‘A man! Goodness. I thought you were looking for a girl to share with.’
Nat was looking at his phone. ‘I didn’t think Emmy would like it.’
Rose had kissed him, in a deliberately congratulatory way. He heard her later on the telephone telling Laura how mature the twins were being, not living together in a flat, and now how sensitive Nat was being about the gender of person he let his second bedroom to. Emmy hadn’t wanted a second bedroom. She said that if she couldn’t live with Nat – they had made a solemnly announced decision together – she didn’t want to live with anyone. He had been very touched. Now, he was outraged. Outraged and hurt and bewildered. What was Emmy playing at, asking Jess to supper and telling him he couldn’t come, that she didn’t want him to come?
And Rose wasn’t much better. Rose, who had always been, even when creating a difficulty, so transparent, so easy to read and influence. He mightn’t have approved of this liaison, as he termed it to himself, or the speed of it, or her conduct in the solicitor’s office, but he could see, despite his own exasperation, what the internal battles she was fighting were. And then, she half offered him enough money to transform his life, and seemed immediately to think better of it. One moment she was talking openly about some kind of advantage for him and Emmy and Laura attached to the sale of the mews house, and the next she was in a flurry of retraction, begging him to ignore her, obliterate their conversation from his mind. She became, he thought indignantly, as mulish as she’d been after seeing Grace Ashton, almost covering her ears while she insisted, loudly, that she had spoken out of turn and should never have opened her mouth.
Nat rang Laura. Her phone went to voicemail – she’d be taking evening surgery of course – and he decided, angrily, not to leave a message. Even if he had requested – or, in his present mood, demanded – that she ring back, she probably wouldn’t. She wouldn’t deliberately, she would simply fail to get round to it. Surgery would finish, she would drive wearily home and domestic life would suck her in and use her up to such an extent that if she did remember about his message, it would be days later and Nat wanted a reaction now. Right now. He wanted someone from his inner circle of women to empathize with his current state of mind and tell him that he was completely justified in thinking that his sister and his mother – and even, painfully, his girlfriend – were behaving in a way that wasn’t just puzzling and arbitrary, but plain wrong. He wasn’t interested in being a victim of incomprehensible behaviour, he just wanted to be acknowledged as in the right. He nodded to himself, even though no one was watching. He was indisputably right.
Laura rang back in ten minutes.
‘Nat? You OK?’
‘I’m amazed.’
‘I’m in the car. On the way home. I saw you’d rung. Are you all right?’
Nat looked up at the ceiling.
‘Seething. But physically fine.’
‘Oh God,’ Laura said. ‘What now?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘No,’ Laura said, ‘I don’t. But I’ll have to. So tell me.’
‘I’m alone!’ Nat said, in the tone of one who couldn’t believe what they were saying.
‘Yes?’
‘Laura,’ Nat said, ‘I’m alone in the flat because’ – he began to enunciate with exaggerated clarity – ‘Jess is having supper with Emmy and Emmy told Jess to tell me that I was not wanted. That’s what she said. Not wanted. Emmy didn’t want me to come.’
There was a pause.
‘Laura?’
‘Come and have supper at ours,’ Laura said.
‘No, really, I’m—’
‘Come,’ Laura said.
‘Thank you.’
‘Honestly,’ Laura said, ‘the way some people drive! Why are they all so ratty all the time? Actually . . .’ She stopped.
‘What?’
‘Actually,’ Laura resumed, ‘I’d like to see you. I’d like to see you anyway. There’s something I want to talk to you about.’
*
Emmy hadn’t cooked. She hadn’t made a deliberate plan not to cook, she just hadn’t got round to planning what to buy, to shopping for food, so when Jess turned up, below the open windows of her studio flat with her arms full of flowers, Emmy felt flustered. She looked down at Jess – long purple-velvet coat over trousers tucked into knee boots and a wide smile – and said, ‘Do you want to go away again? I haven’t done anything about supper.’
