Читать книгу Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered - Rosie Thomas - Страница 26

It was the party that made Julia feel, now I do belong here. It was gratifying to have been part of a success that was still talked about in the Rocket and Blue Heaven. Out of a new, buoyant sense of security she wrote to Betty and Vernon.

The letter said no more than I’m here, with Mattie, and I’m all right. Betty would be worried, and even in the confusion of her feelings about her mother Julia didn’t want her to be anxious for no reason. She put the address of the flat at the top of the letter because it sounded so fixed, a long way from Fairmile Road.

Betty saw the envelope at once, lying on the rug behind the front door with a church newsletter and a bill addressed to Vernon. Her hands were shaking as she picked it up. She held on to it, crumpling it a little, while she fetched her glasses and the Brighton souvenir letter opener.

Betty read Julia’s brief message, and re-read it, and then sat down abruptly on the upright chair beside the telephone.

She remembered that she had done exactly the same thing when she had read the first note, the few words that Julia had scribbled before she disappeared. It had made no sense then, and she had turned the envelope over in her fingers. The gum on the flap was still damp and she saw her daughter licking it to seal in her goodbye, with her dark hair loose about her face.

‘No,’ Betty had said aloud into the quiet of the house. ‘Oh, no. Julia, where are you?’ The words echoed back at her. Betty had dropped the note and run up the stairs. In Julia’s pretty, schoolgirl bedroom the drawers and cupboards were half empty. The neat cardigans and pinafore dresses that Betty had bought for her were still there, and the strange, defiant clothes that they had quarrelled about were all gone.

Betty stood in the silent room, trying to understand what had happened. It was as if her Julia, the pretty, clever schoolgirl, was still there in the house, with all her clothes and the white furry lamb that always sat on her candlewick counterpane. It was someone else, a stranger who she didn’t know or understand, who had run away from her.

‘Julia!’

Betty turned and ran frantically through the house. A series of pictures danced in front of her eyes, faster and faster, like a slide show running out of control. Her first sight of Julia, a bundle of blankets put into her arms. Julia’s first steps, wobbling across the hearthrug towards her. Picnics, and an outing to the sea. Julia making her first cake, frowning solemnly over the mixing bowl. Then Julia in her new grammar school uniform, when Vernon had said, ‘She’ll be someone, Betty. She’s got a head on her shoulders.’

And then, darker pictures slipping between the sunlit ones, there was another Julia who looked at Betty as if she hated her. Betty saw more and more of that Julia, a sullen, silent interloper in her skirts that were too short and too tight, her pretty face shadowed by too much make-up.

‘Julia!’

Betty had searched in every room, flinging open the cupboard doors. The tidy contents displayed themselves, yielding nothing. The garden, grass and roses in the sunshine, winked emptily back at her.

Julia had gone.

She remembered all that, because it had replayed endlessly in her head in the weeks that had gone by since then. And now there was this new message, hardly any more words, but they were headed by the reality of an address, after all Betty’s imaginings. She read it again, London W1, fixing it in her memory in case the letter should disappear. And then, for the first time in twenty-five years, she did something important without waiting to consult Vernon first. She put on her brown coat, and the hat she always wore with it, and went up to London to look for her daughter. To look for her, and to bring her back home.

The square surprised her, when she reached it at last. People didn’t live in places like this. They lived in houses set behind clipped hedges, or else they lived on the estate. She faltered for an instant, the first time since leaving Fairmile Road, but then she collected herself and marched round the railings, under the plane trees, counting the house numbers. When she reached the right door she saw that it was already standing open, revealing a hallway with a strip of shabby carpet and a shelf piled with circulars and manila envelopes.

These were offices, then, and not homes at all. She could hear typewriters, and a telephone ringing somewhere. She looked at the number on the peeling, black-painted door to make sure that she hadn’t made a mistake, and then beside her left shoulder she saw a single bell-push. It was labelled Lemoine, Top Flat.

Julia hadn’t mentioned anyone called Lemoine, but Betty pressed the bell anyway. She waited for a long time and then pressed it again, harder and longer.

Nobody came.

Jessie never answered the bell during the day when Felix was out. Even if it was someone she wanted to see, she couldn’t manage to negotiate the stairs to the front door.

Betty was undeterred. She had plenty of time to wait, if that was what was needed. She looked round and saw that the iron railings sprouted from a foot-high wall with a stone coping. She wrapped her coat carefully round herself and sat down on the stone, her hands clasped over her handbag on her knees.

The occasional passing secretary or messenger looked oddly at her, but no one spoke, and the afternoon went slowly by.

It was Felix who saw her.

He had been to meet the developer, Mr French, in the block of run-down flats, and his head was teeming with ideas and impressions as he walked through the square. He passed the small, brown woman sitting quietly outside the front door with barely a glance, and he was in the dusty hallway before something, perhaps her eyes on his back, made him turn round again.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

‘I’m looking for Miss Julia Smith,’ the woman said. ‘Does she live here?’

