Читать книгу Told in Silence - Rebecca Connell - Страница 7

At the airport I felt the first stirrings of a change. I watched my shadow gleaming ahead in the bright reflective floor as I walked towards the café’s reddish cocoon. Curved walls rising and curling inwards to meet me; warm globular lights scattering sparkles across the tables. It struck me that I had never seen these things before. I had grown so accustomed over the past few months to reseeing the same surroundings that the realisation that there could still be first times, for anything, gave me a brief sting of surprise.

The plane was late landing. I felt impatient as I scanned the arrival boards from my café seat, and this sensation too was unfamiliar. I imagined Harvey, shifting slightly in his window seat, every so often glancing at the heavy gold watch that he always wore, but otherwise betraying no flicker of discontent. Lately I had mastered his level of restraint without even trying. Now, though, I could feel my fingers wilfully flexing with annoyance, my heart beating a sharp erratic tattoo against my ribs. Anxious not to be late, I had driven too fast up the motorway, numb with fright after so long away from the wheel. It had taken half an hour of patrolling the cool white airport shopping arcade for the panic to subside. I had left the café until last, deliberately stringing out the minutes as I watched the plane’s arrival tick back and back, balancing what little entertainment I could find against the delay.

I ordered a coffee and drank it in tiny sips, the acrid taste prickling on my tongue. It was another twenty minutes before the news that the plane had touched down blinked out at me from the screen. Although I knew it would be a while longer before Harvey emerged with his luggage, I gulped the last of the coffee down hastily. I would walk over to the arrivals gate and wait there. The decision, small though it was, flooded me with pride; I was too used these days to having my decisions made for me. I found myself smiling. I had dreaded this mission for weeks, but now that it was drawing to its conclusion, I wondered what I had been worrying about. I took a swift look around the café: an elderly couple huddled over a teapot, a bored beautiful young woman flicking through a magazine, a teenage boy plugged into headphones and oblivious to his parents. I’m one of you, I thought. And it was true – from the outside, no one would be able to tell the difference between us. I stood up.

As if by magic, a waitress materialised at my side. All false nails and false smile. ‘Are you off?’ she cooed.

I nodded uncertainly – what business was it of hers? I started to move away, but she followed, her tanned forehead creasing a little now with what looked like annoyance. I turned back, my eyebrows raised politely.

‘That’ll be one ninety-five, then, please,’ she said. Simple though they were, it took a strangely long time for my brain to filter and decipher the words. Reflexively, my hand went to my pocket, but I knew it was pointless. I had come out without a handbag, without any money, without a credit card, without anything at all except the car keys. Two hours earlier, it had been as much as I could manage to force myself through the door. I felt my cheeks flush and panic grind into gear; a sharp needling noise in the back of my head, a sudden ache in my stomach. Uselessly, I patted the pocket again. The waitress had taken a step back now, arms folded. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the elderly couple, watching, waiting. Their faces were suddenly full of suspicion.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. My voice sounded far off. The curved red walls of the café began to swoop and slide around me. ‘I…I don’t—’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ the waitress said. I had expected her to be angry, but her voice was soaked in pity. I glanced up sharply, and saw it reflected in her eyes, as clear as glass.

I spun on my heel and walked away, as quickly as my legs would carry me. I could feel those eyes boring into my back, making their judgement. For a second I wanted to turn back, to explain to her that although I might well pass for a wayward teenager in her eyes, I was a respectable married woman, that I had simply been going through a difficult time, and that sometimes the everyday practicalities of how to move through the world had a tendency to slip away from me. But she wouldn’t have understood – few people did – and of course I wasn’t married; not really, not any more. I pressed my fist, cold and hard as a diamond, against my chest, and breathed in. That much I could manage, but it didn’t shut out the little voice hissing at me in the back of my head. What sort of person goes into a café and orders a coffee, without remembering that they have to pay for it? An idiot. A madwoman. I gritted my teeth against the voice, but I knew by now that attempting to quell it was pointless.

Unconsciously, I had kept to my original plan; my feet had taken me to the arrivals gate. Dozens of passengers snapped into focus in front of me, flooding through the double doors. It was too early for the plane to be Harvey’s, but nevertheless I found myself scanning the faces intently. As the crowd cleared I saw a man hovering on the opposite side of the barriers: middle aged, balding, dressed in dilapidated tweed as if he had come from a shooting party in the country. He was holding a sign with the words ‘AU PAIR’ printed in large black letters across it. Underneath, in shakier lettering, ‘Natalia Verekova’ – much smaller, as if the woman would be more liable to recognise her job title than her own name. He was acting out a pantomime of exaggerated distress: craning his neck forward and waggling his head from side to side as he scanned the crowd, looking at his watch, brandishing the sign desperately aloft. This woman had obviously let him down. Natalia Verekova. It was a Russian name, I thought. Suddenly a memory flashed into my mind; a finger rubbing back and forth along my cheekbone, slowly and rhythmically, familiarising itself with the angular line. Your bones are Russian, he had said. I had no Russian blood, as far as I knew, but I had liked the idea that my face hinted at a more exotic lineage than the one I possessed – it had made me feel tightly packed with mystery.

All at once I imagined myself walking across the cool polished floor towards the man in tweed, holding my hand out to greet him and introducing myself as the woman he was looking for, apologising for the delay. I could see him nodding and smiling, looking at me and accepting me without suspicion. I would travel back with him to some country pile and meet his children, and there I would be…catapulted into another life. For a second, the random force of the thought and the strength of the longing that came with it made me dizzy.

With a jolt I realised that I was staring at the man in tweed, and that he had noticed his eyes on me, was coming forward fast through the crowd. Another morass of people was spilling out of the double doors and he had to raise his voice to be heard above the chattering throng as he reached me. ‘Natalia?’ he said, yellowing teeth showing in an eager, uneven smile. ‘Natalia?’

I shook my head and backed away, and in the same instant I saw Harvey, his smooth silver head swaying back and forth like a snake’s as he searched for me in the crowd. The man in tweed was reaching out an uncertain hand, frowning now. I broke away from him and half ran across the hall, ducking into the one place where neither he nor Harvey could follow me. In the ladies’ cloakroom I stood in front of the long row of mirrors, stretching vertiginously down the corridor into bright white space. I ran some cold water on to my hands, and they felt burning hot, shaking violently as if I had a fever. I had a crazy urge to laugh, and I forced the sound back unsteadily into my throat.

My reflection stared back at me; black hair in a soft cloud around the face, dark indigo eyes, a mouth that fell naturally into lines that looked sulky, even when they did not feel so. It seemed that this woman was someone other than myself – someone who could pass for a glamorous au pair in a plush country home. It was only a fantasy, of course, one that had passed as quickly as it had come, but the bright flare of excitement that it had given me remained. There in front of the gleaming mirrors, I felt something shift in the back of my mind and come into focus. For months I had felt so dull and tarnished that I had stopped trying to recall how I had been before. The memory came to me now unbidden, and it made me lift my chin and shake my hair back from my face.

Out on the concourse Harvey was standing stock still, his head raised to the clock. He was looking at it, motionless, watching the second hand glide round and round. Some thirty feet behind him, the man in tweed hovered, mercifully with his back to me, worriedly shifting from foot to foot. I hurried over to Harvey and touched his coat sleeve lightly. He swung round to face me, and I thought I caught a spark of irritation in his cool blue eyes.

‘Hello, Dad,’ I said quickly, and his face softened.

‘It’s good to see you, Violet,’ he said, holding out his hand for me to shake; always the same formality. ‘You managed the journey all right, then?’

‘It was fine, but we’d better get going,’ I said. ‘Laura will have lunch ready by one, and you know what the traffic can be like.’

He nodded slowly, but I could see I had displeased him; it was the ‘Laura’, of course. I pretended not to see, picking up one of his bags and hauling it over my shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw the man in tweed approaching, and started to walk fast, down towards the car park, my footsteps pounding in my head, trusting that Harvey was following. My heart was hammering stupidly.

He caught up with me by the car, watching as my fingers fumbled shakily with the keys. ‘Who was that man?’ he asked. ‘The one who was talking to you when I arrived.’

So he had seen me after all. ‘No one,’ I said. ‘At first he thought he knew me, but he didn’t.’

Harvey looked suspicious, wearily so, as if it were almost too much effort to see through such an obvious lie. ‘You must be careful, Violet,’ he said. ‘You could get yourself into trouble.’

Grindingly, I reversed the car. He was way off the mark with the kind of trouble he was referring to, but I had learnt by now that Harvey could see a sordid sexual motive in almost any contact I had with any man, no matter how old, unattractive or obnoxious. In some ways, he had taken over the role of jealous husband – not that it needed taking over, as Jonathan had never been that way inclined. I had been the jealous one. All the same, I nodded as I swung the car out on to the motorway. All the way back, I felt his eyes on me. After two weeks without him, I had forgotten the relentlessness with which he could watch me, even in such a confined space – without embarrassment, without deviation. At first, it felt strange. Soon enough, as I drove, I felt the inevitable familiarity of it seeping coldly through me, numbing me from head to toe.

Pulling into the driveway, I caught a glimpse of Laura through the cream curtains, her outline flickering there for an instant before they snapped shut. I knew she would have been waiting there for some time, as if by keeping vigil she could somehow ward off disaster: a violent ball of flames blowing the plane to smithereens, a snarled, ugly pile-up on the motorway. It was understandable, I supposed, but that morning it felt like another new irritant. Laura had no business to take such a responsibility on herself, or to presume that she had any divine power to influence anyone else’s fate.

As she cautiously pushed the front door ajar and came forward to meet us, barefoot, the thought seemed even more ridiculous. There was something insubstantial about Laura – a kind of transparency that made it too easy to look past her, through her. Hair the shade of straw, the negative of my own. Pale colourless eyes and papery skin that looked as if you could effortlessly scratch it off with your fingernails. She was a slight woman, barely five foot two, and when she craned her neck up to look at Harvey, I saw the pale blue tendons strain and push against their thin covering.

‘Welcome back, darling,’ she said. Her tone was calm, but her eyes were wet with anxiety. Harvey touched his hand briefly to the small of her back and kissed her hairline. It was a smooth ritual that I had seen a thousand times. ‘How was your flight?’

‘Dull,’ he said. ‘There was a woman next to me who insisted on telling me her life history, even though I patently had no interest in anything she had to say.’

Laura shook her head, as if barely able to believe the temerity of the woman, before she turned to me. ‘And you, Violet?’ she asked tentatively. ‘You managed the drive all right? Everything was fine?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ I said. I saw Harvey shoot me a glance of satisfied relief. ‘Everything was fine.’ I could have told her about my panic on the way to the airport: the spasms that had racked my cold hands as they gripped the wheel, seemingly independent of me; the way my head had reeled at the sudden sharp smell of diesel on the motorway as I wound down the window to get some air; the sense of desolation I had felt as I got out of the car and realised I had no idea how to walk to the correct terminal. She would have been sympathetic – too much so. It was easier to keep quiet.

‘You left your handbag,’ she said, her hands fluttering nervously in the direction of the coat-stand. ‘I was worried that you wouldn’t have any money to pay for the parking.’