Jess was laughing. ‘I’m not here for the food.’ She held up the flowers. ‘Tulips,’ she said unnecessarily. ‘For you.’
Emmy went to let her in. It was a wrong-footed start, not to have food, to be brought tulips by someone in a purple-velvet coat. Someone smiling. Why had she asked her to supper? Why had she asked her and been horrible to Nat and not bought anything to eat? Why, Emmy thought, crossing her sitting-room space and noticing the copy of a gossip magazine that was lying against the crushed cushions and that was so obviously not a copy of something by James Joyce or Proust, do I get myself into these situations?
Jess was wearing a hat. Not a beanie or something sensible to keep the rain off, but a big-brimmed, glamorous, swooping sort of hat, in which she looked – well, wonderful. And effortless. She looked completely natural in her hat, as she did in her boots, which were slouchy, with turned-down cuffs, like pirate boots. She stood on Emmy’s doorstep like a dancer, slightly on one hip, and held out the sheaf of white tulips.
‘Hello,’ Jess said. ‘Hello, Nat’s sister.’
Emmy stared.
‘What?’
‘We can be friends, can’t we?’ Jess said. ‘We can get along, at least. Let’s go down to the pub.’
So they went to the pub. Emmy left her tulips in a sink full of cold water and collected her bag and her khaki drill parka – eclipsed immediately by the purple velvet – and accompanied Jess obediently to the pub. Or mindlessly, she told herself, glancing sideways at the way Jess walked, at the bag hanging on her shoulder that looked as if it had been made and embroidered in an Afghan village – probably, Emmy thought churlishly, as part of some worthy charitable project.
‘At least,’ Emmy said, trying to pull herself together as they approached the pub, ‘let me buy the wine.’
Jess halted by one of the outdoor tables and dropped her bag off her shoulder onto it. She gave Emmy her wide smile. ‘Lovely.’
Emmy looked at her.
‘Aren’t you coming in?’
Jess settled gracefully into a chair. She said, still smiling, ‘Can’t smoke inside.’ She began to rummage in the embroidered bag.
‘Nat hates smokers,’ Emmy said.
Jess stopped rummaging. She glanced up at Emmy from beneath the brim of her hat.
‘Not all smokers, it seems.’
They held each other’s gazes for a moment. Then Emmy said, ‘Red or white?’
Jess drew out a classy dark-red cigarette pack with a label on it that read: ‘Smoking seriously harms you and those around you.’
She said, ‘Oh, red. Every time. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘What?’
‘If I smoke.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘So would I. So would Nat. But there we are.’
Emmy pushed her way into the pub. Australian Jake was behind the bar with his red bandana tied round his head and the single earring shaped like an anchor. Emmy had initially thought he was very attractive, but an endless evening of stories about bunking off school to go surfing had severely dimmed his appeal. Close up, he could also be forty. Maybe even more. But he was still good for giving her a bottle of trade-price Beaujolais on a tray with two glasses and two bags of salt and vinegar crisps, and his breezy well-honed pub banter was reassuring in its familiarity. Emmy carried the tray back outside and put it on the table beside Jess’s bag. Jess was on the telephone. Something about her phone attitude, her air of having a delicious intimacy of some kind, made Emmy think that she was talking to Nat. She poured wine – a lot of wi
ne – into one of the glasses and held it out.
‘Yours, I think,’ she said loudly.
Jess took the glass with the hand holding the cigarette, and went on talking, smiling, into her telephone. Emmy sat down in the chair opposite with a bang, and took a big gulp of her wine. She counted to twenty. Then another twenty. Then she stood up.
Jess blew a kiss into her phone, clicked it off and swung round. She raised her glass.
‘Cheers. Why are you standing up?’
Emmy said, ‘I was leaving.’
‘Were you? Why?’
‘You were on the phone.’
Jess put her wine glass on the table and leaned back. She took a long and thoughtful drag on her cigarette.
‘Oh, Emmy.’