Felix’s hand cupped the bell-push, an instinctive, shielding movement, but he said, ‘Yes. She lives here.’

The little woman’s face changed. He saw exhausted relief taking the place of determination.

‘I’m her mother,’ she said.

Felix looked at her, and then he thought of Jessie, waiting for him upstairs. The images of mothers collided, hopelessly.

‘You’d better come in,’ he said quietly. Betty followed him meekly up the stairs.

As soon as Julia came in, she felt the change in the atmosphere. She had been singing as she climbed the stairs, but the song trailed away as she opened the flat door. It was very quiet, and Jessie didn’t call out Come here. Tell me the news, and pour me a drink while you’re about it.

‘Jessie?’

Julia ran the two steps to her door, and then she saw. Jessie was sitting in her chair, with her bottle at her elbow. Felix was by the window, enigmatically dark against the light pouring in. And facing Jessie, with her knees and her lips drawn together as if she was afraid of touching anything or breathing in the air, sat Betty.

She looked so incongruous amongst Jessie’s photographs and souvenirs and Felix’s objects, that Julia couldn’t find anything to say at all. Her first thought was, I should have known. I should have known she’d come straight here.

‘Mum,’ she acknowledged awkwardly, at last. She bent down and her cheek brushed the brown felt crown of the hat. Betty wouldn’t look straight at her but her mother’s hand took hold of hers, kneading it, making sure that she was really there. To Julia’s shame, the restraint of it made her want to pull away and run across the room to stand in the light, by Felix.

She realised that they were all waiting for her to say something. Jessie and Felix were waiting too. Julia’s thoughts darted helplessly. What justification was there? Except what she wanted, for herself? Wasn’t it just a truth of life that it was so different from what Betty dreamed, confiningly, for her?

‘I’m all right, you know,’ Julia said. Her voice came out sounding colder, further away, than she had meant it to. ‘I’ve got a job. In an accounts office. Just like Dad.’

Betty didn’t move.

‘And I’m living here. With friends.’

‘Friends?’ Betty did look up then. And her voice could be venomous, when she wished it to. Julia knew all the prejudices that lurked behind the single word. She could have recited them. Dirty blacks. Drunkards and thieves. No better than a common prostitute.

That her mother could even think such things, sitting here with Jessie and Felix, ignited a sudden, violent anger. She jerked her hand away.

‘Yes, friends. Good friends, who’ve been kind to me and Mattie. You and Dad would hardly let Mattie in the house, would you? Do you think you’re better people, or something?’

Anger against Betty’s prejudices found a shape in the words and they spilled out of her, regardless. ‘You aren’t any better. You’re narrow. You condemn anything you don’t understand. You …’

‘Julia.’ It was Jessie, warning her. ‘That’s enough.’

The hot, rancorous words dried up at once. Julia’s fists had been clenched at her sides. They opened now and the fingers hung loosely.

Betty looked in bewilderment from the fat, over-painted old woman who seemed able to command her daughter in a way that she had never mastered, to Julia herself. She seemed taller, thinner than ever, and her face had lost the last blurred roundness of childhood. In the days since leaving home, Julia had grown up. Grown up here, in this horrible attic flat that smelt of drink and cigarettes, with a woman who looked like a madam and half-caste son. Here, instead of in the home that she and Vernon had made for her, and where they had made such plans for her for sixteen years.

Jealousy bit into Betty, and the pain of exclusion, and with them came the terrible fear that she had lost Julia. She pulled her coat tighter around her and shielded herself with her handbag.

Fear made her desperate.

‘I want to talk to you, Julia.’

‘Here I am.’

‘To you, not to these people.’

It was Betty’s mistake to let her hostility show. Julia’s face, the new, grown-up face, didn’t change, but she said, ‘I don’t have any secrets from Jessie and Felix. Or from Mattie.’

‘That girl …’ Betty was sure that it was Mattie’s influence that had brought Julia here, but she made herself bite back the accusation. The moment of control strengthened her, and her fear ebbed a little. She looked fiercely at Jessie and the fat woman’s chair creaked as she began to labour to her feet.

‘You talk to your mother,’ Jessie murmured to Julia. But Julia whirled across to the chair and her hands descended on Jessie’s shoulders, holding her in her place.

‘Please,’ Julia whispered. She looked across to the window, trying to see the shadowed face against the sunshine. ‘Please, Felix.’

Jessie hovered for a moment, almost on her feet. And then she sighed. Her weight sagged backwards against the cushions. She knew that Julia was fighting, and the battle clearly mattered so much to her. If Julia wanted herself and Felix to stay for it, then they would do it for her. Jessie could read the vulnerability in Julia’s face, even though Betty was blind to it. She sighed again, silently aligning herself. Over by the window, Felix was looking out at the plane trees. Their leaves were beginning to curl and turn brown, the first premature autumn in August. He didn’t turn, but he didn’t try to leave the room either.