‘Dad dealt with that,’ I said quickly. When I had driven to the barriers, the overdue realisation that I would have to pay for the privilege of parking my car had felt like a complete surprise – and yet it was something I had done many times before, a ritual that most people would perform as smoothly as breathing. Well, it didn’t matter, I told myself as I busied myself with untying my boots. Anyone could make a mistake. Despite my thoughts, my fingers were stiff and clumsy with the laces and, for just a second, before everything snapped back into focus, I felt as if I were being confronted with some incomprehensible, soaringly complex mathematical puzzle that I would never be able to solve, that made no sense at all.

I followed Laura into the kitchen, which was thick with the smell of roasting meat. As she lifted the lid off the largest saucepan, clouds of potato-scented steam billowed forth, clinging to our hair and clothes. Laura was a good plain cook, but she was an obsessive checker, barely able to go a minute or two without testing the status of everything she was cooking, with the result that she slowed down the progress of every meal she made. It was already almost half past one and nothing seemed to be ready, despite her pleas before I left to be back on the hour. I watched her turn to the pan of broccoli. Anxiously she fumbled with the oven gloves, tipping the lid to the side, releasing the heat, and my hand itched to reach out and slam the burning lid back on, no matter how much it hurt. But of course I didn’t. I did nothing at all. My limbs felt heavy and hopeless.

‘Did Dad say anything about the trip?’ she asked presently, addressing the vegetables rather than me. The concentration with which she avoided looking at me betrayed the casualness of her tone.

‘No,’ I said truthfully. Since he had retired from the law firm to which he had given over forty years of ruthlessly efficient service, Harvey occasionally took a fortnight alone away from home, usually to somewhere hot and mildly exotic: Spain, Greece, Bulgaria. The trips were usually taken without much in the way of prior warning, or indeed of explanation. On a practical level, it was almost impossible to imagine what Harvey actually did on these jaunts away. The idea of him sunbathing on the beach was ludicrous; even in my mind’s eye, I could not strip him of his suit and tie, and the image of him sitting primly on a sunlounger, fully dressed, briefcase in hand, was one that alternately amused and confused me. Of course, it was none of my business. It was difficult to begrudge him a bit of solitude, particularly as it was bought with the money he had earned, even if in his absence the house did feel even emptier and bleaker than usual. All the same, I knew that Laura wondered and worried. She didn’t like him out of her sight, or more precisely, I suspected, she didn’t like herself to be out of his.

‘He seems rested, anyway,’ she said, nodding with an air of finality. I knew that she would never ask Harvey directly about his trip; incredibly, my one-word answer seemed to have got the curiosity out of her system. All the same, I thought I saw a fleeting sadness cross her face as she turned back to the stove.

‘He does,’ I agreed, although in reality I wasn’t sure. If an alcoholic stopped drinking, he was just an alcoholic without a drink, and if you allowed some of the tension to relax from a coiled spring held between your hands, then what you were left holding was still, after all, just a coiled spring.

‘I think this is ready,’ Laura announced cautiously now. Her hands fluttered around the pots and pans as if she were trying to calm an angry mob. ‘Will you help me dish up, or would you rather go and sit with Dad?’

It didn’t matter. Surely even she could see that. I knew what she was trying to do: give me decisions, give me back some responsibility. It was a pity that she thought I was capable of so little. But look what happened when she trusted you to drive to the airport, the voice at the back of my head hissed. You panicked, you forgot your money, you could barely even lift your hands off the wheel. This is about your level. I bit my lip. I helped Laura dish up, and she was disproportionately grateful.

Harvey was sitting at the head of the dining table, his back ramrod straight, the newspaper he had brought from the plane held up before him. He was frowning and intently scanning its pages, seemingly totally absorbed. It was only in the second in which he folded it and smoothly returned it to the floor that I saw that it was in Spanish, a language he didn’t even speak.

‘This looks excellent,’ he said to Laura, bestowing one of his tight smiles on her. His eyes travelled over the dishes of pulpy vegetables, hard little bullets of potato, anaemic meat carved and carefully arranged on a platter. It was impossible to tell whether or not the compliment was sincere. With a flash of clarity, I suddenly saw the meal as it would appear to someone outside our enclave; joyless and functional, a means to an end. Harvey had once been something of a gourmet, if not a gourmand. That was lost now, like so much else, and bizarrely, the thought made my chest constrict for a second. I sat down, keeping my eyes on my plate.

Laura sat down last, clearing her throat. Her hands drifted together, clasping loosely as she bowed her head. ‘Lord,’ she said quietly, ‘for the food we are about to receive, may You make us truly thankful. Bless the land from whence it came and all those who receive it.’ She paused, took a breath. Staring at my plate, I felt all the muscles in my neck tighten. Don’t say it, I thought. The vague, blurred discomfort I always felt at these moments had inexplicably sharpened today into a fury that I found I could barely contain. The pale blue swirls around the rim of my plate started to go bright and fuzzy before my eyes. For a moment I thought that Laura would break the habit of the past nine months, raise her head and go on with her meal. But of course she didn’t. ‘And, Lord, please bless Jonathan,’ she quavered, her voice bending with that predictable crack. ‘Commend him to Thy spirit and let him watch over us.’

She wiped each eye in turn with the tip of her finger, laid her hands flat down on the tabletop for a moment, and then rose to serve the vegetables. As I had waited for the inevitable words, I had genuinely thought that when I heard them, I would jump from my seat, slash my arm viciously across the table and send the dishes smashing to the floor. Instead I nodded when Laura asked whether I wanted broccoli, sat quietly and chewed my way numbly through the meal. Inside, I turned this new rage over and over in my mind, examining it, exploring it. At its core was something very simple. I didn’t want Jonathan’s name trotted out over the dinner table as if it were public property. He had been mine as much as theirs. Maybe more. I wanted some choice in when he was spoken of. I wanted some ownership, some right to him.

Our past is so real to me that I can’t see it as something dead and gone; it’s always there waiting. I can picture myself there in the office with him as clear as day. Whenever he comes near me I feel my skin prickling all over. Air rushes into my lungs and makes me gasp, my heart thudding against my ribs like a crazed demon trying to rip its way out through my skin. Surreal bright spots pop, tiny fireworks at the corners of my vision. I know that this is lust, but it feels more like danger, and it frightens me. I’m barely eighteen, and this is too big for me. I can’t rein it in.

My desk is barely fifteen feet from his. I file papers, forward emails, take messages, all the things a secretary is supposed to do, but my real job is watching him, nine hours a day. Most of the time it seems he barely notices that I’m there at all. Even when he speaks to me his eyes are elsewhere. I watch him flicking through files, frowning down in concentration at the bright white sheaths of paper. When the sun shines through the window behind his desk, the light that bounces off these papers sparkles across his face and I ache at the way it illuminates his bones. His dark golden hair is always perfectly smooth; he wears dark expensive suits that look as if they were lovingly fitted to every line of his body; his lips are full and almost feminine. He’s so nearly a dull, passionless prettyboy, and yet there is something in the set of his shoulders and the hard slash of his jaw that tells me otherwise. He looks…I think, the unfamiliar words coming readily to my mind as I stare at him across the room, he looks as if he can handle himself.

I know now that this is what people mean when they talk about fate. When I decided to take a summer job before starting university, I barely considered my choice of workplace. It was nothing but a means to an end, a way of earning money. I circled a temp agency’s ad at random. I didn’t even care whether or not I got the job, but now that I’m here, I know that it is where I was always meant to be. Every morning I make him a cup of coffee, black with two sugars, and I press my lips against the side of the burning cup for just an instant before I take it in to him. When I’m back at my desk watching him curl his fingers around the place where my lips have been, it’s all I can do not to cry out. This frustration keeps me awake at nights – hot and restless and impatient, wanting him, needing him. When I do sleep I sometimes dream of him, but in these dreams he’s just as elusive as he is in life, always a crucial few inches away from me. His name is Jonathan Blackwood. He is thirty years old and an associate lawyer at the firm; his father, Harvey, is a partner. He wears no wedding ring. This is the sum total of what I know about him. No—I know one more thing. I know that he was made to love me.

One Wednesday I see the time display on my computer click on to six o’clock, and I don’t move. It’s late September, and the last of the light is fading outside. Autumn has come early this year and I can see the leaves falling darkly from the trees that flank his window. In two days I will pack up my things for the last time and walk out of his life to begin my own, at university, in Manchester. For these last few days, I don’t want to leave his office until he does. He is bent over the desk, writing notes on a pad of paper, lost to everything else. His lips move slightly, unfathomably, as he writes. I lean back in my chair and surrender myself to the pleasure of watching unobserved. I don’t know how much time passes; only that the room gradually shrinks and glows until it seems that we’re caught in the only pocket of light in the whole universe and the darkness outside has graded through to pitch black. This should feel strange, but it doesn’t. It feels as if I have come home.

Suddenly, he raises his head and I feel the force of his gaze on me. ‘Violet,’ he says. ‘Why are you still here?’

I straighten up in my seat. ‘What time is it?’ I ask.

‘Nine o’clock.’ He speaks with faint surprise. ‘I don’t know where the time’s gone tonight.’ He pauses, and I know I am supposed to fill the silence, but I am mute and frozen to my seat. ‘Why are you still here?’ he asks again.

‘I thought,’ I begin, and clear my throat to ease the tightness, ‘I thought you might want me to stay, in case you needed anything.’

He stands up abruptly, snatching his briefcase and stuffing the pad of paper into it. ‘God, I am sorry,’ he says briskly. ‘I had no idea – you should have said something. I meant to leave hours ago myself. Let’s get these lights off and lock up. I expect everyone else has already left.’

Hearing him say it makes it real. We’re alone here. I watch him click his desk lamp off, and want to scream for him to stop. I stand too, but I don’t move away from my desk. At the door he glances over at me, looks away, then back again. His brow creases in confusion, or indecision. After a few moments he comes across the room to stand in front of me. Close up, I can see the faint golden hairs pushing through around his mouth and chin, and a flash of how they would feel against my fingers comes to me so clearly that I can’t help making a small sound, deep in the back of my throat. He puts his hands palms down on the desk, leaning in slightly towards me.

‘Is there something wrong?’ he asks.

I can smell the dark spicy scent of his aftershave, and his fingers are just inches from mine, and suddenly a wildness overtakes me and I think, why the hell not, why shouldn’t I get what I want this time? I don’t reach out and touch him. I don’t tell him that I think I love him. I know, instinctively and deep in my gut, that the most brazen thing of all is not to say a word or move a muscle, and that’s exactly what I do. The realisation seems to come to him slowly, drip by drip, easing its way through his body and changing the expression on his face so subtly that I can’t pinpoint the moment it switches. All I know is that first he’s looking at me with detached concern, the way that any employer might see his secretary, and next he’s just a man staring at a woman.

‘I didn’t…’ he says slowly. He doesn’t finish the sentence, because he’s realising that of course he did know, he’s always known. I stare steadily back at him, and then I back away, inch by inch until my back is flat against the wall. I feel the silky fabric of my stockings catch against the cold plaster. He moves towards me in slow motion, never taking his eyes off mine. When he is as close as he can be without touching me, he puts one hand, flat and deliberate, against the wall above my shoulder – centimetres from my face, a knife just grazing my ear. I’m trembling, waiting, feeling the heat rising off him. He slides the other hand down the opposite side of the wall until it is level with my waist, then curves it swiftly inwards, slipping against the small of my back. I feel his touch on me like an electric shock. He pulls me towards him, roughly against his body, and suddenly I’m closing my eyes and giving myself up to it, kissing hard and fast. When he pulls back for a second, his face is dazed and surprised.

