Wilma beamed as she fumbled the black leather out of its wrapping. 'Ooh, isn't it a lovely one?'
'Lovely!' chorused around the room.
'But you didn't get this from the pound shop?'
'Yes, I did,' Judith lied. 'I've kept the receipt at home, in case you want me to take it back.'
'I won't want you to take this beauty back, m'duck!' Wilma creaked her laugh. She began unzipping compartments with stiff fingers, dropping her voice. 'Did you put a coin in it?' Wilma believed that it was bad luck to give a purse without.
'Of course.'
'Judith!' Wilma had found the coin. 'It's a pound! That's all the purse cost! Here, let me give you some change.'
Laughing, Judith protested. 'You can't give change for a good luck coin, Mum, it's bound to stop the luck working! Adam put it in there, anyway. You can't hurt his feelings by refusing.'
Beside their mother, Molly's dark brows rose in big sister reproof that Judith was slithering into bigger and bigger lies, just as she had when they were children.
'Was that purse really only a pound?' demanded a silver-haired lady in a bobbly cardigan in shades of oatmeal. 'My dear, I need a new purse. I don't suppose you'll be going to that shop again, will you? Could you get me one?'
'And me!'
'And me, m'duck, if you're sure it's not too much trouble.'
With sinking heart, and grinning sister, Judith found herself collecting five one pound pieces that she was supposed to exchange for five genuine leather purses from the pound shop.
When the others had drifted off to the television room or were nodding over newspapers, Wilma grasped Judith's hand anxiously, her own flesh chilly despite the central heating. 'Were all them purses alike?' Her whisper was almost a wheeze.
Judith understood instantly. 'I think the rest were smaller.'
'Oh.' Wilma sat back, looking satisfied. 'They won't mind theirs being smaller.'
She left much of the conversation to Molly, after that. Her sister was good at talking trivia, storing up little nuggets of information about her neighbours - people Wilma had never met - what Edward had told her about his skiing holiday, in his last phone call, and what seeds she intended to grow on her conservatory windowsill.
Wilma followed it all with fierce interest, until the residents' cocoa was ready. Visitors were welcome to join in the nightly cocoa ritual at a cost of 30p per cup. Judith waited until the frothing drinks had been served, then, knowing that when it was drunk visiting hours would be over, decided to break her news.
Until the moment arrived, she hadn't given much thought to the actual words she'd use, or having to watch Wilma's face as she delivered them. Faced with the reality, she found that the more she attempted to make her tone casual, the more falsely contrived it emerged, and the fewer words she seemed to have at her disposal. 'I have something to tell you,' she began. 'I'm probably going back to Malta, Mum.'
A silence. Molly frowned, her face sharp with disapproval, glancing at Wilma and laying a comforting hand on her forearm. 'For good?'
Judith realised that she'd been too blunt, and wished she'd talked to her sister, first. Moll was good with Wilma, she would have done something to prepare the ground, used some of the endless comfortingly inconsequential chat she had at her disposal to talk around the subject, how much Judith loved Malta, how she wouldn't be surprised if Judith went back some day. So the seed of possibility was sewn somewhere on Wilma's narrow horizon. 'Not definitely,' she muttered. 'I've got to see Richard, anyway, and discuss what's going to happen with Richard Morgan Estate.'
Wilma gripped her hands together. 'But it might be for good? Just when I'd got used to you, again.' Her words were forlorn, and there was a hint of a tremble about her round chin. Then, 'I've got my new glasses, did you notice? The frames are called "Amethyst". That me
ans mauve.' The tremor gaining strength, she removed the glasses to display them, then surreptitiously blotted her eye with the back of her hand.
Dismayed, Judith gazed at the teardrop glistening on the soft white skin. Gently, she rubbed it away with her fingers, taking the hand, swollen with age, in both of hers. 'They're lovely glasses. Even if I stay in Malta, I'll come back, often, to see you, Mum.'
'Of course you will, dear!' Wilma blotted the other eye. 'But I just thought... I thought you might settle here, now, so that I could carry on seeing you all the time. Adam's such a nice man.'
'He is.' Judith didn't pretend not to understand. 'He's coming to Malta with me for a couple of weeks, possibly.'
Wilma fumbled to push the new glasses back on her face. 'Lucky for you he's patient.'
They got their usual table at The Three Bells in the little dining room. Molly didn't like to eat in pubs unless it was in a separate dining room.
A log fire roared in a stone fireplace ornamented with a companion set, andirons, bellows, horse brasses and a warming pan. The beams were hung with corn dolls and more horse brasses. A young lad with red hair and a serious expression wiped their table and presented them with cutlery wrapped in white paper napkins, and a little round pot of sauce sachets.
Molly was working now as a volunteer in a charity shop. Usually, she seemed to enjoy sitting across the table from Judith and talking about her customers, those who came in every week to stretch their budget by trawling the clothes, and the occasional middle-class matron who couldn't resist a Royal Doulton tea service at about one-tenth of its value. Normally, she'd sniff about the man from Brinham market's thriving Antique Corner, who liked to buy cheap in charity shops and sell dear on his stall.
But today she could scarcely wait for the first sip from her coke before starting in on her sister with a huge sigh. 'Just when I thought you'd settled here! But, no, you're off again.' She folded her arms with a little huff of annoyance. 'You can't keep shuttling backwards and forwards for the rest of your life, you know, Judith.' She didn't sound cross so much as anxious.
Uphill All The Way Page 19