Julia faced Betty again.

‘Go on,’ she said.

Betty’s brown hat bobbed in front of her.

‘I want you to come home.’

The words dropped into the room’s stillness.

Julia said nothing and Betty, with the fear lapping up in her again, began to talk faster. ‘Come home. We’ll forget all this. Dad and I won’t mention it, if that’s what you want. We’ll all forgot it. They’ll take you back at the school, in the new term. You can finish your course, and then get a job, a real job, a good one. You needn’t think that everything has gone wrong, just because of this.’

She was trying to say, if it’s out of pride that you won’t come back, don’t be proud. I’m not too proud to come here and beg you, am I? But Betty had never been any good at words.

‘You can come back. Everything is at home, waiting for you.’

Julia seemed to be waiting politely for her mother to finish. But at last she said, ‘I’m not coming home.’

Betty sprang up and ran to her. She put her hands on Julia’s sleeves and twisted them, trying to move her, trying to find her. Julia thought, she’s so small. like a dry leaf. She had no memories of Betty having been the source of warmth and strength in their childhood. She couldn’t remember her childhood at all. All she could focus on was this, a little, thin woman who clung to her, and whose bones felt brittle.

Suddenly all the perspectives changed.

The great battle that she had prepared herself for, the battle for her own freedom to be fought out to the sound of trumpets in front of Jessie and Felix, had never even begun. It was a nothing, a foregone conclusion, her own strength brutally crushing Betty’s.

Julia wished now that she had made the small concession of letting her mother take her defeat in private.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m very sorry.’

And Betty, who was just beginning to understand what her loss really was, with bitterness eating through her fear, rounded on Julia for the last time.

‘Sorry? You’re sorry, is that all? After what we’ve done for you, and given up for you, ever since you were a baby? A dirty little baby who wasn’t wanted …’

Betty’s mouth made a circle of pain, and her hand went up to cover it. She heard the warning creak as Jessie leaned forward in her chair, and out of the corner of her eyes she saw the shadow move as Felix swung away from the window.

Julia didn’t hear anything or see anything. There were only the words, inside her head. A dirty little baby who wasn’t wanted.

Afterwards she remembered a bowl of oranges, Felix’s sea-blue bowl, on the table in the window. She remembered a paisley shawl draped over the sofa back, and the sagging cushions and protruding springs of the sofa itself. The precise images came back to her, afterwards, in the moments of deepest shock.

Lily. Lily, standing in a drawing room in jeans and a torn T-shirt. Bare, tamed feet with chipped silver polish on the toenails.

‘You can’t go,’ Julia heard herself saying.

Lily dug her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans. Her shoulders hunched forward to make shadowed deep hollows at the base of her throat.

‘I want to go. I want to go with Daddy and Clare.’ That clear, high voice, cutting her.

‘You can’t. You have to live with me.’

And Lily looking back at her, with her father’s level eyes and Julia’s own mouth, shaping those words.

‘What kind of life will it be, if you make me?’

Too old for her age, and yet still a little girl. The weight of all that had happened, pressing on them both.

And then Lily turned lightly away from her, while Julia wanted to run after her and hold her as she would once have been able to do, keeping her, loving her now that it was too late.

The door closed.

Julia saw the oranges then, and the old sofa, and the squirled feathers of the paisley.

In the close attic room she moved slowly, as if the air around her hand turned solid.

‘What do you mean?’ the words slurred in her mouth. Like being drunk, only she knew she wasn’t drunk.

Betty grown old, with all her life of fear naked in her eyes now, fear and a kind of last exultation. Power, after all. Not quite done yet.

‘You’re not my daughter. Not Vernon’s either. We took you when you were just a few weeks old. I’d lost one of my own, couldn’t have another. And the War was coming.’

All Julia could think of, the only thing as she struggled to form the words, was, ‘My real mother? Who was she?’

Betty’s face dancing in front of her eyes, ageing as the seconds ticked past, a stranger’s.

‘I don’t know. I never knew. Some silly girl, I suppose, who got herself into trouble.’

That was all.

It was Felix who came forward to put his arms around Julia. Her head fell against his shoulder and she began to shiver. The sudden stripping away of it all, Fairmile Road and Betty and Vernon, left her icy cold. Her teeth chattered and Felix’s hands felt dangerously hot through her thin blouse. He held her close to him. For a moment even Jessie was silenced, but Julia laughed. It was a little, tuneless noise that none of them recognised as laughter. She lifted her head from Felix’s shoulder and said, ‘I’m glad you told me. It explains a lot of things, doesn’t it?’ She looked past Betty as if she had stopped existing and repeated, ‘Some silly girl.’