Later, much later, he whispers, ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ and I say, ‘You won’t.’ At eighteen, I am filled with confidence and certainty, and I have no suspicion that I am wrong. When I’m lying in bed beside him, finally still and listening to him breathing, I pinch the back of my hand so hard that tears spring to my eyes. I don’t wake up. This is a dream from which I won’t surface for another two years, but when I do it will be with such violence – eyes streaming, limbs aching, throat straining for breath – that it will almost kill me.

The morning after Harvey’s return from Spain, I walked into town for my shift at the shop. Every Friday and Sunday for the past four months, I had done the same thing. Laura had been the one who had seen the job advertised in the shop window, had noted down its details on a scrap of notepaper and pushed it under my bedroom door without a word. I hadn’t thought it worth my while to argue. Even I could see that I couldn’t sit in the house for the rest of my life. It was a kind of rehabilitation, I supposed – an undemanding job designed to reintegrate me into society – and like all rehabilitations, it felt at once painfully repetitive and ridiculously daunting.

Finding my way to the shop was usually like sleepwalking, my feet blindly steering me on a course they knew by heart. That morning I made myself stop and look as I walked, forcing the blurred, remote shapes around me into reality. Trees, lampposts, buildings, people. It was a hot day, and I could feel the sweat trickling down the back of my neck and catching in my collar. Everything I saw seemed to have a kind of unexpected clarity to it, like bright flesh suddenly and shockingly revealed under a layer of skin ripped away. For months I had felt distant and separated from the world I walked through; a patient behind a smooth, impenetrable glass wall. That morning I felt that I could reach out and touch whatever I saw. I was acutely aware of the pavement underneath my feet, pressing up against the soles of my shoes. When I reached the shop and raised my head to look up at its purple painted sign, the letters flashed at me, winking crazily. I closed my eyes briefly, and I could still see them – Belle’s Boutique, written in luminous script across the darkness.

I pushed the door open, listening to the sharp tangle of sound that pealed from the bell above. Catherine was already there, her platinum head bent over a glossy magazine. As always, she was sipping from a huge mug of tea, cradled in her tiny hands with their vixen-painted fingernails. When she saw me she set it down and gave me a brief friendly nod of acknowledgement. Catherine was twenty-two and blessed with the prettiness of a pixie. She had been away from the village for the past three years at a London fashion college, and I suspected that she would soon be gone again. Today she was wearing a linen smock covered with green and crimson flowers and a pair of high-heeled, strappy emerald sandals. In my first few weeks she had tried her best to make friends, but I had been unable to rouse myself to reciprocate and as a result we had fallen into an uneasy truce, two strangers brought together by a common setting. That morning I tried to smile in a way that would tell her that something had changed, even if I wasn’t quite sure what, but her face gave no sign that she had understood.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said, glancing at the clock. The extra lingering on my way in had cost me ten minutes.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Catherine said, shrugging. We rarely got any customers before eleven. ‘Good day yesterday?’

‘Yes, thanks,’ I said, finding that it was at least partly true. Looking back on it now, the drive to the airport had lost its nightmarish quality. I felt expanded, like an animal let out of a cage into the open air.

‘You were picking up your dad, weren’t you?’ she asked.

I stared at her. She wasn’t looking at me, still thumbing through the magazine and drinking her tea. A sudden bolt of vertigo hit me. For just a second, the whole shop lifted itself and shook before settling back into place. I opened my mouth to speak and the words came out. ‘Actually, he’s not my father.’

Catherine looked up now, her face quizzical and alert. ‘Oh, right – sorry,’ she said. ‘I just assumed he was – I mean, well, because you live with him, and…’ And because you always call him Dad, her frown finished silently.

I sat down opposite her at the till. My heart was beating very fast, with excitement or fear. I wanted to giggle. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘He and Laura are actually my parents-in-law. I married their son, Jonathan, a couple of years ago.’ The truth slipped easily from my lips then, and I wondered why it had stayed locked up for so long. Catherine was staring across at me, red-painted lips parted in blank surprise. I could see her tussling with questions, selecting one almost at random.

‘How old are you?’ she asked bluntly.

‘I’m twenty-one next month,’ I said. ‘I married young.’

Catherine was alive with shock now; I could feel it buzzing, crackling off her. ‘That’s amazing!’ she shrieked, reaching out and grabbing my hand hotly in hers. ‘I can’t believe I’ve been working with you all this time, and I never even knew you were married! God, I don’t know anyone who’s even in a serious relationship, let alone…it’s so romantic.’ All of a sudden she looked down, as if her hand were telling her something. She examined mine, turned it over. ‘You don’t wear a ring?’ she asked. For a second her face dropped with disappointed suspicion.

‘I do,’ I said quickly, hating her doubting me. ‘I just wear it around my neck, see?’ I fumbled for the long, thin white gold chain beneath my shirt and drew it out. The platinum-and-diamond ring sparkled wickedly in the light, swaying back and forth like a dowser’s pendulum beneath my hand.

‘I see,’ said Catherine slowly, reaching out a finger to touch it. ‘Why do you do that?’

I drew in breath to speak, and found that this was harder. I fought past the sudden sickness in my throat: I had come this far. ‘Jonathan died last October,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to get rid of the ring, but it feels wrong to wear it on my wedding finger now. I don’t know why.’

She leant in towards me, her hands clasped tightly together now as if she were praying. Her face was flooded with sympathy. ‘Oh my God.’ She was looking at me as if I were someone entirely different from the girl she had thought she had known – a curiosity, a rare discovery to be treasured and explored.

‘You’re the first person I’ve spoken to about it.’ I corrected myself. ‘The first person who didn’t already know.’

Catherine bowed her head, as if sensible of the honour, simultaneously gratified and unworthy. When she shook her head in disbelief, her long beaded glass earrings leapt and jangled prettily against her neck, casting pale shadows against her skin. For a few moments, stupidly, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them. I felt the hairs on my arms stand on end and prickle against my sleeves; despite the heat of the day, I was cold, and shivering with what felt like delayed shock. Now that I had told her, the glee had drained out of me. I wanted the words back, wanted them swallowed back up into the black depths of my head.

I heard her voice, tentative but insistent, come to me from somewhere. ‘How did it happen?’

‘It was an accident,’ I said, and in the same instant heard the bell go. A group of young girls poured into the shop, chatting and screaming with laughter. Catherine looked swiftly across at them, then back at me, frozen into silence. Excuse me, excuse me, one of the girls was bleating, holding up a skirt, do you have this in a size ten? She means a twelve, another cut in. Whoops of laughter. You cheeky cow. Oh, come on – you’re never a ten. Their words rolled around the walls like marbles. I watched Catherine rise reluctantly from her seat and move towards them. I could still feel my pulse beating hard and fast, thumping in my eardrums. I slipped the chain back inside my shirt. For the rest of the shift, I could feel the cool, perfect circle of the ring against my skin, always there, reminding me, branding me.

We stay away from the office for the next two days, holed up together in Jonathan’s penthouse flat, leaving only to buy food, which we eat mostly in bed. On Friday morning he sleeps in until twelve, and I spend over an hour just lying there looking at him. His lips are slightly parted, showing a flash of white pointed teeth that gives me a sick, shifting pang of lust deep inside my stomach. His eyes move mysteriously under closed lids, rolling and flickering. I want to peel them back and step into his dreams.

When he wakes he reaches for me reflexively. ‘Good morning,’ he murmurs.

‘Good morning,’ I repeat. He must catch something different in my voice, because he sits up sharply.

‘What’s up?’ he says. ‘Are you hungry? Do you want me to get you something to eat?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s just…I’ll have to go soon.’

Jonathan shakes his head, more in confusion than disagreement, as if he simply cannot believe what he is hearing. ‘Go where?’ he asks. ‘What for?’

I spread my hands helplessly. ‘I’m going to Manchester tomorrow,’ I say. ‘To start university. You know that.’

He frowns a little, lines creasing the smooth beauty of his forehead. ‘You can’t do that,’ he says. When I don’t reply, he repeats it, louder this time. ‘You can’t do that. You’ll have to cancel.’

Even though I can hardly bear the thought of leaving him, a laugh rises unwillingly in my throat. ‘You can’t just cancel university. I have to go.’

‘No,’ he says, grabbing my hand, pulling me against him. We are so close that I can’t even focus on him any more, but I can still feel his eyes boring through me. ‘You have to stay. Here with me. If you go to Manchester, it’s over.’

His words land like a punch and I gasp. This conversation is moving too fast, making me dizzy. If I’ve thought about it at all in the haze of the past two days, I have vaguely assumed that we will manage, no matter how far apart we are; visits at weekends, long stretches of time together in the holidays. I love him, and although he hasn’t yet said so, I know he loves me too. This is what love is about: enduring separation, believing that we can surmount all obstacles. I tell him as much, but he thumps his hand impatiently down on the bed, making me flinch.

‘No, Violet,’ he barks. His face is aflame with anger and outrage. ‘Love is about being together. I want you, and it’s now or it’s not at all – I won’t wait for you.’ It should sound hard and unfeeling, but somehow it doesn’t. It sounds like exactly what I’ve dreamt of hearing all my life. Someone who needs me, who’s desperate for me, so desperate that he can’t even bear me to be out of his sight.

‘I can’t,’ I say again, but the conviction has gone from my voice.

He leaps up and pulls on a robe; grabbing the phone from the bedside table, he strides back and brandishes it in front of me. ‘Of course you can,’ he says. ‘You can call them right now and tell them you’re not coming.’ Suddenly, he smiles wickedly, and the warmth of it soaks right through my skin to my bones. As I take the phone I’m laughing and shaking my head, because it’s all so ridiculous, because the truth of it is that I barely know him, because it would be crazy to throw the future I’ve planned for months away with one phone call, and because I know that this is it, suddenly there’s no other option – he’s the one and I’m going to do it.

The woman at the admissions office on the other end of the line is silent for a long while, and then asks to speak to my parents. My mouth opens and words fall out: I tell her she can’t, because they are both dead. I have not crafted my thoughts or moulded them into speech – they have just happened to me, used me as a vessel. As the woman flounders and gropes for a response, I press the button and cut her off. I’m laughing like a madwoman as I jump into Jonathan’s arms. He hugs me back, but I can feel the tension in his shoulders. Sure enough, after a few seconds he grips me by my arms and pushes me back slightly, frowning at me.

‘Was that true?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I say, even though an inner voice is telling me to stick to my story. To do otherwise looks crazy, unreliable, but I can’t help myself. Anyone else I can lie to, I think, but not you, not you.

He tips his head back sharply for an instant, as if to throw his thoughts together into a heap. ‘Why did you say it, then?’ he asks. I can’t know, at this point, that denying his parents’ existence would seem to him the worst kind of sacrilege.

I shrug, looking at him steadily, straight on. This is who I am, and if he can’t accept it then he is not who I think he is. ‘I had to say something,’ I say. ‘I’m doing this for you.’

For a split second, uncertainty pulses across his face and I feel something curl coldly between us; a sudden distance, a moment of clarity. We’re facing each other, both our bodies tensed. His face spells out his thoughts as plainly as if he has shouted them into the silent room. He’s wondering what the hell he is doing, if he is right to have pushed me to make that call, if it’s too late to backtrack. He’s wondering whether I am worth his time. Just as he begins to speak, his mobile rings, shrilling and flashing insistently from the bedroom cabinet. His head snaps instantly towards it, and he strides across the room to pick it up. Facing away from me, he murmurs a hello. I watch his back straighten; he moves towards the balcony, pushing the glass doors open and pulling them to again behind him. I’m left alone in the bedroom. I stare down at my hands; they are clenched and shaking, blurring in front of me. I feel as if I have narrowly avoided a disaster. In the past two days I have discovered something so strong and so powerful that it comes as a shock to find that it could also be so fragile. I can’t let him take this away from me, from us. I will have to fight for him.

