‘What are you doing here, Rose?’
Her gaze swung between me and Nathan. ‘Didn’t Nathan tell you?’ Her eyes gleamed. ‘Nathan, you didn’t tell Minty. That’s bad of you. I wanted to talk to Nathan and he suggested that I drop in since I was going to be in the area. We’d have had to meet sooner or later though, wouldn’t we, Minty? Is it OK?’
‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m not prepared.’
Rose could have said, ‘Nothing prepared me for you to take Nathan.’ She considered. ‘I don’t think either of us has anything to be afraid of. Not any more.’
I missed her – I mean, I missed the kind, soft Rose, the wife to Nathan who had brimmed with the desire to help and who said things like ‘Tell me what’s wrong, Minty’, or ‘You’re not to worry’ Unsurprisingly, that Rose had vanished from my life.
She shifted a bag, with fashionable buckles and straps, from one shoulder to the other. Her love of handbags hadn’t changed. The smile she directed at Nathan was friendly and well disposed, and I swear he winced. ‘Nathan, about Sam…’
I raised an eyebrow at Nathan, who looked utterly helpless. He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Sam has a problem and Rose wanted to discuss it.’
‘Ah,’ I said. I didn’t add, Why didn’t you tell me?
‘Dad!’ There was a cry from the top of the stairs.
Nathan went out of the room and hissed, ‘Get back into bed, Lukey. Now.’
‘I’m really sorry, Minty,’ Rose said. ‘I wouldn’t have come if I’d known Nathan hadn’t cleared it with you. I should have realized he’d duck it.’ I gave a little laugh, and she added, ‘I remember your laugh. It’s distinctive and I could always tell where you were.’
For some reason, that made me both angry and sad. ‘Do you still see Hal?’ I asked. ‘How is he?’
Her eyes narrowed, but she answered politely: ‘We still see each other, of course. Quite a lot. It’s great… A great friendship. I’m lucky in that.’
‘I’ve always wondered.’
Nathan returned and pressed on Rose a drink, coffee, whatever she would like. ‘Some wine,’ she conceded.
‘I’ll check on the twins,’ I said. ‘You’d better get on with your conversation. Don’t mind me.’
Nathan sent me a look that meant, Please don’t be like that. I sent him one back: Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t.
‘The twins? How are they? I hear a lot about them.’ Rose could only summon a polite interest in two children she’d never seen. ‘I gather Frieda – Sam’s Frieda – gets on well with them.’
‘I know who Frieda is, Rose.’
‘Minty…’ Nathan intervened, with a note of warning.
Rose merely replied, ‘How stupid of me. Of course you do.’ She turned back to Nathan. ‘As for our son…’
‘Our’. It dropped from Rose’s mouth with all her rights to its usage.
I fled the room and ran upstairs. Lucas had settled and both boys were sleeping calmly enough – in the wrong beds. Felix was hunched under his duvet. Lucas had thrown his off, and I tucked it over him, adjusted the night-light and found myself by the ironing-board on the landing.
Downstairs the voices murmured. I heard Nathan laugh and say ‘No…’ in the way he did when he was particularly amused. The construction and timbre of that word seemed expressly designed to exclude me.
I snatched up one of his ironed shirts and began to fold it this way and that. In the perfect syllogism, the logic flows without a hitch from proposition A to proposition B, which results in the only possible conclusion. For example: husband leaves first wife because he is unhappy; he marries second wife who he ‘knows’ will make him happy; she believes him; they are happy.
Perfect syllogism. Imperfect world.
I was clutching Nathan’s shirt so tightly that my hands hurt. I dropped it on the floor, stepped over it and crept downstairs, like the thief I was.
Light spilled into the hall from the sitting room. The door was half closed, but sufficiently open to allow me to watch the scene inside.
7
Nathan and Rose were ensconced on the sofa. Rose was toying with her glass, fingers curling and uncurling round its stem. The big gold ring she wore on her right hand caught my eye, so bright it hurt. Nathan was leaning back against the cushions, one hand spread along the top of the sofa. It was a pose suggesting relaxation and ease. Every so often, his gaze settled on his first wife like that of a starving dog on a bone.
‘They never last,’ Rose was saying, all indulgence and affection, which meant she could only be talking about her daughter. ‘How many times, Nathan, have we seen that?’ Nathan hung on her every syllable. ‘All the same, I’m a little worried about Poppy. I detect a certain, well… restlessness. I asked if she and Richard were getting on all right, and she said she’d never been happier. But you know how it is, Nathan – you can sense that something’s not quite right.’
Nathan lifted the hand that lay on the back of the sofa in agreement. ‘Can’t be money, surely.’
Rose said affectionately, ‘No, Nathan. It’s not money. At least, I don’t think so. It can’t be. Richard earns such a lot.’
‘Someone has to think about money.’ He smiled at her, complicit and gentle in a way he never was with me.
I could have enlightened them as to what Poppy hadn’t told her mother. Almost certainly it was to do with the on-line poker. I could have said to them, ‘Do you realize that Poppy’s probably gambling and losing? And the more she loses, the more she’ll play. It’s the nature of the beast.’ They could have seized the chance to act in concert, and asked, ‘How much and how deep?’ They could have gone in tandem to have it out with Poppy. You can tell us. We’re your parents. We love you. But, yes, I held my silence. I didn’t hold any brief for Poppy, but what was her business was her business.
Nathan put his elbows on his knees and leant forward. It was a pose he adopted frequently, which emulated Rodin’s The Thinker. ‘ About Sam, is Jilly happy for him to take the job?’
Rose tucked a leg under her. ‘That’s what I wanted to discuss. Jilly’s furious at the idea of leaving Winchcombe. Apparently she’s threatening to stay behind. She says she hates America, Texas in particular.’
‘She’s never been to Texas, and she won’t stay behind. She’s not that kind of woman. She knows it’s a big step up for Sam, and that it’s important.’
Rose clicked her tongue against her teeth, but it was not an impatient or angry sound. It was a marker that formed part of the discussion. It meant she was considering what she would say next and my husband, my foolish husband, waited, a smile on his lips, doting to the point of being offensive. ‘Difficult, Nathan. Jilly’s very settled in the village. Parish council, book club, and the school is perfect.’ Rose turned to Nathan and her hair tumbled over her shoulders. Nathan… Nathan reached over and tucked a tendril behind her ear.
‘It’s uncanny,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Frieda looks more like you each day.’
Rose ignored the gesture, but she was pleased. ‘Do you think? She’s very special. Has she told you about the pink bike? Last time I went down, she and I conducted a ballet class. We leapt off armchairs and pointed our toes.’ She drank some wine.
‘Savour the merlot,’ he said, in a Russian accent, which made Rose laugh.
‘Don’t remind me of him,’ she said, and I had no idea who she meant. She tapped the glass. ‘This is nice, though. Did you buy it at the usual place?’