Jessie leaned forward to Betty. ‘You shouldn’t have told her like that,’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t you know better than that?’ Betty ignored her. Her eyes were fixed on Julia, held in Felix’s arms. With her last shot gone, Betty was defenceless. Felix thought painfully that she looked like a dismembered creature, ‘We did our best for you,’ she whispered. ‘We loved you.’

‘Love?’ The word sounded like an intricate puzzle to Julia, turning inwards on itself until it was finally empty, without meaning. ‘Yes, it doesn’t make any difference, you know. I won’t come home.’

She was more brutally certain now’. Her own strength surprised her. Betty made a last effort. ‘We’re still your parents. Your mother and father. Legal guardians. And you’re only sixteen. We can make you come back if we have to.’

Jessie’s big, grey head lifted, but she said nothing.

Julia laughed again, just recognisably now.

‘You could, but what difference will it make in the end? I will be twenty-one one day, you can’t stop that, and even before then you don’t own me. You can’t change what you’ve just told me.’ Carefully but deliberately she detached herself from Felix. She went across to the sofa and sat down, her back against the warm paisley shawl. ‘I’m all right,’ she said to Felix and Jessie. She was smiling when she turned to Betty again.

‘It’s funny, in a way, isn’t it? Ironic, I think that’s the word. I wanted to be free, and you’ve set me free by telling me the truth.’

There was a moment of silence. Felix thought, It isn’t as simple as that.

Then Betty stood up. Her coat seemed bigger, too loose for her frame inside it, and her handbag looked like a dead weight over her arm.

‘You won’t come?’ she asked childishly.

‘No,’ Julia repeated. ‘I live here now.’

There was no more talk of guardianship, no suggestion of ownership. Betty’s head nodded stiffly, just once.

Watching her, Jessie tried to promise, ‘We’ll look after her for you. I’ll see she’s all right.’

Betty swung round to her, bitterness only heightened by defeat.

‘You? You and him?’ She jerked her head at Felix. ‘My Julia might just as well be on the streets.’

No one said anything then, not even Julia, even though her fists clenched in her lap. She watched her mother plod slowly to the door, fumble with the catch. There was still an instant when she could have said, Wait. Yet she didn’t, and afterwards she believed that she was right.

They heard Betty’s footsteps going away down the stairs.

Julia had stopped shivering. To Jessie and Felix she said almost triumphantly, ‘I told you, didn’t I? You’re my family now. You and Mattie.’

Mattie was at the front door when Betty passed her. She caught a glimpse of her face and automatically put her hand out, but Betty never wavered. Mattie watched her go, away under the plane trees with her brown hat held upright. She seemed to carry the smell of Fairmile Road with her, Air-Wick and polish and ironing.

Betty sat quite still, all the way back on the train to the local station. She crossed the High Street, quite blind, although she nodded to the people who greeted her. Everything inside her was focused on her longing to reach home. Outside the front door she groped for her key, not even noticing that the panels of the door were coated with street dust. But when the door swung open there was none of the relief of sanctuary. She saw Vernon’s mackintosh hanging from its pegs on the hallstand, and his black briefcase on the floor beside it.

Of course, it was past the time for Vernon to be at home. It was strange, she realised now, that she hadn’t thought about him all the way back.

He appeared in the living room doorway, at first only a dark shadow seen out of the corner of her eye, and then she looked full at him. He was wearing his navy-blue office suit, shiny at the cuffs and turn-ups.

‘Betty? Where have you been?’

She always had his tea on the table by half past five, always. Her eyes met his.

‘I went up to Town. To look for Julia.’

His stiff face, frowning, measuring her.

‘And did you find her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

She told him, awkwardly, stumbling over the words while he frowned. ‘She won’t come back to us, Vernon. She says she won’t come home.’ She wanted to go to him and have him put his arms around her, as that black boy had done with Julia, but neither of them moved. That wasn’t part of what happened between them.

Vernon said at last, ‘Well. If she won’t, she won’t.’ He turned back into the sitting room.

Betty’s hand reached out to the pretty, orange-skirted lady who covered the telephone. Her fingers caressed the layers of net skirt, searching for comfort.

‘I’ll put the tea on,’ she whispered.

It was an evening like any of the others, except Julia’s room upstairs was empty. There was not even the expectation of her key in the lock. Vernon listened to the play on the Home Service and Betty sat in the armchair opposite him with her knitting coiled in her lap.

At ten o’clock exactly she asked him, ‘Shall I make the cocoa?’

He nodded, not even looking at her over his reading glasses. She was heating the milk, in the special pan she always used, when he came in behind her. His presence seemed incongruous in the tidy kitchen. Betty looked down into the still, white circle of milk.

‘I told her,’ she said roughly. ‘I told her about the adoption.’

He almost bumped against her, but then he stepped back again.

‘I wish you hadn’t. She’s too young yet.’

‘Vernon, she’s grown up. She’s grown up, in that place.’

‘What did she say? How did she take it?’

The milk rose swiftly, and Betty lifted it off the heat.