Dimly, I become aware of his voice outside on the balcony, seeping in through the tiny gap where the door has not quite closed. He’s saying that there is nothing to worry about, that he has everything under control and that he will be back in the office on Monday. He sounds deferential, stumbling over his words in a way I have never heard before. After a minute’s taut silence, he says, ‘Yes – yes, she is.’ Another silence, and then a short, relieved laugh.

‘OK,’ he says, and as he does so he pushes the door open again and steps back inside the room. ‘I will. Lunchtime tomorrow at the club? Got it. I’ll see you then.’ He disconnects the call and tosses the phone on to the bed, breathing deeply. He glances at me and I am surprised and relieved to see a flirtatious spark in his eyes. ‘That was my father,’ he says. ‘Wondering why I’ve been playing hooky from the office. He’s a clever old devil, I’ll give him that – he worked out that you must be with me, and he’s intrigued. He wants to meet you—us—for lunch tomorrow with him and my mother. Fancy it?’

I blink, unsure of what has just happened. The thought of lunch with Jonathan’s parents both exhilarates and terrifies me. I stare at him, running the tip of my tongue nervously along my bottom lip. ‘Yes,’ I say, because there seems to be nothing else to say, nothing else that will keep us on this course.

He comes to sit beside me on the bed and puts his arm around me, and with that one gesture my doubts dissolve and I want to weep with relief. ‘I’m sorry this is all so fast,’ he whispers into my neck. ‘But I don’t want to lose you. I know that already.’ He kisses my collarbone, a soft, long kiss that makes me close my eyes. ‘You’d better go home later,’ he says. ‘Explain things to those parents of yours. Maybe leave out the part about them being dead.’ A low snort of amusement against my neck lets me know that he’s teasing me, repainting what initially seemed bizarre and disturbing in a kinder, more indulgent light.

‘We’re not close,’ I say. I’m trying to justify myself to him, but he doesn’t seem interested in hearing me. He’s running his hands slowly over me from top to toe, as if he has just noticed that I am naked. He mutters something that I can’t catch, and soon enough I don’t want to talk any more. He attacks my body with a passion that half frightens me, so roughly at times that I can feel the pain stabbing at me through the haze of pleasure, and more than once I almost scream at him to stop, but he seems to read my thoughts and softens his touch at the crucial moment every time. Soon enough I will reflect that things are much the same out of bed as they are in it. Some people have a knack for bringing you to the brink again and again, pushing you right to the limit of your endurance until you think you cannot take any more, but never quite tipping you over the edge and out of love.

Laura was in the garden when I returned from the shop, tying lengths of pale green and lilac crêpe paper in bows around the back of each chair in turn. I stood and watched her from the kitchen window. When she had tied each bow, she stepped back, shaded her eyes against the sun and tipped her head a little to one side, as if expecting the chair to speak to her. Several times she came forward again and readjusted the crêpe paper, fluffing it primly and precisely into place until she was satisfied. There must have been fifty or sixty chairs in total, huddled in groups around spindly metal tables dotted across the sweep of lawn. A pile of bunting was stacked up by one of the tables – multicoloured flags strung together on a pale yellow cord, stirring slightly with the summer wind. As I leaned out of the window, peering closer, I could see tiny sparkling dots nestling in the grass, winking and glimmering like jewels. Rose petals perhaps, or some kind of confetti. As I stared at them, Laura looked up and saw me, gave me a little wave. I came out into the garden to join her.

‘How was the shop?’ she asked when I was close enough to pick up the soft, low register of her voice.

Briefly, I considered telling her the truth. I told Catherine about Jonathan today. She treated me differently all afternoon, and before I left she asked me whether I wanted to talk any more about it. I said no, but now I’m not so sure. I think I might, and soon. ‘This all looks great,’ I said instead, gesticulating to take in the whole lawn. ‘Better hope it doesn’t rain overnight.’

‘Oh, it won’t rain.’ A hint of Laura’s old imperiousness surfaced. ‘I wanted to get everything ready today, so that I could concentrate on the food tomorrow. We’ve got almost sixty coming, you know.’

There was pride in her words. I stared out across the lawn, shading my eyes against the evening sun, trying to imagine it filled with people intent on celebrating Harvey’s sixty-fourth birthday. It was an arbitrary number to be making such a fuss over, but I suspected that the birthday itself was little but a device to kick-start Harvey’s return to society. Last year, visitors had come and gone with a monotonous regularity that had rapidly thinned into nothingness when it became clear that none of us was inclined to put on a brave face and entertain company. I could tell that through his grief Harvey was still capable of being disappointed by the shoddy pretence of respect with which his erstwhile friends and colleagues had retreated – and contemptuous of it, too. All the same, the garden party had been his idea, perhaps to test the permanence of the situation. As the RSVPs had trickled back I had sensed a kind of cold satisfaction emanating from him, a growing confirmation that he had not been erased as swiftly as it had appeared. He had always known, as well as they did, that he was not the sort of person who was easily forgotten.

‘It’ll be strange,’ I heard Laura say, as if half to herself. ‘Seeing everyone again. It feels like such a long time since we’ve had this sort of gathering.’ Her fingers plucked disconsolately at a thread of lilac crêpe, teasing it apart into long filmy strands. ‘I hope Dad enjoys it.’

‘I hope we all do,’ I said, ‘but there’s no reason why we wouldn’t.’ Empty though the words were, they seemed to reassure her, and she nodded. I hesitated, and then put my hand over hers. Despite the heat of the day, her skin felt cold and faintly damp, as if she had just come in out of the rain.

‘I think this will be good for you, Violet,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘You’re too young to…’ She trailed off and, not wanting her to go on, I gripped her hand more tightly. The sudden smart of tears behind my eyes surprised me. Affection, even love, for Laura tended to strike me like that; randomly, as if unthought of ever before.

‘I’m looking forward to it,’ I said, as brightly as I could muster, and as I smiled at her I felt my spirits lift with the knowledge that I wasn’t lying. The closest I had got to a party in the past nine months was a strained, abortive gathering with a few of Jonathan’s old university friends – women ten years older than myself who wanted to drink cocktails, talk loudly about their own lives and subtly compete to give the impression that they themselves had been far more deeply touched and bruised by my husband’s death than I could ever imagine. It was a mistake that I had never made again. There was something unsettling about the distance I felt from them, a sharp contrast to the easy friendliness with which they had seemed to welcome me when Jonathan and I were first married. Perhaps they had seen me as temporary. Now, in their eyes and mine, he would always belong to me, and they had not liked it.

‘Really, I’m looking forward to it,’ I said again, almost defiantly. Still smiling, I swung round to look back at the house, and saw Harvey there. He was standing motionless at the kitchen window. I raised my hand, but he gave no sign of having noticed me. He was staring out through the glass across the lawn, his face blank and remote, as if he were watching Rome burn.

I began to walk back towards the house. I didn’t want to see the garden through his eyes, as I knew I would if I turned around again: the pointless little bunched-together groups of tables, the coloured bows fluttering emptily in the breeze. Harvey had a way of stripping back pretence, albeit without intent or volition. He simply saw the futility of things, and it bled out of him, tainting everything that it touched.

I heard them before I saw them: a rising and falling hubbub of voices outside the kitchen door, their words blurring into each other so that I could barely make sense of them. I kept my head down, piping cream into meringues in perfect circles, feeling heat spilling over me. Now that the guests were arriving I wanted them gone again. A painful shyness was spreading in my chest, making me gasp for breath. My fingers shook as I placed the strawberries one by one on top of each meringue, taking far longer than I needed, spinning out the task. Above the general hum I heard Harvey’s coolly authoritative tones, inviting the guests to go out into the garden and exchanging niceties. Now and again, I thought I could hear Laura chiming in, palely echoing his words. Shadows moved across the work-surface as people passed outside, but I kept my back to the window. I collected the meringues on to their silver platter, then went to wash my hands. In my agitation I turned the tap on too hard and water sprayed out on to my dress, staining darkly against the red linen. I dabbed it ineffectually with a tea towel, feeling my heart beat faster, hearing the voices grow louder outside.

‘And where is Violet?’ I heard someone say, my name cutting through the babble of words. ‘How is she?’ I didn’t recognise the woman’s voice, but her tone was deferential, sympathetic, as if she were referring to an invalid. I couldn’t catch Laura’s reply, but the woman made a noise of ostentatious understanding in response. ‘Of course, it’s very hard on her,’ I heard her say. ‘On all of you.’

I snatched up a tray of quiches at random and made for the back door, gripping the tray tightly to cancel out my shaking. When I saw the lawn I stopped in my tracks and blinked, half dazzled; dozens of people, many of them women with bright, jewel-coloured hats and shoes that danced and sparkled jauntily in the sun. I had not meant to make an entrance, but as I appeared, conversations seemed to fade, heads turn sharply my way for an instant before whipping back into place. I came forward across the lawn, placed the tray carefully down on to the nearest table, then straightened up, searching for a face I recognised. Many of them stirred up vague memories: ex-colleagues from Harvey’s law firm, their eyes alert and watchful. I couldn’t remember a single one of their names.

I saw Laura and made my way towards her, forcing my lips into a smile. Next to her, a large matronly woman loomed, her hair teased up into tight little brown curls that clustered around her bovine face. I knew instinctively that it was her voice I had heard in the kitchen, but I had no idea who she was.

‘Violet, I was just going to bring out some more of the food – but you remember Miranda,’ Laura said, almost beseechingly, as if willing me to say yes. I looked closer, and with a shock I connected the name and the face: Miranda Foster, Jonathan’s godmother and an old family friend. All at once I could see her on our wedding day, bearing down on me and telling me how lucky I was and how Jonathan was like a son to her, before enfolding him lasciviously in a hug like no mother I had ever seen. The past eighteen months had not been kind to her; her face looked strained and stiff, as if it had been dipped in wax.

‘Of course,’ I said, holding out my hand, but Miranda made an impatient gesture and cast aside the sandwich she had been holding, pulling me against her voluptuous bosom into a forced embrace. I froze in shock, the sticky, cloying scent of her perfume flooding my nostrils.

‘My poor child,’ she whispered into my ear. ‘What you must have been through!’ As swiftly as she had drawn me towards her, she pushed me back, holding me by the shoulders to examine me. ‘You look older,’ she said, a little critically. ‘I suppose it’s to be expected.’

Yes, I almost said, the passage of time tends to have that effect – but I knew that was not what she meant. What she was trying to imply, not very subtly, was that grief had ravaged me, stolen the youthful bloom that she might once have envied and rendered me wholly unremarkable. She may well have been right, but I fiercely resented her assumption that she was entitled to say it. She was no one to me; had meant less than nothing to Jonathan, who had once told me that he wished the old harridan would stop undressing him with her eyes every time they met. For an instant I felt my colour rise and the words threatened to burst out of me.

‘I suppose it is, yes – for all of us,’ I contented myself with. ‘I would hardly have recognised you.’