‘What?’
‘You are so like Nat.’
Emmy wanted to say, ‘And you are unbearable,’ and didn’t.
‘Please sit down. I’ll turn my phone off. Right off. Please don’t go.’
Emmy didn’t move. Jess took off her hat and tipped her head back to shake her hair free. She said, staring up at the sky, dim with London’s not-darkness, ‘Does it actually matter?’
‘What?’
Jess brought her head slowly forward to look at Emmy. ‘If we like each other or not. Obviously Nat would prefer it, if we did. Shall we try again?’
Emmy looked at the table, at the wine bottle and the glasses and the crisp packets and Jess’s dark-red carton of cigarettes. She took a deep breath.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. She took a step away. ‘Ring Nat again. He can come and collect you.’ She bent to push the wine glass towards Jess. ‘He can drink my wine.’
*
Prue rang Rose to tell her that she was coming to London to see her on Wednesday. Rose said that Wednesday wasn’t very convenient, so Prue said steadily that that was fine, she would change her podiatry appointment and come on Thursday or Friday, whichever Rose preferred. And no, she didn’t want lunch or even coffee, she didn’t even want to come to the mews house, she could say what she needed to say in a coffee shop, so why didn’t they meet in John Lewis on Oxford Street, and then Prue could buy the mattress topper she was after from the bed-linen department, after they had finished.
Rose said, ‘Must you be so portentous? Can’t you tell me what this is all about?’
‘The children.’
‘My children?’
‘Of course,’ Prue said. ‘Who else’s children really concern me?’
Rose was aware of Tyler in his armchair across the room.
‘Couldn’t we have a conversation about whatever it is, now?’
Prue was looking out of her kitchen window, and noticing that her wisteria was beginning at last to show signs of coming into flower.
‘I’ve always found,’ she said to her sister, ‘that face to face is far better in every way than the telephone. I need a mattress topper; John Lewis is five minutes from your front door. What is so difficult or momentous about meeting me there for half an hour next Thursday.’
‘I just always feel as if I am about to be reprimanded.’
‘Nothing to do with me,’ Prue said.
‘Well . . .’
‘See you Thursday,’ Prue said. ‘I have to fill the bird feeder. You wouldn’t believe the mess they make, especially the goldfinches.’
Rose put the phone down and sighed.
‘What?’ Tyler said.
She shrugged. ‘Nothing. Just the usual. She said it was about the children this time.’
Tyler rose from his chair. ‘Your children? What business of hers are your children?’
She smiled at him. ‘I only ever feel brave enough to think that when I’m off the telephone.’
Tyler said seriously, ‘Your children are very, very lucky.’
She sighed again, and gave him a fleeting smile. ‘You’re biased.’
‘Yes. I’m biased in thinking they are lucky to have a mother like you, maybe. But they are lucky to have been born into affluence, to have had good educations, to be—’
‘Being lucky,’ Rose said, interrupting, ‘doesn’t always make you happy, though, does it? Especially if people keep telling you how lucky you are, telling you to count your blessings.’
‘I won’t do that, Rosie, ever. I might count my own, but I’ll never ask you to count yours, or what the outside world sees as yours.’
She moved across to him and put her arms round his neck.
‘I know.’
He regarded her. He said, ‘I don’t want you ever to feel obliged again.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I mean it.’
‘Yes,’ Rose said. She kissed him. ‘I know,’ she repeated.
‘You aren’t obliged to Prue, you know. You aren’t obliged to your children. You aren’t obliged to me.’
She loosened her arms a little.
‘There’s something in me, then,’ she said, ‘that feels obliged to all of you, in some way.’
‘Your invention, sweetheart.’
Rose took her arms away and folded them.
‘We had this conversation, didn’t we? That we are, by this stage, as we are.’
‘Yes.’
‘Tyler,’ Rose said, standing in front of him, arms folded, head high. ‘Tyler, I’d like to move forward a bit, I’d like to make plans.’