‘I think she laughed. She said … she said it set her free.’

She couldn’t understand that. Perhaps Vernon would understand it. But all he said, after a long pause, and so quietly that she could hardly hear him, was ‘Perhaps it’s for the best. In the end.’

Betty carried the cups back into the living room and they drank their cocoa in silence. When her cup was empty she said, ‘I’ll go on up.’

Vernon usually followed her, after locking the doors and winding the clock on the mantelpiece. But tonight he sat for a long time in his armchair in the quiet house, staring ahead of him at the lavender and yellow flowers that ran in garlands down the wallpaper.

Betty lay under the eiderdown upstairs with the tears wet and stinging on her cheeks.

It was Jessie who told Mattie what had happened. Julia listened with her head bent, picking at the fringe of the shawl. At the end she broke in, saying fiercely, ‘I’m sorry about what my … about what she said to you and Felix. That’s the way she is. Anyone who doesn’t live like she does is condemned. She did it to Mattie …’

Jessie said gently, ‘There’s no need to be sorry, my duck. And she is your mother. She raised you all those years, whoever had the birth of you.’

Mattie didn’t say much. She was shocked, but a part of her wasn’t even surprised. She put her arms round Julia’s shoulders and hugged her, and then she grinned lopsidedly at Jessie and Felix.

‘Here we are, the two of us. What do you think?’

‘I don’t think anything,’ Jessie declared. ‘I know you belong here, that’s all. You can stay as long as you feel like it. Felix?’

He had gone back to his place by the window, looking down on the square. ‘Of course they can stay,’ he answered.

They had given Julia a glass of vodka and orange and she drank it in a gulp, and then looked round at the three of them.

‘What shall we do?’ she demanded.

‘I’ve just told you,’ Jessie said. ‘Stay here with us.’

Julia’s face softened. ‘Thank you for that. But I meant now, tonight.’ There was a pressure on her chest, tightening, like something threatening to burst out of her. And she felt a weird, wild gaiety. When the others stared at her she laughed, a little too loudly.

‘I want to go out somewhere. Have some fun.’

Jessie hesitated, and then she nodded. She reached down beside her chair for her huge, cracked leather handbag and then peered inside it. From one of the powdery recesses she produced a five-pound note and waved it at Felix.

‘She’s right. No point moping here. Take them both out and buy them dinner. Go on with you.’

Felix took charge. ‘Get dressed, both of you. Something decent. We’ll go to Leoni’s.’

‘Good boy,’ Jessie said approvingly.

When they were ready, they tried to persuade Jessie to come with them.

‘We need you,’ Mattie said, ‘if we’re going to have a posh dinner. Julia and me won’t know which knife to use.’

‘Felix will tell you. He’s good at all that.’

Jessie seemed more firmly lodged in her chair than ever. She was afraid of the long flight of stairs outside her door, and the streets beyond them, but she tried not to let them see it.

‘I’d rather stay here in peace, you know. Fill me up, Mat, will you?’

‘But you belong with us.’ Julia knelt down in front of her, and Jessie saw her feverishly bright eyes.

‘I know I do, duck. And here I am. Now go and have your dinner, and don’t make too much bloody noise when you come back.’

On the way to Dean Street, passing through streets that had become familiar, even homely, Julia felt herself spinning, as if her feet might lose contact with the paving stones. The pressure inside her intensified until she had to run, her arms and legs pumping up and down. Mattie and Felix were breathless behind her, and their feet thudded faster and faster, like drumbeats.

Felix reached out and grabbed her wrist and she swung outwards, her full skirt ballooning up around her legs.

‘What are you running away from?’ he demanded.

‘I’m not running away. Towards something.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, Felix. I don’t know. Freedom.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Mattie shouted, catching Julia’s mood.

‘What will you do with it, all this freedom?’

Julia had a momentary sense of space. Dark, windy emptiness, dropping away all around her. She was perched on a tiny foothold, all alone. She reached out and put her arms around Mattie and they swayed together, laughing at Felix.

‘Gobble it all up,’ Julia said triumphantly.

At first Leoni’s seemed forbidding, with its long, white-starched tablecloths and faded decor. It was full of people, all seemingly much older and richer than themselves. But when a table was found for them in the centre of the room, the other diners looked up as they sailed past in the wake of the head waiter. The three of them held their heads up. They knew, somehow, that tonight they were worth looking at. A spark had ignited them.

‘I’ll order for you,’ Felix said. He studied the big white menu, and spoke rapid French to the waiter.

‘How do you know French?’ the girls demanded, impressed in spite of themselves.

‘I only know menu French. And please and thank you. I taught myself.’

‘Teach us,’ Julia demanded. ‘I want to learn everything.’

He smiled at her. ‘I know you do.’ Her eagerness pleased him, and at the same time, in a different recess of himself, it frightened him.

