The Adults

by Caroline Hulse

  Patrick ran faster now, down the winding path toward the outdoor pursuits area.

  As soon as he got back home, he was going to find somewhere local and take his kids to play crazy golf. Or—if they were too old for that now—actual golf.

  He passed Santa’s grotto. He passed a tucked-away shelter, in which short men in elf costumes stood in a haze of billowing cigarette smoke.

  He thought about Nicola. Right next door, after all this time.

  This was silly. Claire didn’t know what he’d done. Nicola didn’t even know he was here. Nothing bad had happened. So why was his stomach telling him he’d done something wrong?

  He could just avoid Nicola and family for the rest of the trip. Then no one would know.

  Yes. That’s what he’d do.

  Patrick reached the archery enclosure and slowed to a jog. He looked at the empty field: at the row of circular targets laid out in a primary-colored line.

  He turned and followed the path for the Teddy Bear Trail.

  It had been odd the night before, seeing Claire and Matt interact so easily. When Patrick first met her, she’d looked like she was sick of Matt.

  So why did it look so different now?

  * * *

  —

  Three years before, a year before they started dating, Patrick had met Claire at a legal “meet and greet” evening in a four-star hotel on the East Midlands Airport roundabout.

  Patrick hadn’t had high expectations for the meal. He was there because Frank, the head of Patrick’s chambers, had called a meeting a few days before.

  “I know it’s crass to talk about money,” Frank had said, “but the next few years are crucial for our industry. We can’t reduce our overheads much more, so we need to think about our margins.”

  Margins. It was a new thing, this—barristers talking in corporate-speak. These last few years, people in his profession had been trying to make themselves more real-world accessible. The super-clever, fusty-dusty thing wasn’t cutting it with clients anymore, and now they had to sell themselves onto preferred supplier agreements and agree on fixed commercial rates, and all that stuff that Patrick thought unseemly and grasping when considering they were talking about the Queen’s law.

  “And we need to stay agile,” Frank continued. “We have to keep up with the jackals.”

  In trying to “keep up with the jackals,” whatever that meant, Patrick found himself at a speed-dating session for corporate solicitors and barristers, prostituting himself in his free time to meet potential clients. Patrick knew what to expect from this session—he’d be drinking champagne, making small talk with people he had nothing in common with, and those people would probably stand too close.

  But, this particular evening, when Patrick entered the bland hotel reception, the first thing he saw was Claire. More specifically: he saw Claire’s rear.

  Claire leaned on the desk in the hotel reception, next to an elaborate vase of fresh flowers sprayed artificially black. She stood with one hip pushing out, stretching her skirt and straining her zip, showing the definition in her calf muscles.

  This girl must be a runner, Patrick thought. He studied her legs. Sprinter, probably. Not distance. (He was wrong, he found out later. Claire hadn’t done any formal exercise since school.)

  “The thing is,” Claire said to the receptionist, “you just have to remember he’s a knob. Then you can hold your head high and let his comments float over you. Just think: Whatever, arseface.”

  Claire stood on one leg and took her shoe off. A miniature piece of gravel flew out, skipping along the shiny floor. She held her shoe up and peered into it. She looked to Patrick and gave him a smile of nothingness—a general smile of acknowledgment of whoever he was, but someone who was nothing to do with her—and put the shoe back on.

  Patrick felt himself blush, he wasn’t sure why. “Sorry.”

  Claire turned to him. “Sorry?” There was laughter in her voice.

  “I was just going to ask your friend”—it felt rude to say “the receptionist”—“the way to the law do.”

  The receptionist pointed to the large stand-up sign next to him. “It’s in the Churchill Suite.”

  “That’s where I’m going.” Claire looked at her watch. “I need to come through too.” She turned to the receptionist. “Good luck,” she said with a smile. “And, remember, don’t take any more of his shit. You’re worth more than that.”

  She fell into step beside Patrick. The two walked in the direction the receptionist had indicated.

  Say something, Patrick willed himself. “Is your friend OK?”

  “The receptionist? I’ve just met her.” Claire beamed at him. “But she’ll be OK.”

  As they walked, Patrick tried to study this woman who apparently achieved a level of intimacy with strangers in less than a minute. She was taut, with muted blond hair and a nose that was too small. She walked with a sense of absolute purpose. Patrick knew immediately that, however many people were in any room she was in, she’d be the first person you’d notice.

  She was lovely.

  Claire took a seat at a table in the conference room and, after a breath, Patrick took the seat next to her. She smiled at him and picked up her napkin, laying it daintily across her lap.

  She lifted her menu and Patrick took up his own. Patrick tried to concentrate on it while adrenaline coursed through his stomach.

  Claire didn’t speak to Patrick straight away, but he enjoyed the lilting sound of her voice as she spoke to other people. He even enjoyed listening to her place her order with the waiter.

  “No starter for me,” Claire said. “And the salmon for main.”

  Patrick smiled at Claire approvingly. A delicate eater. He used to be proud of how naturally thin Lindsay was, but now he saw it for the death-curse it was. She had no incentive to eat healthily.