He put his hands in his pockets, and smiled at her. ‘I’m waiting.’
‘Can we make an appointment to see another cottage?’
*
Nat rang Laura and said he wouldn’t be round for supper after all. There was a lot of noise in the background, jolly pub or restaurant noise, Laura thought, and he sounded a little shifty, as if the reason he was giving for not coming over for supper wasn’t the real reason at all. He said that Emmy had had a change of plan, something to do with work, he wasn’t at all clear what was going on, but the upshot was that he and Jess were now going to be together for the evening after all, so sorry for the change of plan, but he was sure Laura understood.
Laura looked at the three sea bream that Angus had got out of the freezer and that were thawing on the kitchen table, on a baking sheet. She had a Friday night glass of wine in her hand and the telephone in the other against her ear. Angus, perched on the edge of the table with his own glass of wine, was listening, his eyes on Laura’s face.
‘Bring her,’ Laura said. She took a swallow of her wine.
‘What?’
‘Bring Jess to supper,’ Laura said. ‘We’ve got enough fish for four. I’d like to meet her. We both would.’
Angus put his glass down on the table and stood up. He went across to the freezer and stood by it, his hand on the door, looking questioning.
Nat said, sounding caught off guard, that that was really sweet of Laura and they’d have loved to, but there were other plans.
‘Other plans?’ Laura said. ‘But I thought the original plans had just gone haywire, so you were free?’
‘I was,’ Nat said. ‘But now – I’m not. There’s – well, there’s new arrangements. After it all fell through. With Emmy. Laura . . .’
‘What?’
‘It’s so nice of you to ask us round but I think we’re – we’re meeting up with some people.’
Laura gave Angus a wink.
‘What people?’
‘Um,’ Nat said, ‘friends of Jess’s.’
‘But,’ Laura said, persisting, ‘they can’t be very concrete plans because you were coming here, and Em and Jess were going to have supper together. Right?’
Nat was silent. Laura could hear merriment and laughing in the background. She said, ‘Nat. Where are you?’
‘In the pub,’ he said lamely.
‘What pub?’
‘Our pub.’
‘Yours and Emmy’s pub? Where’s Emmy?’
There was another silence and then Nat said reluctantly, ‘She’s gone home.’
Laura shook her head at Angus and he returned to the table and his win
e glass. Laura put her own glass down. She said, more severely, into the telephone, ‘Nat. What is going on?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Has there been trouble? Has there been trouble between Emmy and Jess?’
‘No,’ Nat said miserably.
‘Ah,’ Laura said. ‘And if I were to ring Em, would she say the same thing?’
‘Please don’t.’
‘Look,’ Laura said, ‘I have something, a family thing, that I want to talk to you about. Irrespective of what Em and Jess did or didn’t do. So please come here, as invited, and bring Jess if she’d like to come. She can talk to Angus while I talk to you.’
She could hear Nat’s discomfiture down the phone line.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Just come.’
‘I can’t,’ he said, ‘I really can’t. I’ve promised.’
‘Even if I tell you that I’ll ring Emmy? And Mum? I might well ring Mum too.’
‘Ring who you like,’ Nat said recklessly.
Laura took the phone away from her ear and looked at it. Then she put it back under her hair and said, ‘Bye Nat,’ into it and dropped it on the table. Angus looked at it.
‘Poor guy,’ he said.
‘Boy solidarity.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘situation solidarity.’ He looked at the sea bream. ‘Can you eat more than one fish?’
She picked up her wine glass. ‘Probably.’ Then she looked at him. ‘Emmy didn’t like Jess, did she? I wonder if I will.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mallory flew to San Francisco for the weekend, to see her brother. It was no good hoping to stay with Seth and Yuhui, she knew – it would have meant the couch as her bed and accepting their inflexible, all-absorbing routine round Doughboy – so she contacted her old high-school friend, Carmen, and arranged to sleep on Carmen’s futon instead.
An Unsuitable Match Page 17