Miranda’s brow wrinkled in suspicion and dismay, but before she could speak Harvey materialised at my side. He was wearing a crisp linen suit in pale grey, his silver hair drawn back from his forehead, and a necktie I had not seen before: an unusually flamboyant affair, apple-green silk shot through with metallic thread. When she saw him, Miranda’s face softened into what I suspected she thought was coquettishness, and which indeed might have been in a woman half her age.

‘Lovely to see you, so glad you could make it,’ Harvey said smoothly. ‘Violet, why don’t you go and see if anyone would like a top-up? There’s more champagne inside.’

Gratefully, I broke away. Harvey had an instinct for seeing when people needed to be rescued and an admirably selfsacrificing nature when it came to substituting himself into the firing line; it was something I had forgotten about him in these months of near-isolation. As I retreated, I stole a look back at him. He appeared relaxed, urbane and smiling. It was impossible to tell whether it was just an act.

I spent the next hour passing through the crowd, offering drinks and canapés, stopping here and there for a brief five minutes of small talk. Most of the guests had eyes that flooded with a mixture of pity and curiosity as they spoke to me, but at least, unlike Miranda, they had the good sense to keep their tongues in check and stuck to chatting about the weather. As time passed I felt myself begin to unwind, the tension relaxing from my muscles. A couple of Harvey’s colleagues flirted gallantly and unthreateningly with me, making me roll my eyes and blush. I wondered whether I might be having fun. Standing there on the lawn in my red dress, tossing my hair over my shoulders and laughing, I caught a glimpse of the future opening up. It was not the future I had planned and not the kind of fun I had been accustomed to, but there was little prospect of that any more. Glancing into the crowd of guests, I tried to imagine Jonathan among them, moving with his old confident ease from group to group, and found that I could not. For so long I had carried him around with me like a dead weight, projecting him so vividly into every situation I found myself in that it sometimes seemed I had summoned his ghost. The thought felt disloyal, but if I had lost the knack, I was not sure that I wanted it back. I was tired of missing him, tired of living my life around someone who no longer existed. Any respite from it, no matter how temporary, made me giddily thankful.

I was helping Laura to collect some empty glasses when I saw Harvey stride across the lawn towards us. He put his arm lightly around Laura’s waist, bending in towards her so that his mouth almost brushed her ear. ‘What is that man doing here?’ I heard him murmur, jerking his head to indicate who he meant. To anyone who knew him less, his voice would have sounded unruffled, but I caught a steely undertone to it, the merest hint of a threat.

Laura followed his gaze, narrowing her eyes in the sunlight, and I did the same. Underneath the low-spreading apple tree at the edge of the lawn, a little apart from the crowd, a man stood, smoking a cigarette and looking out across the grass, his face half turned away.

‘It’s Max Croft, isn’t it?’ Laura said. When Harvey did not reply, she turned her face up to his appealingly, searching for a clue as to what to say. ‘I suppose his parents brought him,’ she said finally.

‘His parents?’ Harvey repeated, a little bitingly. ‘Couldn’t they find a babysitter?’ His voice threatened to become louder, and he took a full minute to compose himself, smoothing the flat of his hand slowly and repeatedly over the knot of his tie. I squinted harder at the man, but could make out little but the short, angry-seeming drags he was taking on his cigarette; hard, muscular movements.

‘I didn’t realise that you didn’t want him here.’ Laura fluttered, her hands making desperate shapes in the air now as she spoke. ‘I mean, I didn’t specifically tell Patricia and James that they couldn’t bring him, I wouldn’t really have thought of it – and after all, he did know Jonathan, I thought they were quite friendly once—’

‘Actually,’ Harvey cut in levelly, ‘I don’t think Jonathan liked him at all.’

‘Oh dear…’ Laura began to flap, her eyes darting wildly back and forth between Harvey and the man underneath the apple tree. ‘I’m not sure…I don’t think I can…’

‘Of course you can’t,’ Harvey said, so softly that I could barely catch the words. ‘All the same, next time, perhaps you could finalise the guest list with me.’ His tone was perfectly pleasant, almost soothing. Before Laura had a chance to reply, he had turned and melted into the crowd, clapping yet another well-wisher on the back. Laura looked after him, wringing her hands, her face haunted. I knew that she would worry about the incident for the rest of the afternoon.

I drifted away from the central tables to get a better look at the man whose appearance had jolted Harvey’s famous equilibrium. As I stood on the fringes of the group, staring across at him, he saw me and half raised his hand in a silent salute. Automatically, I waved back. He paused, stubbing out his cigarette against the tree, then beckoned me over. I hesitated, glancing back, but curiosity drove me forward; I walked slowly across the lawn, the pointed heels of my shoes sinking a little into the earth with each step. As I drew closer I realised that Harvey was right. This face had no business at his garden party. The features were bold, tough and cruel; brutal slashed cheekbones, a hard, unsmiling gangster’s mouth. His dark hair was cropped close to his skull, bristling along the strong lines of his bones. His shoulders looked tensed for battle, and his body gave the impression of being hard-packed into a container a little too small for it, restraining its force. If I ran into you in an alleyway, I thought, I would be terrified. I could smell the powerful scent of nicotine and burnt smoke rising off him.

‘All right,’ he said when I halted a few feet away from him. His voice was every bit as harsh as his appearance, a faint rasping rattle running underneath the surface that made me want to clear my throat. When I didn’t reply, he lit up another cigarette, keeping his eyes warily on me, cupping his hand secretively around his mouth.

‘Hello,’ I said at last.

‘Max Croft,’ he said, thrusting his hand out so that I had no choice but to take it. He crushed mine for a few painful seconds before throwing it back. ‘I think you work with my sister.’

It took me a beat to understand who he meant. I looked more closely at him, and could see no trace of Catherine’s elfin prettiness in his face. ‘Really?’ I said.

He gave a grin more like a sneer, showing even, regular teeth. ‘Well, you tell me,’ he said. ‘Do you or don’t you?’

‘If you mean Catherine,’ I said, ‘then yes.’

‘That’s the one.’ He was silent for a few moments, leaning back against the apple tree and smoking, his lips sucking on the cigarette in a way that made my skin prickle with revulsion and fascination. ‘Nice do,’ he said eventually, jerking his head in the direction of the clustered guests. His voice was lightly laced with irony.

‘For those who were invited,’ I said. His mocking tone had set off a small fire of protectiveness in me, and I folded my arms. ‘Harvey didn’t seem to think you were one of those.’

Max raised his eyebrows, looking at me speculatively. ‘Come to kick me out, then?’ he asked. I was silent. ‘Look,’ he said after a few more drags, ‘I don’t want to cause any trouble. I don’t think your old man likes me very much, but it’s not down to anything I’ve done. I liked Jonathan – we didn’t have a lot in common, granted, but he was a good guy. We played a few games of pool, hung out a few times. If your old man doesn’t think I was a suitable friend, then that’s his problem.’

I frowned, trying to remember. As far as I could recall, Jonathan had never mentioned this man. I had certainly never seen him before. I thought of Harvey’s quiet words to Laura: Actually, I don’t think Jonathan liked him at all. There was no way of telling who was right. The silence threatened to stifle me. ‘He’s not my old man,’ I said.

Max shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Obviously. He might as well be, though. Seems you’ve been well and truly welcomed into the family bosom. Just shows what an untimely death can do, eh? But for that you might still be knocking on the back door pleading to be let in.’ His voice had dropped, taking on a nasty, sarcastic quality.

A bright flush of anger swept over me. This man was being insufferably rude, and he had no business saying these knowing things to me, as if he knew more about me and my family – for family they were, in a way – than I did myself. I drew in a sharp breath and turned to go. In the same instant, he had leant forward and caught me easily by the wrist, the tips of two fingers still holding his cigarette, burnt down to the stub now, sending heat coursing across my skin.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking straight into my eyes, and I felt my whole body jolt with something strange and dark. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It just makes me angry to see a girl like you shut away with those two. They’re not so bad, don’t get me wrong, but they’ve got no life to them. You’re, what? Twenty? Twenty-one? You should get out more.’ Incredibly, I thought I saw his left eye briefly flicker in a wink. He dropped my arm, still staring at me. ‘I’ll see you,’ he said, making it sound like a promise and a threat. I backed away from him, breathing hard. My heart was thumping in my chest, as if he had pulled a knife on me.

The next few hours slipped by like minutes. I watched, as I might have watched a scene in a dream, as Harvey commanded everyone’s attention and made a short speech, thanking all the guests for coming and saying how pleased he was that he was able to celebrate his birthday with so many of his friends and family. The polite smattering of applause fell into my ears like rain. As people gradually started to peel away, the sky above began to darken. I helped to find coats, showed departing guests to the exit. The wind was picking up, shaking the green and lilac crêpe paper tied to the chairs, setting up a low insistent rustle across the lawn. Drinks were finished, glasses cast aside, presents left in the hallway. I stood smiling and thanking people for coming, saying the same lines over and over, kissing and shaking hands with what might as well have been so many brightly dressed puppets. ‘I saw you talking to Max Croft earlier,’ Miranda whispered as she left, intent on imparting one final sting, ‘he’s not our sort, not our sort at all.’ As I waved off the last of them, a light drizzle began to slash against the windowpanes.

I went back out into the empty garden, feeling the rain soaking into my skin, collecting coldly in my hair. Far in the distance, I could see Laura, sitting still on a bench by the rose garden. I walked down towards her, my shoes sucking and sticking to the damp earth. She was gazing at the yellow rose bush, the one she had planted in memory of Jonathan. I remembered her digging the cold ground, her head bent down, shoving the spade in with such violence that it shook her whole body, sending gravel spraying in a fountain around her, muddying her dress. The roses were in bloom now; huge, gorgeous blooms the colour of sunshine, trembling with fat drops of rain. I sat down beside her, and for a long while we didn’t speak. Her face was set and distant, as if she were sorting through her memories and finding nothing new there.

‘Do you ever wonder?’ I said. ‘Do you ever wonder what happened?’

Laura raised her head slowly, searchingly; didn’t speak.

‘I don’t mean…I know that we know what happened,’ I said. ‘But…’ I didn’t know how to continue. All at once, and without warning, I felt the old familiar grief and incomprehension rising to the surface, sending a shiver of nausea the length of my body. As we sat there, I began to cry as I hadn’t done in weeks, huge ugly sobs that shook the air around us. I wanted these feelings gone – wanted them out of me. It seemed that they were here to stay; that however much I wanted it and however much I might fool myself that I was moving on, they wouldn’t ever leave me.

I unlock the door and push it open as quietly as I can, feeling it snag and scrape against loose carpet. As I slip into the dark hallway, I hear the low static noise of the television coming from the sitting room. I move towards it, the familiar smell of must and musk flooding my nose and mouth as I do so. If I stay in this house too long, it starts to cling to my hair and my clothes, infecting everywhere I go. It’s the same with the mess; even when I’m not here, I can see it in the back of my mind, weighing me down. Now, coming from Jonathan’s immaculate flat, it hits me even harder: boxes piled up against the hallway wall containing God knows what, stacks of old yellowing newspapers, a heap of ironing that never seems to get done. I have long since passed the stage of seeing these things as charmingly bohemian.

I creep to the sitting-room door and stand there, peeping through the chink. The room is dark but for the television, light bristling off it like an eerie aquarium, and a small floor lamp throwing dim shadows against the back wall. The backs of my parents’ heads are there, popped up above the sofa and framing the television, motionless. I know they will have heard me come in, despite my efforts to be quiet, but they don’t turn around. I push the door open and come into the room, go and sit opposite them on an armchair that sighs and whines when I settle myself down on it.