  Patrick had been sitting next to Claire for over fifteen minutes and, apart from exchanging names and jobs, they hadn’t shared a word of chat the whole time. Claire kept speaking to Angus, a red-faced solicitor, comfortably round-bellied, who was seated to her right. Claire’s laugh tinkled out charmingly with a regularity that Patrick found profoundly depressing. A beautiful reminder of his own failure.

  Patrick looked down at his napkin. He straightened his cutlery.

  He wasn’t one of those people who could charm with small talk—he knew that. But he also knew he had one of those faces that looked like it was thinking serious things.

  Deep. Deep was what he aimed for.

  Patrick stirred his soup (deeply), mixing in the basil-flecked swirl of oil. He heard a low buzz from Claire’s handbag.

  “Excuse me.” Claire pulled her phone from her bag. She stepped away from the table: far enough away to indicate politeness, not far enough for any actual privacy.

  She put the phone to her ear. “Is everything OK? Is Scarlett OK?”

  Patrick took a small spoonful of soup. It was too hot, burning the delicate V of his inner top lip.

  Claire’s voice was quiet, but audible. “No, of course you can just call. But did she get to sleep OK?”

  Pause.

  “But what’s Walshy doing there anyway?”

  Pause.

  “The what?” Claire frowned. “The blowtorch?”

  Patrick frowned too.

  “Not off the top of my head. Have you tried the cupboard under the stairs?”

  Pause.

  “And what are you making at this time of night that needs a blowtorch? You can’t be cooking crème brûlée on a Tuesday.”

  Claire listened, brow furrowing.

  “Hot knives? But…”

  Claire put her hand on the back of her chair to steady herself.

  Patrick made himself take another spoonful of soup, carefully, keeping it away from the burnt center of
his top lip.

  “I just don’t understand why that makes it an occasion.” Claire held up a hand to the air with the firmness of a crossing guard. “Yes, I understand that—in your head—that makes it an occasion. But you’re looking after Scarlett, so be careful. And make sure you stay alert enough to hear her if she needs you.”

  Claire switched the phone off and sat back down. She stared across the room and stroked the napkin on her lap in a gesture of self-soothing. Penny for your thoughts, Patrick wanted to say. But that wasn’t the sort of thing a deep person said.

  Patrick noticed the screensaver on the front of Claire’s phone—Claire and a grinning man crouching either side of a pigtailed toddler, the toddler holding a cuddly toy of such a large size and poor quality it could only have been won at a funfair.

  “Is that your family?” Patrick asked.

  “Yep. Matt and Scarlett.”

  Patrick studied the picture. “Your husband’s got a good head of hair.”

  He put a hand to his own scalp automatically.

  Claire laughed. “He’s too proud of it, you know what I mean? It encourages him in bad ways. I can’t wait for him to go bald.”

  Patrick smiled.

  “What about you?” Claire asked. “Do you have a family?”

  Patrick paused. “Two kids, Amber and Jack.” He licked his lips. “Married to Lindsay.” He felt the color rise in his face and he took a deep breath. But it wasn’t a real lie. He was separated, and separated was still married.

  He cleared his throat. “Is Scarlett a good sleeper, Claire?”

  Claire didn’t appear to hear him. She stared into space, stroking her napkin. Then, with violent speed, she lifted herself from her chair and shifted ninety degrees. She bumped back down, now facing Patrick directly. “How old are you, Patrick?”

  Patrick balked, surprised. “Forty.”

  “And when you were thirty-five, and your wife went out on a Tuesday night and you were looking after your four-year-old on one of the rare occasions you were babysitting on your own, would you have invited your friend round to do hot knives?”

  Patrick gave a hard swallow.

  “I mean, even without kids, would you have done that at thirty-five?”

  “I—”

  Patrick stopped. He cleared his throat.

  “Have I made you uncomfortable? Sorry. I know we don’t know each other. I’m just trying to make a point. To myself.”

  Patrick’s face steamed with shame. “I just don’t know what you mean by hot knives.” He pictured a juggler, throwing knives with sizzling red blades into the air.

  Claire sighed. “Exactly.” She patted Patrick on the arm. “That’s exactly what I meant.”

  Patrick didn’t have a clue what was going on in this conversation—though he could tell from the sigh and the pat that it was going well.

  Claire took a large gulp of wine. “I didn’t know what hot knives were either, till I met Matt and his stupid friends.”

  Patrick’s face cooled, though his heart continued to hammer in his chest. “Should I know what they are? Do you want to tell me?”

  “Absolutely not. But apparently Matt’s got hold of some black, as he was keen to tell me”—Patrick was struggling more with this conversation every second—“and you rarely get black anymore, apparently, so it’s a red-letter day and they’re doing hot knives.” Claire scratched her chin. “So don’t do drugs, kids. When they’re done by fathers in their mid-thirties, they’re definitely not cool. They’re pathetic.”

  “Drugs? Oh, right.” The tension in Patrick’s shoulders released and he gave a half smile. “I don’t know anything about those. Even as a student, I cared about my grades and my health too much.” He raised his voice for any potential eavesdroppers. “And the law, of course.”

  Claire laughed. “Even as a student?”