When their plates came, Mattie and Julia stared disbelievingly into the bubbling interiors of the big, amber and gold striped shells nestled in their special dishes.

‘They’re snails,’ Mattie whispered.

‘They certainly are,’ Felix agreed. .’And you will eat them. You can’t let me down now. Look, like this.’ He fitted the little silver clamp around one of his shells and winkled the snail out. It dripped hot, buttery sauce. When the snail was gone Felix tipped the juice out of the shell and mopped it up with bread from the piled-up basket.

‘I’m so hungry’,’ Julia said suddenly. ‘I’ve never been so hungry.’

Copying Felix, she extracted a snail. She opened her mouth and it slid down her throat. She blinked, and realised that it was delicious.

They devoured their snails, and emptied the bread basket. The waiters were fatherly, bringing more bread and beaming their approval, all except one who was young and hovered around Mattie’s chair.

After the escargots – ‘Escargots,’ repeated Julia – came tournedos Rossini. The thick wedges of steak with pâté and toasted bread were rich and utterly satisfying. Wine was brought in a wicker cradle, the neck of the bottle wrapped in a white napkin. Felix tasted the drop that the wine waiter poured into his glass and nodded.

‘This is Beaune,’ he told them.

The pudding was a puff of choux pastry oozing with dark chocolate. Mattie loved all sweet things and she chased the last fragments of hers around her plate, groaning with pleasure.

‘Oh, how I love food and wine.’ Looking across the table at Felix and Julia, she was suddenly struck by their likeness. Julia’s skin was white and Felix’s was milky coffee, but their faces had the same high cheekbones and strong mouths. And their expressions were the same. Appraising. Touched with arrogance, but ready to dissolve into laughter as well. ‘And I love you two,’ she whispered.

They both heard it. You too. Julia’s hand was lying loosely on the white cloth. Felix had raised his own hand, intending to cover her fingers, draw them towards him. Now, he thought. It has to be now.

But he felt the waiter behind him, leaning forwards to murmur in this hear, ‘Excusez-moi, monsieur.’

They heard ice clinking, and a frosty silver bucket materialised beside their table. In the bucket was a bottle of champagne.

Through the droplets misting the clear glass they could see the wine. Pink champagne.

‘I didn’t order …’ Felix murmured, unusually disconcerted. ‘No, monsieur. The gentleman over there ordered it. He asked me to present his compliments.’

They turned their heads, in unison.

‘Who’s that?’ Julia breathed.

Joshua Flood and Harry Gilbert always met for a drink or dinner whenever Josh passed through London. Harry was an ex-RAF pilot, ten years older than Josh. The two men had met when Harry and his air charter company pilots were flying eighteen hours a day, lifting supplies to Berlin, and Josh was a skinny American teenager who was hanging around the airfield looking for work, any work, that had anything to do with flying. Harry had given him a job loading and unloading crates, and Josh stuck to it. Harry Gilbert gave the boy his first flying lesson, and they went out and got drunk together on the day Josh got his pilot’s licence. It was an unlikely relationship, between the upper-class Englishman and the much younger American who, by his own admission, ‘came from Nowhere, Colorado, but was going plenty of places’, but it had persisted. They enjoyed one another’s company, and they were drawn together by their mutual enthusiasm for aircraft, skiing and women.

They had amused themselves over dinner at Leoni’s that evening by speculating on the threesome at the centre table. It was Mattie who had first drawn their attention.

‘Look at that hair.’

‘And the superstructure.’

‘Harry, you’re a dirty old man.’

‘Age has nothing to do with it, my boy.’

‘Anyway, the blonde’s mine. You can have the dark one.’

‘I fancy it’s an academic question. They’re having far too good a time on their own.’

‘With that panty-waist?’ Joshua’s blond eyebrows shot up into his tanned forehead.

Harry laughed. ‘Appearances can be deceptive.’

‘Not that appearance.’ Josh signalled to the waiter. ‘But there’s only one way to find out. Let’s send ’em a drink.’

The bubbles fizzed and burst on Julia’s tongue. The champagne seemed to send currents of elation through her veins. She gripped the edge of the white cloth, to anchor herself in her chair.

I’m still here, she thought. I’m still myself. That’s good. That’s all that matters. She knew that she was hurt, somewhere, but the pain, if there was going to be any, hadn’t bitten into her yet. There was only the strange, tight, bursting feeling, buried inside her. ‘We can’t just drink their champagne,’ she said aloud. ‘We’ll have to invite them to join us.’

A moment later Joshua Flood leaned between Mattie and Julia.

‘I thought you were never going to ask.’

He had green eyes, and his hair was bleached by the wind or the sun. He positioned his chair between Julia and Mattie, and his good-humoured, appraising glance slid from one to the other.

‘Thank you for the champagne,’ Julia said.

He bowed, mock-formally. ‘It was my pleasure.’ When he held out his hand, it was to Julia first.