‘Nice of you to join us,’ grunts my father, and for a few moments we’re just sitting there silently, all of us together, our eyes trained on whichever stupid quiz show they’ve been watching for however many minutes or hours or days. The pictures dance in front of me, blurring meaninglessly into blobs of coloured light. I think of Jonathan, the hot sharp smell of sweat and sex in his bedroom. Already I can’t wait to see him again.

‘Are you all packed, dear?’ my mother asks idly. I have told them that I have been staying with a friend, Gemma, for the past few days. It seems they haven’t bothered to check. From anyone else this question might be barbed – if she had bothered to set foot in my room, my mother would know that no packing had been done – but from her, it denotes nothing but ignorance. I look at her, her calm and indifferent face. In a minute I will make that mask crack. I can feel my hands growing hot and damp; I wipe them slowly against my skirt.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I haven’t packed, because I’m not going to Manchester.’

The change, in my mother at least, is instant. Her head jerks up and she shoots a sharp glance at my father. He just stays slumped in his seat, watching the television, looking bored and faintly contemptuous. He has heard this before, of course, but he doesn’t know what has changed.

‘We’ve been through this, Violet,’ my mother says in a voice that might be meant to be compassionate, but just sounds hard and impatient to my ears. ‘It’s difficult going to university at first, but you’ll be fine. You’ll make friends. You’ll manage with the work.’

‘I’ve met someone,’ I say. ‘We’re in love.’ Saying the truth here, in this faded room with its threadbare rug and peeling walls, makes it sound totally unreal, a little girl’s fantasy. I dig my fingernails into my palms and will myself to remember. I won’t let these pedestrian surroundings crowd him out. Still, the echo of my words around the room sounds hollow even to my ears. Quietly, my father snickers, a low, unimpressed chuckle that makes me so angry I have to close my eyes briefly, seeing bursts of red pumping across the dark.

‘Oh, Violet,’ my mother says, her tone exasperated and brittle. ‘You’ll meet plenty of boys in Manchester.’

I picture them: spotty youths with stripy scarves and flat Northern drawls. ‘He’s not a boy,’ I spit out. ‘He’s a thirty-year-old man with his own flat. And I love him, and I’m not leaving him. Some things are more important than—’ I stop. I want to say ‘than education’, but it sounds wrong. It’s not a question of importance, but one of necessity. I can’t leave him. The thought twists a fist in my stomach, tensing my whole body in desperation.

‘Oh, Violet,’ my mother says again. She clasps her hands in front of her, and I see the ancient engagement ring glinting on her finger. When I was younger I had thought it was the most beautiful ring in the world, but now it looks dulled and tarnished, just like everything else in this house. ‘This sounds like a crush to me. We’ve all had them, but really, a thirty-year-old man is not going to be interested in a young girl like you.’

I feel a surprised bark of laughter rise in my throat. How can she be so naive? ‘I think you’ll find he’s very interested in me,’ I say, my voice shrill and loud, battling against the television’s merry clatter. ‘I’ve been with him for the past three days, not that you’d care.’ For a wild moment, I want to shock her further, push her over the edge, tell her every detail of what we have done. Forbidden words crowd into my mind, making me breathless.

‘What?’ my mother says, louder now. ‘But this…this is outrageous. I don’t know what’s been going on here, but whatever it is, it’s ridiculous. You need to go and pack. We’ll be leaving at ten a.m. tomorrow.’

‘You’re right,’ I shout. I am on my feet now, towering over her on the sofa, my fists clenched impotently with rage. ‘You don’t know what’s been going on – you never have. I love him, and I’m not going. I phoned the admissions office today and told them, so there!’ The last two words slip out, and I want to bite them back; even to me they sound silly and childish, but I stand my ground, glaring.

For the first time, my father raises his head and looks at me. He seems faintly puzzled, grooves of confusion etched into his brow. ‘You did what?’ he asks gruffly.

‘I phoned them up and told them I’m not coming,’ I repeat. I find that I’m shivering with adrenalin.

My father wipes a hand slowly and deliberately across his mouth before rising to his feet. He’s not a tall man, barely a few inches above me in his socked feet, but right now I have to fight the temptation to shrink before him. He puts one hand on my shoulder, but not in comfort. I feel my muscles tense, wanting to shrug him off, but I keep still. He peers forward, into my eyes, as if he is searching for the person he wants to see inside them. But she’s not there. I have never been his vision of me. I am somebody else, and all at once she is fighting to get out.

‘You have a choice here,’ he says. ‘Either we call up the admissions office first thing tomorrow and we forget about all this and we take you to Manchester, or you get out of this house and don’t come back.’

‘David…’ I hear my mother say behind him, floating there worriedly like a ghost. I can sense her there, but I can’t look at her. My eyes are fixed on my father’s.

‘No, Jessica,’ he interrupts. ‘We’ve done everything for this girl. Everything for you,’ he says to me. ‘If you don’t like it, you’re not welcome here.’

For a second I am rigid with shock; then I move back, out of his force field, my arms folded across my chest. The hurt and disbelief that wash over me feel strangely familiar, as if they are already a part of me. ‘OK,’ I say, just to fill the silence. I turn his words over in my head. All I can feel is confusion, incomprehension at how he can believe that eighteen years of what has sometimes felt like near-total indifference amounts to doing everything for me. My mother’s face swims into view, her mouth half opened in shock or indecision. She’s no better; some days can barely rouse herself enough to care whether I’m dead or alive, for all her protestations when it suits her. I have tried for too long now to pretend that this is how things should be – to be content with this hollow parody of a family. I feel fury rise inside me again, making me heady and nauseous, but I don’t speak.

I turn on my heel and leave the room, pounding up the stairs to my bedroom. I let the door swing open, revealing the tatty single bed, the piles of books scattered around it, the childhood knick-knacks that I haven’t used in years crowding the dressing table, leaving no inch of space. I step forward and pull my largest suitcase out from under the bed. My blood is pumping in my head. I am not sure what I am doing, and I don’t want to stop and think. Quickly, my hands shaking, I start stuffing things into it, almost at random. I force myself to make a list in my head. Clothes, make-up, a few favourite books, the charger for my mobile phone. I zip the bag up easily; it’s only half full. There must be something else I need. I look around the room, my eyes darting from corner to corner, taking in the piled-up possessions that don’t even feel like mine any more. There’s nothing.

I run back down the stairs, dragging the case behind me. They’re waiting for me in the hallway. I see my mother’s eyes narrow in uncertainty, wondering whether I have been packing for Manchester, or for somewhere else.

‘I’m going,’ I say, and through my anger, to my own shock, I hear my voice crack even though my eyes are dry. ‘Thanks for…for everything.’ I sound hard and bitter, but I don’t care. My father’s face is stern and set, betraying no emotion. I’ve seen him more animated in front of the TV.

‘There’s really no need for this, Violet. This isn’t like you,’ my mother says. I am silent. Again she looks to my father, and finds no encouragement. I see her grasping for words. ‘Perhaps a couple of days away will help you get things in perspective,’ she says. ‘When you’ve calmed down, then…Well, be in touch soon in any case, won’t you? Let us know where you’re staying.’ She sounds as if I’m going on holiday. Already I can tell that she’s reframing the incident in her mind, trying to force it within the bounds of acceptability, unable to cope with the reality of what is happening. She has always been a coward. I won’t turn out that way, not if I can help it. This is my chance to stop it happening.

I move towards the door, put my hand on the latch, hesitate for an instant. Now that I am on the point of leaving, it feels so surreal that I almost laugh. The fight threatens to drain out of me as I stand there. How much easier it would be to do as they want. I glance back and see my parents’ faces, and for a second they seem different, older. I look at the tiny wrinkles around my mother’s eyes, the sprinkling of grey in my father’s hair, and my heart contracts unthinkingly, taking me back to a time when I loved them so much that I couldn’t bear them to be out of my sight. It’s so long ago, but I can barely understand how we have got from there to here. I want to scream with the unfairness of it. I want those people back – not these two painted dolls who no longer know anything about me. It seems that in the past few years we’ve peeled apart so subtly that I’m no longer sure where the threads between us are, and now it’s far too late to stitch us back together, ever again. I have spent eighteen years following in their footsteps, and somehow I know that unless I act now, I will spend the next eighteen doing the same.

Sometimes the biggest decisions are made in a split second. In the half-light of the hall, I think I see my father’s face start to change and sag with sorrow, and I can’t watch. I open the door into the dark and pull it shut behind me. A light drizzle is beating down on to the ground beyond the porch, splattering wetly on to the gravel. I step out into it and start to walk. In fifteen minutes I will be on a train to London; in a little over an hour I will be with Jonathan again. Unless he offers me one, I no longer have a home.

Already I can feel my memories sealing over. If I am not to regret this decision and go crawling back out of weakness, I must put my parents in a box where no one can find them but me, and I’ll only open it when I’m ready. It’s a vow that I will keep to, and while they’re there, locked and trapped somewhere I don’t want to reach, I find that I don’t miss them much. I barely miss them at all.

I put on my best dress – black, dotted all over with tiny indigo violets. I hope that Jonathan will pick up on the violet reference, and find it endearing rather than trite. In front of his floor-length mirror, I brush my hair slowly and luxuriously, drawing out the crackling of static. I have spent almost twenty minutes doing my make-up, anxious to strike the right note. The tension between the sex symbol I want to be for Jonathan and the homemaker I want to seem to his parents still shows itself on my face, in the battle between my heavily kohl-lined eyes and the neutral, subdued gloss of my mouth. In the mirror I see him approaching behind me, buttoning a white shirt, naked but for boxer shorts from the waist down. He’s sizing me up, his eyes running carefully from top to toe. What he sees seems to please him; he comes closer and slips his hands round my waist, encircling me.

‘Stunning,’ he says into my hair, and I see his eyes flick up to look at us together in the reflection. ‘My father ought to like it anyway, randy old devil.’

‘Jonathan!’ I twist round in his arms. ‘He’s not really like that, is he?’

‘Ah, no,’ Jonathan says dismissively, loosening his hold on me. ‘Not really. We’d better get going – I said we’d be there by one.’

‘Better put some trousers on,’ I suggest, heading for the door. Nervous though I am, happiness floods me. Quickly, I run back through the events of the night before in my head: turning up at Jonathan’s door, finding him eager and unquestioning, not caring about what has happened with my parents or why, just pulling me into bed and making love to me until I was sore with exhilaration and exhaustion. Later, he did ask, but when I told him that I had moved out, it seemed to be taken for granted that I would stay on with him. Amazingly, this flat already feels like home. I love it, its slickly painted walls and gleaming polished floorboards, its tasteful array of ornaments and clean gleaming gadgets. Compared to what I have come from, it feels like a palace, and although I know it is disloyal to think so, I feel that it suits me. I should have been born to this.

Outside it is raining again. The harsh smells of diesel and damp ground press in on me as we step into the road. Jonathan hails a cab effortlessly, seeming to only briefly raise one hand for it to do his bidding and screech to a halt. I climb into the back and listen to him ask for the Sherbourne Club, reel off an address I don’t recognise. I barely know London at all. As we drive, I see the city rushing past the window: a jumble of streets and houses and towering industrial blocks, parks and roundabouts, all so unfamiliar that the instant they are out of sight I forget them again.

