‘I’m not finished,’ protests Sophie.
Jim pauses briefly. ‘Well, you can eat it in the car, or walk. Your choice.’
‘I don’t see why I have to go to stupid summer camp anyway,’ grumbles Sophie. ‘Holidays are meant to be holidays, aren’t they?’
‘Yes,’ says Jim. ‘But sadly there’s a rest of the world that has to go on while you’re not at school.’
‘We thought it would be more fun than staying in your room all day,’ says Kirsty.
‘Mum used to keep us company in the holidays,’ Sophie says. ‘I don’t see why you can’t. It’s not like you’ve got-’
She catches her mother’s eye, sees the warning in it and stops her sentence. Gets up from the table and scuffs her way over to her trainers in her navy-blue socks with her big toes sticking out. Socks, thinks Kirsty. They grow out of everything. I’ll need to stop in at Primark. And maybe it’s a good thing she doesn’t like summer camp, because if things don’t improve, it’ll be the last one she goes to. We’ll be farming her out to a sweatshop this time next year.
She glances at Jim and sees, to her relief, that he’s brushed Sophie’s tactlessness off. She can never be sure, these days. Sometimes a careless word, some assumption that he’ll be available, that he has nothing better to do, will send him into a spiral of self-doubt that will kibosh the job hunt for days. He’s being so good about it, she thinks, but it’s hard for all of us, and sometimes he forgets that. It scares me to death, being the only one bringing in money, but I can’t talk to him about it. Every time I do, it sounds like a reproach.
Jim tucks his folder into his briefcase and comes over to kiss her goodbye. He’s still treating job-hunting like a job, thank the Lord. It’s when he takes to his pyjamas that she feels she’ll really need to worry.
‘Sorry,’ he says, gesturing at the uncleared table. ‘I’ll do it when I get in.’
She feels herself quail at the humbleness. They’re both uncomfortable with the way he’s taken over the bulk of the domestic duties, even though it’s the reasonable thing to do. ‘It’s OK,’ she replies. ‘I don’t have to leave till eleven anyway.’
He shrugs the bag up on to his shoulder. ‘What’s on the list today?’
‘Press conference. Some new political movement. Authoritarian UKIP or something.’
‘Sounds like a laugh.’
‘Fish in a barrel,’ she says.
Jim laughs. ‘When in doubt, be facetious, eh?’
‘First law of journalism.’
Another tiny, awkward pause. She avoids enquiring as to his plans for the day. Since his redundancy, the fact that all his days follow a similar pattern of poring over the job ads, drinking coffee and doing afternoon housework is a subject that makes them both wince. Kirsty knows how she would feel herself if she were in his position. She loves work, defines herself by it. Just the thought of no longer doing it fills her with a deep, aching melancholy.
‘What are they called?’
‘The New Moral Army.’
He laughs. Picks up his tea and drains it. ‘Oh, good Lord. Kids, come on!’
‘It’s going to be a short day today, I reckon,’ she says. ‘I won’t have to reach for a joke at all. Just type up the speech.’
‘I’ve never heard of them.’
‘No. They’re new. That bloke Dara Gibson making his move.’
‘What? The charity bloke?’
Kirsty nods. Dara Gibson, a self-made billionaire, has made a splash lately with a series of high-profile contributions to cancer, animals, ecology and miserable kids. All the emotive causes, none of the donations anonymous.
‘Hunh,’ he says. ‘Might have guessed he had an agenda.’
‘Everybody’s got an agenda of one sort or another.’
Chapter Five
A nice young constable gives Amber a lift home in a squad car, drops her off shortly before eleven. She feels wiped out, dirty and dry; but the sight of her own front door raises her spirits, as it always does. The door itself makes her happy. Just looking at it. It was the first thing they bought after they moved up to ownership: a proper, solid-wood, panelled front door to replace the wired-glass horror of council days. It represents so much, for her, this door: solidity, independence, her gradual rise in the world. Every day – even a day like today – she finds herself stroking its royal-blue gloss paint with affection before she puts the key in the lock.
Amber hopes Vic’ll be awake and is disappointed to find the house silent as she opens the door and breathes in the scent of the pot-pourri on the hall table. She glances into the living room, runs an automatic eye around it. Quiet and dark and neat: the sofa throws in place, the glass-and-wicker coffee table empty save for the couple of coasters that have their home there, papers put neatly away in the magazine rack. Rug hoovered, pictures straight, TV off at the wall, not just on standby. Everything is as it should be. All that’s missing is Vic. ‘Hello?’ she calls.
From the back of the house, faintly, a chorus of yips. The dogs are still out in the garden. They’ve probably been out there all night again. It’s not that he does it deliberately; it’s just that the dogs aren’t figures in his emotional landscape. They’re her dogs, not his, and Vic has a talent for simply editing out things that don’t engage him.
Amber is bone-weary. She plants her bag on the hall floor and walks through the kitchen – hard-saved-for IKEA cabinets, a vase of flowers on the gateleg table, yellow walls that fetch the sun inside even when it’s overcast – to open the back door.
The day is already warm, but Mary-Kate and Ashley shiver among the pelargoniums like the pedigree princesses they are. She bends and scoops them up in her arms: surprised again, as she is every time she does it, by the fact that they really don’t seem to weigh any more than the butterflies their breed is named after. Delicate, curious noses, fur soft as thistledown. She squeezes them close to her cheeks and is rewarded by great bursting wriggles of love.
She feeds them, makes a mug of tea and goes up to give it to Vic. She needs him. Needs to know the world is still the same.
He’s still asleep. Vic’s working day on the rides at Funnland starts at three, ends at eleven, and he often goes out to wind down afterwards – just like an office worker, only six hours later. Their lives are turned upside down from the rest of the world’s, and from each other’s. Occasionally they’ll see each other as her shift begins, but sometimes the only words they’ll exchange in a week will be on the phone, or as she gets into bed. It’s the price they pay for the life they’ve made. And it’s a good life, she assures herself. I would never have dared to think I’d have a life like this.
Mary-Kate and Ashley follow on her heels, shuffle about the carpet, sniff Vic’s discarded clothes in the half-light through the thin curtains. Amber stands at the foot of the bed for a moment, the mug warming her fingers, and studies the familiar features. Wonders, again, what a man like that is doing with her. At forty-three he’s still handsome, his dark hair still full, the fine lines that are beginning to creep across his weather-tanned skin just making him look wiser, not more tired as her own are doing to her. You’d never tell we were seven years apart, she thinks. What’s he doing with me, when he could have anyone?
She puts the mug down on his bedside table. Steps out of her sensible work shoes, sheds her jacket on to the chair. Catches the musky scent of her own armpits. Feeling another rush of weariness, she remembers the girl’s purple face, the burst capillaries, and wants to weep.
Vic stirs and opens his eyes. Takes a moment to focus. ‘Oh, hi,’ he says. ‘What time is it?’
She checks her watch. ‘Ten past eleven.’