He was picturing her that first day he had seen her at court. How could a disembodied voice conjure up so clearly the dark fall of hair against collar and face, the smallest splash of blue against brown leather?
“What are we celebrating?” he asked.
“Wait until I see you.”
“Okay. Do you want me to pick you up, meet you, what?”
“Meet me.”
“Where?”
“Between the lions, of course.”
What had Colin Rich said about the idiots out there? “Aren’t we a little old for that kind of thing?”
“Speak for yourself, Charlie!”
He had been.
“Half-eight, then,” he said.
“I’ll try to be fashionably late,” Rachel said, a laugh in her voice.
“Not too fashionable, it’s raining.”
“Charlie, I promise you, we won’t notice.”
He wondered what she would say if she could see him standing there, grinning like-yes, Colin Rich had been right for once-like a happy idiot.
“Oh, and Charlie…”
“Um?”
“Whatever you’re wearing…”
“What about it?”
“Change it.”
Twenty-Eight
To the north of the Old Market Square was the site of the Black Boy Hotel, designed by Watson Fothergill and where Resnick and his friend Ben Riley used to drink early on a Saturday night before things started to move too fast. Now it was an expanse of ugly brick wall barely disguised as a Littlewood’s store. On the south side the front of the Running Horse hotel was dated 1483, but the rubble behind it was more recent. On their rare trips up from Hayward’s Heath to visit, his in-laws had stayed there and complained about the service and the sound of the traffic.
The steps between the stone lions were peopled with punks and kids in leathers, girls in coats from Top Shop or Miss Selfridge trying not to keep looking at their watches, a couple of lads in shirtsleeves being “tough.”
Half of them, Resnick thought, have me figured for a copper on duty, the rest are imagining something worse. He knew Rachel was in the square before he saw her, a tensing of the nerve-ends turning his head and opening his eyes. She was crossing behind one of the fountains, hands resting easily inside the pockets of her camel coat, face glowing in the street lights and the shine of wet paving. The heels of her boots clicked a crisp rhythm against the steps as Resnick stepped out to greet her. Her hair was up and her face lifted towards him, smiling.
“See. I’m not late.”
“Not very.”
The corner of her mouth when it brushed against his cheek was almost warm, though her face was cold.
“Come on,” Rachel said, linking her arm through his and turning him to walk up King Street. “We’re going this way.”
He had no sense of it still raining.
The restaurant was on the first floor, alongside a Chinese supermarket. There were tables lining both sides of an L-shaped room, most of them occupied. The waiter who took their coats said, “Good evening, Miss Chaplin,” in a voice that was already more East Midlands than either Hong Kong or Peking. He showed them to a table by the window and Resnick knew that this was where she usually sat, those times she had been there with Chris Phillips, possibly with others too; her place, her territory, her celebration.
A waitress in starched white brought Resnick a bottle of Chinese beer and Rachel a vodka and tonic.
“Cheers,” Resnick said, lifting his glass. “To whatever.”
“Independence,” Rachel said.
The waiter opened large, leather-bound menus in front of them and stepped discreetly away.
“I’d never seen you as anything else,” said Resnick.
“All I can say is, I wish others saw me through your eyes.”
“You mean Chris?”
She drank a little more vodka. “We had it all spelled out, the two of us. What it was about and what it wasn’t. Lots of dos and don’ts. Top of the list: don’t become possessive, don’t become dependent. We spent evening after evening talking it through, testing one another, what we thought we wanted.” She laughed disparagingly. “Making lists.”
Love, Resnick wanted to ask, what about love?
“Lists are all right for Tesco’s,” he said.
“And as long as you remember to take them with you.”
“You’re saying Chris got forgetful?”
She shook her head. “We both did.”
Resnick was wondering for how much of his marriage his wife had lain aside her ten-point plan: how to find true happiness in easy stages and still be one of the six percent in the country to own a dishwasher.
“Eighteen months…”
That long, thought Resnick.
“…and it was as if nothing had ever been said. We were like everyone else. What time will you be back for a meal? Saturday night we’ve been invited to a party, to dinner, a wedding anniversary.”
“Sounds pretty normal.”
Rachel looked at him over the rim of her glasses. “Normal, Charlie? Is that the way you live?”
“The way I live may not be altogether through choice.”
“All right, but still that choice is yours.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“How can you be so certain?”
She didn’t answer. “I’d stopped thinking of myself as myself,” she said. “I wasn’t me, I was part of a couple.” She finished her drink. “I didn’t like it.”
“Couple or not,” said Resnick, “I can’t see you-what? — feeling threatened, submerged, losing your identity.”
“Nor could I until it began to happen.”
The waiter was hovering, an encouraging smile around his eyes.
“Well, Rachel Chaplin,” Resnick said, taking her hand, “there’s no doubt in my mind exactly who you are.”
“That’s what I’m banking on,” Rachel said, moving her hand away to turn a page of the menu. “Now, shall I tell you what’s good…?”
The monkfish and black beans spat and sizzled from a patterned iron plate.
“Sit back, Charlie. No sense in spoiling a clean shirt.”
It had taken him minutes to find one, dry and rumpled and needing water splashed liberally over it before it could be ironed. He had used his thumbnail to remove a blob of horseradish sauce from his best tie, dark red with diagonal white stripe. The shoes that he had quickly rubbed over had soon had the shine splashed out of them while walking to meet Rachel.
Rachel was wearing a pale blue blouse, ruffed and tight at neck and wrists. Silver drop earrings that caught the light whenever she tilted her head.
“Stop staring at me, Charlie,” she scolded, not seeming unhappy about it at all.
“It’s difficult,” he said.
“Don’t waste your breath, Charlie. It doesn’t suit you.”
“What?”
“Whatever you were about to say. Flattery.”
“All I was going to say was…”
“Charlie!” She pointed a chopstick towards him, admonishingly.
“All…”
“Just don’t!”
He grinned and diverted his attentions to lifting rice to his mouth. Even if you picked the bowl up from the table and lowered your mouth it wasn’t easy. Broccoli, pieces of chicken, slices of pepper, they were easy, but rice…
“How long do you think you’ll stay there?” he asked.
“At Carole’s? I don’t know. Till I feel it’s time to move or until I sense that I’m getting in the way.”
“Then you’ll get a place of your own?”
“Yes,” she said. “What else?”
Keep your eyes on the food, Resnick ordered himself, and don’t say it. Don’t as much as think it, because if you do, she’ll know.
She knew anyway.
Men! Rachel thought, with a slight shake of the head. Why do they never learn?
“It upset you, didn’t it?” Rachel asked between mouthfuls. “The verdict.”
Resnick took his time before answering. “Only because it made me think about it again.”
“Then you still don’t want to talk about it?”
“No, far from it. I do-with you-only…I don’t know what I want to say.”
“Or think? What do you think about it, Charlie, the sentence?”