‘It’ll be fine, don’t worry,’ I hear Jonathan murmur next to me, and I realise that I am shaking. I look at him. In his casual suit, his blond hair just brushing the edge of his collar, he looks so beautiful and desirable that I can hardly bear it. His blue eyes are full of kindness and concern; a tenderness that I have never seen in them before.

‘I love you,’ I blurt out, and as I say the words I realise that I have still not heard them from him, not exactly, not in as many words. I hold my breath.

He just looks back at me, smiling. ‘Here we are,’ he says, moving across me to release the catch. It is almost as if he has not heard me. I force down my panic and follow him out of the taxi. On the pavement he takes my hand and squeezes it, and I remind myself that it is actions which count. Holding on to his hand, I let myself be drawn into the building’s lobby. Everything is panelled in luxurious dark oak, giving it a secret, cloistered feel. A long, low, green baize desk stretches out across one wall; an immaculately dressed receptionist sits behind it, her shining blonde helmet of hair dazzling my eyes. She smiles at Jonathan as if she knows him. Her eyes don’t move from his face. She knows who is in control here. For a perverse moment I almost want to stamp my feet and draw attention to myself.

‘We’re lunching in the club,’ Jonathan says. ‘Is my father here yet?’

‘Yes, Mr Blackwood and his wife took his table a few minutes ago,’ the receptionist says. ‘Mr Blackwood senior, that is.’ She laughs prettily, revealing teeth like polished pearls, narrowing her eyes so that her lashes sweep across them. She’s flirting with him. I steal a glance at Jonathan; he’s smiling back as if she has made the best joke in the world. I have to fight to keep all the muscles in my face under control.

‘Thanks, Alice,’ Jonathan says. ‘We’ll head through now, then. Oh…’ He stops, glancing at me. ‘This is Violet, by the way.’ He doesn’t put a label on me: my girlfriend, my lover – but it doesn’t matter. I smile genuinely at Alice now, but I know that my eyes are sending her a warning.

‘Lovely to meet you,’ says Alice sweetly. Her complexion is perfect and smooth, as if it has been painted on. For an instant I imagine that perfection reproduced all over her neat slim body. She lowers her head, as if engrossed in her appointments book, dismissing me.

‘Do you know her well?’ I ask Jonathan as he steers me through the hallway and into the restaurant. My voice sounds appropriately light and curious to my ears, but I can feel the early stirrings of jealousy prickling my skin.

He snorts, his shoulder rising and falling lazily in a shrug. ‘As well as you know anyone you see three times a week and exchange a couple of sentences with,’ he says. ‘Look, there they are.’

I follow his pointing finger. There, across the banks of heavy wooden tables, I see a corner banquette, tucked tastefully on to a slightly raised level, allowing those seated there to have a view of the whole restaurant. The best seat in the house. Seated at the banquette, talking privately to each other, are two figures; my vision suddenly blurred by panic, I can’t take in anything about them. I move forward, guided by Jonathan’s hand. When we’re up closer his father lays the menu aside and stands up. He must be around sixty, but he’s extraordinarily well preserved, as if he’s been kept on ice for a decade or more. His silver hair is smooth and immaculate, and for a moment I find myself wondering whether it is a wig and have to drag my eyes away. His face is alert and aquiline, a sharpened version of Jonathan’s. Immediately I can sense that same hardness in him; the hint of a threat that fascinated me so much when I first saw his son. With his father, though, it’s more than a hint. I sense straight away that it runs right through him like fault lines through rock.

‘You must be Violet,’ he says to me, piercing me with imperturbable blue eyes. ‘I must say, this is the first time that a summer secretary has made quite such an impression.’ He smiles genuinely enough, despite the dismissive undercurrent to his words. For a brief moment I shake his hand; firm, dry and enclosing.

‘This is my father, Harvey,’ Jonathan says, ignoring the snub, if snub it was. ‘I expect you’ve seen him around the offices, anyway.’

I nod, but the truth is that I have never seen this man before. I am sure I would have remembered. I have heard his name, of course – whispered deferentially and fearfully by administrators, cited lordly over the telephone to clients. Now that I can put a face to it, I realise that there is no other face that could fit.

‘And this is my mother, Laura,’ Jonathan continues, indicating the woman sat next to Harvey. I look at her for the first time. She has the palest skin I have ever seen, stretched tight like cling film over a finely modelled face. Her strawcoloured hair is tied in a chignon at the back of her neck. She wears an understated black dress, but her fingers are heavy with gold and sapphire rings, which she is twisting round and round automatically. She raises her eyes to mine and nods. Before, I never would have expected anyone to rise when they greeted me, but now it feels strange that she has remained seated. I sit down myself, slipping quickly into the nearest chair. For a full twenty seconds there is absolute silence as they all peruse the menu. I glance down at it, but the words jump before my eyes, shaking themselves together like dice so that I can barely make them out. Unfamiliar French phrases leap out at me: filet mignon, sole meunière. Underneath the table, I can feel my legs twitching. For an instant, the thought of sitting here with these people for another hour or more is almost too much for me, and I shift in my seat, glancing at the exit. Jonathan doesn’t look at me, but he puts out his hand under the table and rests it on my thigh.

‘So, are you thinking of pursuing the law?’ Laura asks. Her voice is such a soft drawl that I have to bend forward to hear it, and yet she doesn’t seem shy, just very confident that what she says deserves to be heard.

Harvey and Jonathan both snort with laughter, glancing at each other with easy complicity. ‘Rather a strange way of putting it,’ Harvey remarks, pouring the wine. I have never been a big drinker, but I let him fill my glass up to the brim. I don’t want to do anything that calls attention to myself, or to my youth. Tentatively, I smile too, trying to share in the joke. Laura seems unmoved. Her eyebrows are still raised in polite enquiry.

‘Well, I wouldn’t rule it out for the future,’ I say, and am almost instantly conscious that somehow it has been the wrong thing to say. It isn’t even true: I’ve never thought about law as a potential career path. At Manchester, I was going to study philosophy. I’m not sure what career options might have arisen from that – probably none. ‘But no, I doubt it,’ I backtrack, taking a large gulp of white wine. It tastes bitter and dry, raping the back of my throat.

‘Violet is more of a homemaker,’ Jonathan says. ‘She wants to settle down and get married and have lots of babies.’ His light tone tells me that he is teasing me, and yet there is a flicker of hopeful sincerity in his eyes. I suddenly can’t think of anything better than to do those things, and with him. I smile radiantly across at him, and see Harvey watching me, and slowly nodding.

‘Right.’ Harvey snaps his menu shut, and within seconds a waiter is hovering attentively at his side. ‘I’ll have the sweetbreads, and my wife will take the sole, please.’

Jonathan glances at me. ‘The sole, too, please,’ I whisper almost at random. Was I supposed to have somehow made him aware of my choice in advance, as Laura has obviously done? Or perhaps Harvey has simply chosen for her, and I should have kept quiet and allowed Jonathan to do the same. I feel my cheeks warm and know that I am blushing, stare down at the table. This is not the world I have been used to.

‘It’s very good here,’ I hear Laura say, rather kindly. I force myself to look up and smile. I have never felt so shy, and it doesn’t feel like me at all.

The wait for our meals passes in a blur; Harvey and Jonathan talk briskly about office matters, sharing details of some case. I vaguely remember the main players’ names from a letter I typed under Jonathan’s dictation several days ago, but the niceties of the matter completely elude me. Laura is quiet, but watchful. She tops up Harvey’s glass when it is empty, passes him the butter when he splits open his roll. I take note, marking down her little gestures as ones that I could replicate with Jonathan, some other time.

‘We should stop talking shop,’ says Jonathan as our lunch arrives. A huge sole is placed in front of me, its eye gleaming blankly up at me. I force my gaze away from it. ‘Violet is probably bored stiff,’ he elaborates unnecessarily, grinning.

‘Quite right,’ says Harvey smoothly, looking at me. ‘Tell us about you.’

My mind empties. There is nothing to say, nothing that could possibly be of interest to him. I think of the things that, up until a matter of weeks ago, occupied my time. Hanging around the local shopping centre with my school-friends, going to the multiplex and eating popcorn noisily in the dark, dressing up and going to our town’s excuse for a nightclub, where we would sip lurid fizzy cocktails and dance unenthusiastically with slurring teenage boys. I have always felt mature for my age, but looking back at these things now, they horrify me. Harvey would think I was nothing but a child.

The silence threatens to become uncomfortable. I take another large gulp of wine to buy myself a few more seconds. ‘I come from Sussex,’ I say. ‘I’m an only child. I like art a lot.’ This is even worse – extracts from a primary school essay.

‘Looking at it, or creating it?’ Harvey asks.

‘Well, both.’ I search for words. ‘I sometimes go up to galleries – the Tate, the National. But I like painting in my spare time.’ Harvey waits. ‘Modern stuff, mostly,’ I say. ‘Abstract.’

‘Yes,’ Harvey says thoughtfully. His cool blue eyes sweep my face. ‘Well, it’s always nice to have a hobby.’

I put a forkful of sole into my mouth and swallow. A tiny bone rakes the roof of my mouth, bringing a smart of pain to my eyes.

‘And what about your parents?’ Harvey continues. ‘What do they do?’

I contemplate inventing something, turning my family into something other than what they are. As I run through the possibilities swiftly in my head, I feel suddenly defiant. I will tell them the truth. ‘My father works in a garage as a mechanic,’ I say. ‘My mother used to work in a shop, but she stopped that a few months ago.’

‘An honest crust,’ says Jonathan, seemingly to fill the silence. He is looking at me with new eyes. Of course, he knows nothing about my background – why should he? Perhaps he has assumed that because I landed up in his law firm for the summer, I must have sprung from suitable soil. Opposite, Harvey and Laura are exchanging eloquent glances, saying nothing.

‘Excuse me for a minute,’ I say, standing up. I walk shakily away from the table, unsure as to where I am going. A waiter steers me confidently back, pointing at a small gold door set into the back wall. I nod and thank him, slip into the cloakroom and lock myself into the nearest cubicle. I lean my back against the wall, closing my eyes. The air conditioning blasts down on me, making me shiver. I feel humiliated and furious. I don’t care what they think of me – I only care about Jonathan. I don’t want them to colour his opinion of me, to make him see me as a laughable mistake. I curl my hands into tight fists. Already I can feel it happening.

I unlock the cubicle and push my way out, going to the mirror. I glare at my reflection, gold-lit and soft-focused. I will not be made a fool of. I will go back in there and show them just how contemptuous I am of them and everyone like them. Jonathan will take my side, and if he doesn’t…I draw in breath sharply and wheel around, fighting my way through the heavy gold door. I walk slowly and deliberately back to the table, approaching it from behind. They cannot see me, but as I draw nearer, I can hear their voices. I stop, momentarily frozen. She’s very pretty, I hear Laura saying, and there is a general murmur of assent. And she has spirit, Harvey says. She’s very young, of course, but that’s all right. If anything, it’s a good thing. His voice drops lower, and I can’t hear what he is saying, but I can hear his tone: purring, warm and approving. Now and again, Jonathan makes some eager interjection. She’s very special, I think I hear him say.

I can feel my whole body glowing, pulsing with delight and excitement. All at once my scorn withers up into nothing, and my heart feels light and empty, as if the hurt were never there. Now that I have heard them praising me, I realise that it is what I have wanted all along. I don’t hate these people. I want them, need them, to love me. As I walk back to the table, my head held high now, I can barely stop myself from laughing out loud with relief.

