‘Sorry, Jim,’ she says for the eighteenth time, laying the slices of fish as neatly as she can on to the plates. ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to.’
He’s so angry he can’t even look at her as he dishes the salad out next to the fish. ‘I really don’t think sorry’s good enough right now. You knew how important tonight was. You’re just… selfish. I can’t think of another word for it. Just bloody selfish.’
‘Yes,’ she says, penitently. ‘I know. It was. I am. And I’m really, really sorry.’
Miserably, she cuts open a sachet of the mustard sauce that came in the packet. Squeezes it over a portion of fish.
‘NO!’ He grabs her wrist and his cry is loud enough to be heard through the door. The murmur of voices dies down for a moment. Someone giggles.
‘What?’
‘Don’t use the packet stuff, you idiot. I made some.’ He flourishes a beaker of identical yellow glop that’s been sitting by the sink.
‘Oh shit, sorry.’
He shakes his head again, suppressing his rage with difficulty. ‘Look, just get out of the way. I’ll do it. I can’t believe you’d do this to me. These are people who eat in restaurants all the time. Like they’re not going to notice the sauce came out of a packet.’
‘Sorry,’ says her autopilot. She feels so wretched she’s amazed she’s still on her feet. All she wants to do is curl up in front of the telly and doze until bedtime. I will never drink again, she thinks, for the 763rd time in her life.
Jim doles out the sauce, turns and hands her two plates. ‘Here. Take these through. You can have the bought one. I’ll bring it through last. And for God’s sake pull yourself together.’
Kirsty gulps. Together, they go back to their guests.
‘Here’s mud in your eye,’ says Lionel Baker, and she flinches: even in her fragile state, golf-club phrases make her skin crawl.
‘Cheers,’ she says, and raises her untouched glass. Puts it to her lips but doesn’t take a sip. Partly because she fears her liver will explode if a drop of alcohol goes into her body, but mostly because Jim’s eyes bore into her like a laser every time her hand strays towards the stem.
Sue Baker giggles and clinks her glass. ‘Such a funny phrase,’ she says. Sue’s the real deaclass="underline" a woman who chose to Make a Lovely Home the moment she landed herself a stockbroker, and hasn’t had an original thought since she decided to have ornamental cabbages as the table centrepieces at her wedding. I must be nice, thinks Kirsty. If Jim’s going to tap these people up for a job, they need to remember what good hosts we are. Lionel’s ten years older than Jim, ten inches larger about the waist and ten times more pleased with himself. But he’s also been a partner at Marshall & Straum for years, and they all know he’s recruiting again now that the worst of the shitstorm is over. Jim and Gerard Lucas-Jones, the other husband at the table, were on his team when he got promoted. Everyone is pretending that they’re old friends.
Sue puts her glass down and picks up her knife and fork. ‘How lovely,’ she says, with a patronising edge. ‘I haven’t had gravadlax in years. Did you cure it yourself?’
Of course you haven’t, thinks Kirsty viciously. Gravadlax is so 1980s, darling. I’m sorry they were out of black-cod sashimi by the time I got to Waitrose.
‘Afraid not,’ says Jim. ‘Kirsty’s been away, working. I made the sauce, though.’
She smiles quietly. Jim takes pride in being ‘good’ in the house; always has done. But it’s not the right image for a Master of the Universe, he remembers. ‘It’s one of the great things about working from home,’ he adds hastily. ‘Two hours’ commute clawed back every day.’
‘And all of it spent cooking,’ jokes Kirsty experimentally.
‘Well,’ says Jim meanly, ‘it’s better than drinking myself into a stupor, eh?’
Everyone laughs, the barb floating over their heads. ‘Lucky old you,’ says Lionel Baker, sounding exactly like his wife. ‘I long for more time at home, of course. But tell me.’ He turns to Kirsty, and she can see that his enquiry isn’t steeped in approval. Lionel’s a dinosaur. Working wives are not his cup of tea. ‘Away working? How grand. Do a lot of travelling, do you?’
‘Not travel, exactly,’ she replies, trying to work out how to play things down so the job that’s keeping them all afloat sounds like an indulgent husband’s tolerance of the little lady’s hobby. ‘But, you know, a few overnighters here and there.’
She can see him placing her as a travelling saleswoman; wouldn’t mind, particularly, except that sales is probably not the top job for a wifey. Jim intervenes. ‘Kirsty’s a stringer,’ he says, ‘for the Tribune.’
‘What’s a stringer?’ asks Penny Lucas-Jones. She teaches French and Italian at a girls’ boarding school outside Salisbury. It fits in well with childcare.
‘A journalist,’ Jim tells her. ‘She covers a patch of the southeast so the staffers don’t have to leave London.’
‘A hack!’ says Lionel. ‘Well, well! Doorstepping celebrities, eh? Hacking phones?’
‘No,’ says Jim. ‘They have specialists for phone hacking.’
‘Mostly crime,’ Kirsty says. ‘And, you know – London people visiting the provinces.’
The joke falls flat. He’s taken me literally, she thinks. Of course he has. Prising him out of Belgravia was like pulling hens’ teeth, and now I’m blowing it. She feels another wave of nausea break over her, gulps it back. I bet I’m green, she thinks. Which at least will cover the yellow of liver damage.
‘How exciting!’ says Gerard Lucas-Jones. ‘We read the Trib une, funnily enough. Well, Penny does. I’m more of an FT man myself.’
‘I’ve not noticed you in there,’ says Sue. ‘Do you get published often?’
‘She got two pieces in this week, actually,’ Jim says. ‘She had a full page today, and she’s got two on Sunday.’
‘Clever girl!’ says Lionel, drawing out the ‘i’ in girl so it lasts two seconds.
Sue has the grace to look faintly embarrassed. ‘What about?’ she asks.
‘Oh, this rather sad-sack bunch of moral rearmament nutjobs who launched this week. But it was a bit of a damp squib, to be honest. And the other one’s on Whitmouth. The Whitmouth murders. I’m still writing that.’
‘Ah, yes,’ says Lionel. ‘Prostitutes, isn’t it?’
Mustn’t argue, she thinks. We’re here for Jim’s career. And frankly, I don’t have the spit for it anyway. I got most of my bile out last night. ‘No,’ she replies, ‘just girls on holiday. Teenagers having fun, you know?’
Her mind conjures up an image of Nicole Ponsonby’s sister on the Whitmouth Police station steps, behind a bank of microphones, weeping. Begging for someone, somewhere, to dob the killer in. The families always think the pain will go away if the killer is caught; that they’ll get some kind of closure. Like drowning sailors, they grasp at any straw of hope, anything that suggests that they won’t be feeling like this for ever. Kirsty’s seen them so often now, struggling to get words out, propping each other up on tottering legs. Knows that the weeping never ends, not really.
‘A bit of a shithole, isn’t it, Whitmouth?’ Lionel asks, and crams half of his starter in his mouth in one go.
‘I suppose so. Depends on what you like, really. I think it has a – I don’t know, a sleazy charm.’
‘Went to Southend once,’ he says. ‘Someone’s idea of an ironic stag weekend. Now there’s a shithole. As bad as that?’
She thinks. She’s done a fair amount of time in Southend. It’s a fruitful venue, if you’re on the crime circuit. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But pebbles, like Bognor.’