‘I’m Joshua Flood. Josh. And this is my buddy, Harry Gilbert.’

‘We’d better have another bottle,’ Harry smiled.

Even Felix liked them. They were breezy, and funny, and attractive, especially Josh. He saw Julia looking at Josh, watching the way he put his glass to his mouth, the way he flicked his Zippo lighter to his cigarette. He was glad that his hand hadn’t reached her fingers. Not tonight.

Julia had drawn Josh closer, almost cutting him out of the circle. It wasn’t deliberate, but she couldn’t stop looking at him. Joshua caught Harry’s eye and grinned, shrugging faintly. The blonde one was sexier, but he didn’t mind. Harry didn’t mind either. With his developed, English nose for who was what he had spotted at once that these girls and their friend weren’t his own kind. They were very pretty, and they were lively and interesting, but it was only an evening’s diversion, no more than that. He glanced at Josh again. Josh had no time for the English class system, and Harry could see already that the dark girl promised more than an evening’s diversion for Joshua. Good luck to him, Harry thought cheerfully, and he refilled Mattie’s glass with pink Louis Roederer.

Later, when Mattie and Julia retired to the cloakroom to repair their make-up, Julia asked breathlessly, ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’

‘He’s that all right,’ Mattie answered. ‘Nice, too.’

‘Mattie?’

‘Mmm?’ she was painting her lips with pink lipstick, but their eyes met in the mirror.

‘Mattie … do you want him? I saw him looking at you first.’ Julia was cold with fear of her answer, but she had to ask.

Mattie smiled. ‘You go ahead. I like his friend.’ His friend was older and somehow safer, Mattie added silently. Joshua Flood was someone special, but Mattie wouldn’t stand in Julia’s way tonight.

Julia, are you all right?’ she asked abruptly.

Julia stood still for a moment.

‘I meant about your mum. About what’s happened.’

A dirty little baby who wasn’t wanted, Julia heard again. But I am wanted. Josh wants me, I can see it in his face. She laughed, a little shakily. ‘Yes, I’m all right.’ Mattie hugged her, and then smoothed her dress.

‘Come on, then. Let’s get back to your aviator.’

When they reached the table the second bottle of champagne was empty, and Felix was standing up ready to leave.

‘I’m sure I’m leaving you in good hands,’ he said lightly.

The girls kissed him, one on each cheek. ‘Thank you for a wonderful dinner,’ they told him. ‘You and Jessie.’

Felix’s black eyes flickered, not quite to Julia’s face. Then he lifted his hand, almost into a salute, and turned away.

After that there was a taxi, and a nightclub, a proper one with tables in alcoves and girls in evening dresses to serve drinks. Mattie and Julia tried to look as if they came to such places every night, and Harry and Josh played along with the fantasy.

A crooner came out on to the little stage close to their table and addressed his songs to Mattie. She snorted with laughter, and told Harry, ‘I can do better than that. Julia, shall I get up there and give them “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me?” ’

‘Oh no, please,’ Julia murmured faintly.

‘You stay right here with me,’ Harry ordered. His arm was around Mattie’s shoulders and his hand rested on her breast. Mattie, fuelled by champagne, was at her best, teasing and flirtatious and quick-tongued. She knew that she was safe, here in this nightclub surrounded by people. She had also guessed, accurately enough, that Harry Gilbert would have a steady girl, perhaps even a wife, who rode horses somewhere in the country. And so he wasn’t likely to be a long-term threat either. She could sit back and enjoy sparring good-naturedly with him.

Josh was different. Even when he was sitting at their table telling Julia about flying he was moving, restless, confined by the nightclub’s smoky ceilings. His hands moved, making shapes in the air, and he leaned closer so that she saw his white, even teeth and the play of the muscles around his mouth. He had long eyelashes, bleached gold at the tips like his hair. She wanted to touch the backs of his hands, where the taut sinews showed.

‘Why are you so brown?’ she asked him.

‘I’m a traveller. I work where I can, flying, and if it’s in the sun, so much the better. Then, when I’ve put enough money together, I ski until it runs out.’

Julia thought of languorous silver beaches, and then snow under a brittle blue sky. A long way from the attic flat, and from the rows of desks in the accounts office. Her freedom seemed suddenly tame. Josh’s glittering energy fired her own, making it blaze up inside her. It was impossible to sit still any longer.

The singer finished his spot.

‘I want to dance. Can we?’ she asked Josh.

He smiled at her. ‘Sure we can.’

On the little dance floor he held out his arms to her. She stepped forward, a small, deliberate step. His hand on her waist felt light and warm.

Dancing at the Rocket was nothing like this. Usually Julia knew what tune the band was playing, what the other girls were wearing, who was dancing nearby and what steps they were doing.

Tonight she didn’t notice anything, except Josh. She forgot how to dance, and learned all over again through Josh. She felt lighter than she had ever done, part of the music itself.