  Patrick adjusted his spoon in his soup bowl. “Sorry.” Back then, before he went to that New You! seminar, Patrick said sorry when he was embarrassed.

  “Don’t apologize.”

  Patrick managed—just—to stop himself from saying it again. “I was always on sports teams. I looked after myself, even back then.” He paused. “My wife used to do cocaine at university.”

  Too late, Patrick realized what he’d said. Lindsay was a barrister too, she might know these people. He could do without having to have that conversation with her.

  He glanced around, but no one was listening. Though, admittedly, the idea of landing Lindsay in it with shared colleagues was tempting.

  Claire shook her head. “I used to do stuff too, but I grew out of it. Like people are meant to. I’ve got a child.”

  “When Lindsay grew out of it, I was pleased. I never liked it when we went out and she was doing drugs. It made me feel like I should be doing them too. To be sociable.”

  “You should never have been made to feel like that. Zammo would be turning in his grave.”

  “What?”

  “ ‘Just say no’?” When there still wasn’t any recognition in his eyes, Claire added, “You didn’t watch Grange Hill as a kid?”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  A tinkling laugh of incredulity. “You’ve heard of it?”

  “I hardly watched TV as a child. Only educational things like Countdown.”

  There was that incredulous laugh again.

  And again, it felt like it should have been a criticism. On the surface, Claire was laughing at him. But something on her face told him it was OK—that all the criticisms tonight were reverse, parallel-universe, complimentary criticisms. Patrick felt less defensive than he could remember feeling in any conversation before—and that included the conversations in which he actually understood what was going on.

  He wondered: should he tell Claire about his two-episode stint on Countdown as a teenager? About his winner’s teapot, still in the attic at his parents’ house?

  No. No, probably not.

  Patrick smiled at the waiter who was removing his barely eaten soup. He turned back to Claire.

  She was studying him. “You’re an interesting man, you know that?”

  Patrick felt a surge of warmth up his chest and into his throat. He felt dizzy under her gaze. With Claire, he was an interesting man.

  Claire looked thoughtful. “When my daughter, Scarlett, grows up, I want her to date a man like you.”

  The feeling was so delicious, Patrick didn’t even mind that the warmth in his face must be obvious. Here, on opposite-day, that might even be OK.

  Claire gave her lovely laugh. “You’re blushing.”

  “I need to get back out dating sometime. Not with Scarlett, obviously,” he added quickly. “But I told you I’m married and I’m not. I’m separated. So I have to stop saying I’m married and get on and tell people at some point.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.” Claire reached out and gripped his hand. “It’s a hurdle to get over, letting people know. But you have nothing to be embarrassed about.” The skin around her eyes crinkled. She had the most expressive eye area Patrick had ever seen. Those eyebrows had extra muscles or something. She gripped his hand again. “I bet you’re not single for long. You’d be a catch for any woman.”

  Gently, Patrick rubbed his thumb against the soft webbing of hers; the intimacy made his breath catch. He gave her hand a squeeze of appreciation and, with regret, let it go.

  Claire sat back in her chair and took another sip of wine. “Thanks for listening to my crap.”

  “It’s been a pleasure.”

  Claire turned back to the solicitor next to her. She didn’t criticize Matt to Patrick any more that night, even though Patrick gave her ample opportunity to elaborate on Matt’s failings.

  On that magical first evening, when Patrick got home, his chest was bursting with the feelings people wrote poems
about. He sat down at the kitchen table with his laptop. He opened the Internet icon and entered hot knives in the search box.

  He clicked on a definition and leaned forward to read the screen.

  Hot knives. Method of smoking marijuana where two knives are heated using a blowtorch or stove until red hot, then a ball of hash is sandwiched between them. The resulting smoke is collected in a plastic bottle (which has had the bottom removed) and inhaled.

  Patrick shut his laptop with a satisfying click.

  Blowtorches. Drugs. Cutting up bottles. At the age of thirty-five. And not even trying to hide it from his wonderful wife.

  He zipped his laptop back into its protective bag.

  The man must be some kind of idiot.

  17

  At nine A.M., Alex smiled at Claire across the lounge area. Alex sipped her tea and looked around at the blond wood and dated tartan fabrics. She took another sip of tea.

  Across the room, a two-foot-high electronic Christmas tree smiled with its tinsel face as it did a jaunty dance in the middle of the dining table.

  Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…

  The tree wiggled its hip-branches from side to side, the bobble of its hat twitching along to its tinny song.

  Alex looked at the tree, trying to work out if it was truly sinister, or if she was just in a bad mood.

  “Yes or no?” Claire asked Alex. “Should we keep the tree up? Or put it away as a bad job?”

  Oh, what fun it is to ride on a one-horse open sleigh!

  Alex coughed. “Whatever works for you.”

  “We couldn’t just have no Christmas stuff here, that would be so sad. And the tree was silly and, you know”—Claire shrugged—“portable.”

  Alex smiled.

  “It has an off switch,” Claire added.

  Alex decided this Stepford step-wife thing had gone far enough. “Well, that’s something.”

  “See! I knew you hated it!” Claire grinned. “I’ve brought the box if it gets too infuriating. Just say the word.”