Later, outside the restaurant, Jonathan embraces me in the rain and pulls me closely against him, planting kisses in my hair. They like you, he murmurs. I knew they would. He kisses me long and hard, then strokes the damp hair back from my face, holding it in his cupped hands, studying me as if I am a rare and thrilling discovery. ‘I love you,’ he says. When I hear him say it, I start to cry, tears spilling from my eyes and dissolving into the rain, and I have never, never been like this – so luminous with happiness that it is raging and burning inside me, and I can’t control it, I can’t contain it, it feels as if nothing can extinguish it ever again.

Catherine was good with customers. She always seemed to know exactly what to say to them, when to compliment and when to offer a tactful alternative, how to close a sale and leave them feeling proud and boosted by their purchases. Behind the till, I sat and watched her. Head cocked prettily to one side, Catherine admired the girl as she came out of the changing room and did a self-conscious twirl, glancing at her reflection in the mirror. The jeans were slightly too small for her, cutting into her flesh and sending a faint red line running across her back. I tried to think of what I would say if I were in Catherine’s place. Sorry, I think you need the next size up? I wouldn’t be able to do it. I would lie and tell her that they looked great, and then when she got home she would try them on again at more leisure in a less flattering light, and wonder what I had really thought.

‘Lovely!’ Catherine said. ‘Why don’t you try these with them, though?’ She handed the girl a wide blue belt and a pair of tan high heels. As the girl fastened the belt around her and slipped her feet into the shoes, I saw her transform before my eyes. The belt hid the tightness of the jeans at her waist, the heels elongating her legs and making her look elegant and almost willowy. From the look on her face, she was seeing the same thing. Ten minutes later she was loading her purchases on to the counter and pulling out her card. I rang the sale through, smiling at Catherine over the girl’s shoulder. She was clearly glowing with her success, eyes bright and eager. What would it be like to have that kind of talent for something, that kind of satisfaction in what life had given to you?

‘So how was the party?’ she asked when the girl had bounced out of the shop, bags jauntily in hand. Her voice was light, but she was looking at me with the same thinly veiled expression of curiosity and sympathy that she had worn since I had told her about my marriage. ‘Did Harvey enjoy it?’

This seemed to be everyone’s primary concern. ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘Everything went smoothly, anyway. Well, except—’ I broke off. I felt unaccountably shy about mentioning Max – perhaps because to the best of my recollection she had never mentioned him herself. A flash of his dark, scowling face came to me; the rough, earthy smell of smoke that had risen off him as he grabbed my wrist and leant in towards me. The previous night, I had dreamt about him. In my dream he had been cutting down the old apple tree in the garden after dark, naked from the waist up, bare muscular arms swinging with contained power as he hacked with a gleaming silver saw at its trunk. I went forward to greet him, but he acted as if he could not see me, his black eyes burning through me with ferocious concentration, wide and oblivious to the sparks of wood that flew all around us and stung the air. I had woken in a sweat, my heart thumping as if an intruder had slid into something far more threatening than my dreams.

‘I think you met my brother, didn’t you?’ Catherine said, as if she had read my mind. She was watching me very intently now, as if searching my thoughts.

‘Yes – yes, I did,’ I stammered. ‘You don’t look alike, at all.’

‘Everyone says that,’ said Catherine, shrugging. ‘I think we do.’

I almost laughed, looking at her fragile prettiness; the white-blonde hair feathered around her face, the pert nose and full pink lips. ‘Maybe if I saw you together,’ I said.

‘Well, you’ll get your chance,’ she said. ‘He said he was going to pop in here around midday, so he should be here soon.’

‘What? Why would he do that?’ I asked sharply. I saw Catherine’s face crease in confusion, and bit my lip. The echo of my voice, unnaturally and unnecessarily harsh, hung between us. I knew that I was being ridiculous, but the thought of seeing Max again frightened me. I felt an instinctive wariness, the prickling of a sixth sense running over me from top to toe.

‘I wondered that myself,’ Catherine said. ‘He never has before. But maybe it’s not me he’s coming to see.’ Her voice was teasing, but there was anxiety in her eyes. ‘Only joking – I think he just wants to catch up. He moved out from our parents’ a few years ago, so we don’t see each other so much these days. But if there’s a problem – I could call him and tell him not to bother, if you like.’

I hesitated; it would be easy to say yes, but I didn’t want any awkwardness to develop between myself and Catherine, not so soon after I had finally begun to sense the potential for a friendship between us. ‘No, no, of course not,’ I said, softening my voice to compensate for my outburst. ‘I’m sorry. To be honest, I’m just a bit cautious around men these days. I know it’s silly, but since Jonathan, I don’t have much to do with them – well, except Harvey, of course.’ I was speaking without consideration, almost at random, but as I did so I realised that there was more than a grain of truth in what I was saying, and it comforted me a little.

Catherine looked indecisive, her fingers agitatedly running back and forth along the long strands of green glass beads she wore around her neck. ‘Of course,’ she echoed. ‘I didn’t think.’

I sensed her automatic deference to a situation she knew nothing about, and felt guilty. ‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ I said, more firmly this time. ‘I can’t hide away for ever.’ These words had been said to me many times over the past few months, mostly in the form of unanswered voicemails from my former school-friends that had graded from sympathy to worry to sulkiness, and eventually through to silence. I had always hated the sentiment: I wasn’t hiding away, just had no desire to see them or anyone else. Now, though, I discovered that it could be a useful panacea – and when I was the one saying it, I found that I didn’t mind it so much.

‘Well, that’s good,’ said Catherine, breaking away and giggling nervously, ‘because speak of the devil…’

…And he’ll draw near, I thought. The bell above the shop door jangled with brittle force as Max pushed the door open and came in. Hands in pockets, he surveyed the shop for a few seconds, as if it were some curious new world. He was wearing a charcoal-coloured T-shirt that hugged the tops of his arms tightly, outlining the muscle beneath. Seeing him again, I noticed anew the brutally close cut of his hair against his skull, and how tall he was – taller than Jonathan, maybe by three inches or more. He didn’t take off his sunglasses, and it was impossible to tell exactly where he was looking. I found it unsettling.

‘All right, Catherine,’ he said, striding forward and slinging one arm around her neck briefly to kiss her cheek. With a shock, I saw that although I could still see nothing of her in him, there was something of him in her – warped, softened and feminised, but unmistakable. He must have felt me staring, because he wheeled round and directed the blank dark glare of his glasses towards me. ‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hello.’ I was determined to be polite, but all the same I could think of nothing more to say. Now that we were face to face, all I could feel was humiliation at our last meeting – my childish protestations that he had not been invited to Harvey’s garden party. ‘I could make you some tea, if you like.’ I clutched at the idea with relief. It had felt like the right thing to say, but as soon as the words were out, I wished I had kept quiet: it sounded like an absurdly middle-class offer. I felt as embarrassed as if I had suggested that we should all sit out on the lawn together in Edwardian dress, drinking out of bone-china cups and eating scones with jam.

‘Tea,’ Max repeated. ‘Yeah, well, why not.’ He spoke the words in a flat monotone that to my ears was tinged with sarcasm, as if he was doing me a favour rather than the other way around, but all the same I was grateful for the acceptance. I ducked into the back room, pulling the door shut behind me to drown out their voices. I put the kettle on, lined the mugs up with trembling hands. I felt totally out of control of my own body. For a second I screwed my eyes tight shut, breathing deeply, but when I opened them again everything looked eerie and unreal, brightly coloured and two-dimensional. I gritted my teeth; it was ridiculous to be so nervous, nervous at nothing. I bent down and took the milk out of the fridge, then realised that I had no idea whether or not Max took it, or sugar for that matter. The thought of going back in to ask paralysed me. I tapped my fingers against the mugs, willing myself to think. Jonathan had taken milk and one sugar; I would give Max the same. The logic made no sense, but I didn’t care. I filled the mugs with exaggerated care and put them on to a tray. Briefly I considered adding some biscuits, but thought better of it; I didn’t want to seem like an overeager housewife. I pushed my way through the door, tray in hand. Max and Catherine were talking by the counter, their heads close together in a way that suggested something more than idle chit-chat.

‘Tea!’ I said brightly, brandishing the tray. Catherine sprang apart from Max, coming towards me. For a fraction of a second, like a trick of the light, her beaming face looked false and untrustworthy.

I handed Max his mug and watched as he raised it to his lips. From the wince that passed over his face, I assumed that I had been wrong about the sugar, but he continued to drink without comment; it gave me a perverse sort of satisfaction. Silence fell. We made a strange little tableau: Catherine perched on the counter, bright watchful eyes on her brother as she sipped, myself and Max standing a couple of feet apart in front of her. I felt a dizzy, vertiginous sense of rising and falling – as if I had been plucked out of the scene, surveying it from a great height, then returned to earth again.

‘Do you get a lunch break?’ Max asked suddenly. I thought at first that the question was directed at Catherine, but she just looked steadily back at me, awaiting my answer. As I floundered in shock, Max pushed the sunglasses up on to his forehead and his unsmiling eyes met mine. With the contact, I felt my heart twitch, not understanding why.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I usually just go to the café across the road.’

‘Let’s go, then.’ He put down his mug, still half full. The set of his shoulders was challenging, tensed for combat. I swallowed, tasting an acrid tang behind the sweetness of the tea. My eyes flicked to Catherine again. What exactly was happening here? The thought that I was somehow being set up, pimped out to this ridiculously unsuitable man, was so incredible that I could barely give it credence, and yet what other explanation could there be? Catherine’s face was tentatively eager, urging me on, but she looked so innocent, as if there was nothing here to worry about or be afraid of. Perhaps she thought that I needed a male friend. If so, I wished she had alighted on a less threatening candidate. I took a deep breath, straightened my shoulders. I was an adult – I had no obligation to waste my lunch hour with a complete stranger.

I opened my mouth to say that I was busy, but in the brief pulse between the decision and the words, something happened. Slowly and deliberately, Max held out his arm, as if to encourage me to slip mine through his – an exaggerated pantomime of a polite Victorian gentleman. The gesture looked so ludicrous on him that a sharp peal of laughter burst from me. I glanced up and saw that he was smiling too, teeth glinting wickedly in the dark cavern of his mouth. On impulse, I picked up my handbag and moved towards him. It was only a lunch, after all. There could be no harm in this.

‘I’ll be back by one,’ I told Catherine.

‘No worries – I’ve got sandwiches here, anyway,’ she said airily. ‘I’ll see you at Mum and Dad’s next week, Max?’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ Max threw back over his shoulder as he pushed the door open. I had been used to chivalry, but all the same I was surprised when he held it open for me to go through. I did so, blinking as light flooded my eyes. The heat of the day had intensified over the morning, and now everything looked faintly sticky and glistening. I could feel the heat of the pavement through the thin soles of my sandals. I pulled my cardigan off, leaving my shoulders bare to the sun, and I thought I saw Max’s eyes flick there, a quick reflexive action that was over almost as soon as it had begun. We walked in silence to the café. A few people passed us as we went, and I thought I saw something in their eyes: wariness, perhaps, or concern. Watching Max stride along the street, I could understand why. He walked with controlled force, as if he were on a mission that would not end well. Staring straight ahead, he seemed to dismiss everything around him. He doesn’t fit this quiet town,