‘You don’t realise how lucky you are. I’d give anything to have a bloke like that,’ says Jackie, and looks tearful again.
Amber reaches out and rubs her forearm, feels awkward doing it. She’s never really learned the touchy-feely habit; hasn’t thought of Jackie as an intimate. ‘Don’t, Jackie,’ she says. ‘It’s all right. You’ll be all right.’
Jackie stares at her cigarette, her face working. Mary-Kate comes and stands on her back legs, front paws resting on Amber’s thigh. Automatically she takes her hand from the arm and chucks her dog behind the ear.
‘It’s not fair,’ Jackie bursts out. ‘It’s just not bloody fair. I never catch a break.’
Vic appears in the doorway, calm as ever. He’s carrying Jackie’s bag. ‘I’ll put this in the spare room, Jackie,’ he says. ‘OK?’
Amber knows that the gesture is more about his aversion to mess than about hospitality. Vic likes everything to have a place. The bag will have been bugging him since she arrived. Jackie interprets it differently and sees it as a gesture of welcome. She tears up again. ‘God, you guys. I don’t know what I’d do… Honestly. I swear, half this town would’ve fallen apart without you.’
‘Oh, come on, Jackie,’ says Amber uncomfortably.
‘She’s right, you know,’ says Vic, from the door. ‘Salt of the earth, our Amber. D’you know what she’s been doing all morning?’
‘No,’ says Jackie, with little enthusiasm. She’s never that interested in other people, especially when a drama of her own is under way.
‘Calling everyone on the estate to see if they’ve got a spare computer for Benedick Ongom. She’s been on the phone all morn ing, haven’t you, darling? I had to get my own bacon sandwich.’
He moderates the complaint with a bright and winning smile, but Amber hears it anyway.
‘Yes,’ he continues. ‘She’s amazing, really. Sometimes I can’t help wondering if she’s got a guilty conscience. If she’s making up for something she did in a past life, or something.’
Jackie laughs. Amber, blushing, hurries the subject away from herself. ‘So tell me what happened? I’m still not sure I get it.’
‘It just – I don’t know why he’s doing it. You know? I don’t get it.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘Well, I don’t suppose you would. He’s obviously not right, is he? Anyway, I thought Tadeusz had seen him off. With that text.’
Jackie shakes her head. ‘I think it’s made him worse. He’s angry now. I can feel it coming off him. He just seems to be out there the whole time. And it’s going to be worse when I go back to work. Going out at night, all by myself.’
‘That’s OK. I can give you a lift,’ says Amber, calmly adding another item to her list. There’s room in the car. She’s only shuttling Blessed at the moment.
‘But it’s not just that, it is? I’m not sleeping, either. I feel like I’m going to wake up and find him standing over me or something. Seriously. He’s just there, all the time. I feel like I’m going mad…’
Vic watches them through the kitchen window: the two blond heads bent together, the curl of smoke rising off Jackie’s cigarette. They’ve forgotten all about him. Out of sight, out of mind, he thinks. Women. The minute you’re not talking, you might as well not exist. He studies them quietly, his face blank. He feels dog-tired. He used to feel exhilarated for days at a time, during high season, but the thrill gets shorter-lived year on year. Eight different resorts he’s worked over the years, but nowadays Whitmouth seems to tire rather than thrill. It’s my age, he thinks, catching up with me. I’m getting too old for this. I need to find an easier way to live. I don’t think I’ll have the energy for much longer. It really takes it out of me.
Jackie’s left her tea mug on the table, a swill of tannin on the bone-china inside. He picks it up and takes it to the sink. Scrubs methodically, thoroughly, as he listens to the murmur of the women’s voices. Wipes round the sink, polishes the chrome dry and puts the cup on the folded tea-towel on the drainer.
Out in the garden, Jackie’s phone starts to ring.
‘Don’t answer it,’ Amber says. ‘Leave it.’
Jackie regards the phone as though it’s a turd she’s found in her handbag. ‘I wasn’t planning to.’
The phone rings out. Jackie lights another cigarette. Amber suppresses an eye-roll.
‘I’ll get Vic to make up the spare bed,’ she tells Jackie.
‘God, he’s so great,’ says Jackie. ‘How did you manage to find him?’
Her phone rings again.
Chapter Ten
I’m a lousy wife. He’s really hacked off with me and I don’t blame him. Oh God, I can’t wait for this evening to be over. What the hell made me behave so stupidly? I don’t suppose I was even legal to drive when I got into the car this afternoon.
Kirsty uses the cover of being in the kitchen to down a pint of water and slam three ibuprofen down with it. She feels like she’s been turned inside out, and her guilty conscience makes it worse. It’s like a frenzy, she thinks. Not the drink in itself, but the company of journalists. You can’t have a dozen hacks spend an evening together without everyone getting so blotto they can barely stand up; it’s never happened.
She drains the glass and refills it. Opens the fridge and gets out the gravadlax, the bags of salad. The sort of food they’ve not been allowing themselves for months. But exigency has driven her through the aisles of Waitrose like a WAG with a Man U pay cheque. The whole family will be living on beans and rice for the rest of the week to pay for this dinner, but none of the people in the dining room is going to know that. Nothing breeds success like success, and if Jim’s going to get a job, they must persuade these money people that he doesn’t need one. The good side plates are laid out on the countertop, checked for chips, and all she needs to do is fill them, decoratively, while their guests drink Sophie’s shoe fund in Sémillon-Chardonnay.
She feels an urge to vomit and swallows it down. Flaming shooters. At your age. At any age. What on earth possessed you?
Because it was fun. Because I love the company of journalists. Because I love their casual, competitive intelligence, their ranty partisan opinions, the way they compete to reduce everything on earth to a five-word headline, their cynical search for the perfect pejorative. Because I’m tired of being good, and I’m tired of being patient, because I’ve been living it small for months now and I just needed to kick over the traces, and because I got caught early for my round in the White Horse and wanted to get my money’s worth back. Because you can’t describe what a town where people come to go on benders is like unless you’ve gone on one there yourself. Because, despite the heartless carapace we all carry around with us, spending a day digging up the detail on the deaths of five young girls is depressing enough to drive anyone to the bottle. And because I just bloody forgot about this dinner party.
The door bangs back and Jim enters, the sociable-host smile dropping from his face as he crosses the threshold. He lets the door swing to before he speaks. ‘Fuck’s sake, Kirsty,’ he mutters. ‘What’ve you been doing?’
Her skin feels raw under the thick layer of make-up she’s slathered on to hide her pallor. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Had to take a painkiller.’
Jim’s jaw is set like concrete as he snatches up the salad bags. ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘I’ll do it. You open the salmon.’
He turns his back and rips open the packets. Pea-shoots, watercress and rocket, the TV-chef dream combo. A small earthenware jug of dressing he made this afternoon waits by the salad bowl. He dumps the leaves in, sloshes on the dressing and starts tossing. Miserably, Kirsty finds the kitchen scissors and begins cutting open the salmon. Her hands are shaking, visibly.