Millington and his wife had this Sunday morning routine: as soon as the alarm sounded, Millington would push back his side of the duvet (John Lewis Partnership goose down, acquired only after his wife's careful perusal of comfort ratings and tog numbers in Which? magazine) and hurry downstairs, returning some fifteen minutes later with a tray, laden with tea (Waitrose organically grown Assam), slices of fresh granary bread (for which Madeleine had stood in line at Birds the Bakers the previous day), butter (now that the latest dietary reports had suggested a low level of dairy products was actually good for you, they were allowed butter) and Wilkin and Sons' Tiptree' morello cherry conserve. Not jam, conserve. And, for Madeleine, the Mail on Sunday.
Millington placed the tray in the centre of the bed, and prepared to climb back in, knowing full well no matter how circumspectly he did this, his wife would tell him to be more circumspect still.
"Careful, Graham," she said. And, with Millington joining her in harmony,
"You'll spill the tea."
Madeleine detached the sports pages from the paper and passed them across; that done, the drill was this: Graham would butter the bread, which he had already cut into two; Madeleine herself would add the jam. Graham would pour milk into the cups and she would pour the tea, now brewed to a good colour and strength. The only occasions he stirred in a little sugar was at the station, when he could be good and sure Madeleine wasn't looking.
"Ooh look, Graham, that writer, there's something about her in the paper."
"Mmm? Where?"
The photographer had posed Cathy Jordan alongside the statue of Robin Hood beside the Castle wall, Cathy's hand reaching up to touch the bow. The headline: MAKING CRIME PAY.
"You know, Graham, I was thinking of going."
"Where's that, love?"
"She's being interviewed this afternoon, by that woman from the box.
The one I like, with the glasses, you know. From The Late Show. Oh, what is her name? "
"Don't ask me."
"It was on the tip of my tongue just now."
"Thought that were jam." oh, Graham, be serious. "
"So I am. Get your head over here and I'll lick it off."
"Graham, don't! You'll upset the tray."
"Not if we park it on the floor."
"But I've not finished my tea."
178 "Stewed by now. Any road, I can always nip back down later, mash some more."
"Graham!"
What now? "
"I shall have to go to the bathroom first."
"Whatever for?"
"I shall just have to, that's all."
"All right, then. If you must. But for heaven's sake, don't take all day about it."
And Madeleine hurried into her dressing gown, leaving Millington to read about Notts' first innings against Middlesex, nibble another piece of bread and jam and hope the mood didn't desert him before she returned.
"Come on. Mum," Lynn Kellogg was saying down the phone, 'that's just the way Auntie Jane is. You've been telling me that for years. "
And while her mother launched into another familiar family diatribe, Lynn, half-listening, sipped her Nescaf6 and struggled with seven down, four across in yesterday's crossword. At least, she thought, as long as her mother could find the energy to get worked up about her sister's failure, for the third year running, to send a birthday card, it meant there was nothing more urgent to worry about. Meaning Lynn's dad.
Not so long after Christmas, her father had had an operation to remove a small, cancerous growth from the bowel.
"We'll be keeping an eye on him, naturally," the consultant had said, 'but so far, fingers crossed, it looks as though we might have nipped it in the bud. " And her father, slow to recuperate, shaken by everything that had happened the strangeness of the hospital, the discomfort of endoscopy, the myth that no one who was ever admitted to an oncology ward lived more than a twelvemonth after, the persistent threat of the knife was getting better. When last Lynn had driven over to Norfolk to visit, he had been back out again, pottering between hen houses, cigarette hanging from his lips.
"Away with you, girl," he had said, Lynn lecturing him for the umpteenth time about the dangers of cancer.
"There's not a thing wrong with these lungs of mine and you know it. Doctor told me so. So, less you see me pulling down these overalls and smoking out my backside, bugger all for you to get aerated about, is there?"
Lynn hoped he was right. She thought, hearing a bit of the old fire back in his voice, that probably he was.
"Yes, Mum," she said now. And,
"No, Mum. That's okay. He's doing fine, just fine."
A psychological process in which painful truths are forced out of an individual's consciousness six letters. With her mother prattling on like that, Lynn couldn't, for the life of her, think what it was.
"Frank?"
Cathy Jordan rolled off her stomach and reached towards the clock radio, angling it in her direction. Jesus! She hadn't intended to sleep so late.
"Frank? You in the bathroom or what?"
No reply. Most likely he was off swimming, maybe found a gym downtown to press a few weights. Cathy eased herself up on to one elbow and dialled room service, ordered fresh orange juice and coffee, croissants and jam. If she was going to pig out most of the morning, she might as well enjoy it. Give some thought to what she was going to say that afternoon, not that it would be any different from what she'd said half a hundred times before.
The one thing Marius didn't like, the thing he could barely stand, the way she would introduce him as her nephew all the time. As if somehow she were ashamed of him, felt a need to explain. Secretary, that would have been something; personal assistant. She hardly referred to him by either of those titles any more, though, naturally, they explained what most people imagined his function was. And it was true.
Dorothy's correspondence, he saw to that; appointments, meetings with publisher or agent, requests for interviews by the media, any and every little thing. Most people looked at him, accompanying her everywhere, helping her off and on with her coat, pulling out her chair, and they assumed one thing.
About him. Poor Marius, camp as a clockwork sixpence, gay through and through. Well, if only they knew.
He had the oil ready now, a mixture of sweet almond and camellia, scented with dewberry, her favourite. It was just a matter of warming his hands. He knew she was waiting for him, towel spread over the sheet, face down, patient. Undemanding. Most of the world, Marius thought, didn't realise how beautiful old people could be. Their skin. Lightly freckled, the delicacy of fine lines patterned like honeycomb: he thought Dorothy had lovely skin.
FR1; Thirty-two When Resnick's wife had entered into an affair, she had been driven to it; driven by what had disappeared from their own lives, by passion. It had also been a sign: clear, not negotiable. This is over for us; I want out Of course, it had not been clean, nor without pain. It rarely is. But clear, yes, that's what it had been.