From across the room Mattie saw them smiling at each other, hypnotised. She was dancing with Harry, whose still, English bearing was such a contrast to Josh’s. Harry danced like a poker. Harry Gilbert wouldn’t look at her like Josh was looking at Julia. She was glad of that, because she knew what the look meant. But she was touched by a tiny, unfamiliar shiver of jealousy. Mattie wanted to be overtaken too.

Julia and Josh danced for a long time. They hardly spoke but they were still listening to each other, to the sound of one another’s breathing, the unspoken words.

At last, reluctantly, Harry let his arm fall from around Mattie’s waist. He was still standing close enough to see down her blouse, into the blue shadow between the creamy, gold-freckled breasts. But Harry had to work the next day. There was an old Lancaster, converted for freight-carrying, waiting to be flown. Not like Josh Flood, who seemed to have the knack of working only when he felt like it. Harry touched Mattie’s cheek, pushing back the blonde waves. The pair of them were not much more than children anyway, he thought. It was tempting, but impossible.

‘I must get to bed,’ he told her sadly.

‘And me too.’ Mattie’s eyes held his. ‘My own bed.’

She had been perfectly honest with him. And Harry was always dogged by his own gentlemanly code. ‘Of course,’ he murmured.

Julia and Josh followed them. They held themselves apart by a little, artificial space. Outside in the cool darkness Josh turned suddenly.

‘It’s too early to go home. Do you want to go home?’ he asked Julia.

Slowly, she shook her head.

‘Josh never sleeps,’ Harry said. He flung out his arm to a passing taxi. ‘I’ll see Mattie home.’

He held open the door for her. Mattie’s knuckles brushed against Julia’s, hidden in the folds of their full skirts. She took her hand quickly, and squeezed it. Julia watched her friend subside into the taxi with Harry beside her, but she didn’t look round. The cab chugged away into the night.

I love you, Mattie, she thought.

‘Julia Smith,’ Josh said softly. ‘What shall we do now?’

Julia looked up. They sky was powdered with faint stars. ‘Let’s walk a little way.’

He took her hand, drawing it close against him. They began to walk, not noticing which way, perfectly in step.

‘I’ve talked all night about aircraft and ski-slopes,’ Josh complained. ‘I’m surprised you’re not asleep. I don’t know anything about you, except how pretty you are.’

Julia laughed. There was nothing to tell Josh, she thought. She was a blank canvas, like one of Felix’s, waiting. The idea was intoxicating. She felt electrically alive, charged with an astonishing happiness. It made her want to take hold of everything, that lamp-post and these shop windows and the newspapers crumpled in the gutter and hold them, here and now, because they were part of Josh and part of tonight. Nothing could go wrong tonight. Nothing could touch her now.

‘I can’t fly. I can’t ski.’ She heard herself laughing.

Josh lifted her hand and kissed the knuckles, where they had brushed against Mattie’s. ‘I’ll teach you.’

So much to learn.

‘There’s one thing,’ Julia said softly. She would tell Josh, of course. ‘It’s why this evening happened, in a way. My mother told me today that I’m adopted.’ She lifted her chin, looking at him. ‘I didn’t know. I’m on my own, now.’ It was easy to say that, because she knew that she wasn’t.

Josh stopped and put his hands on her shoulders. He looked into her upturned face for a minute, a long time. Julia felt his concern like the sun, warming her.

‘That’s tough,’ he said at last. He didn’t try anything else and she loved him for that, for not flooding her with words.

Josh was watching her, under the light of the street lamp. The attempted sophistication of Leoni’s and the nightclub had dropped away from her. She wasn’t just another girl now. She was this girl, looking back at him with wide eyes that reflected the light. He cupped her face in his hands. Her neck and throat were fragile, and her skin was luminous. He kissed her, twisting her round against him, tasting the sweetness of her mouth and tongue. She held on to him, answering him, but Josh lifted his head again.

‘How old are you?’ he asked harshly.

‘Seventeen,’ Julia said, and then she whispered, ‘Almost.’ That was the truth. She wouldn’t lie to Josh.

‘Jesus.’ He turned her face again, so that he could see her more clearly. ‘That’s jail-bait.’

‘Josh. I’m older than you think.’

He remembered her in the restaurant. She had laid her claim on him then, as coolly as a woman twice her age. And she had danced with him, keeping nothing back. They had been making love, upright and fully clothed. Children didn’t dance like that. And he couldn’t relinquish her now. It was already too late.

‘Are you?’ he demanded roughly. ‘Are you?’

Julia only smiled. When he kissed her again he could feel the outline of her body under her thin clothes. She had long legs and narrow hips, and small, hard breasts. She felt hot, and her head tilted back under the weight of his.

‘Come on,’ Josh said. ‘Julia Smith, this is a public street.’ He was grinning but he wasn’t quite in control of himself, and he didn’t want Julia to see that. ‘Let’s walk on a way, or there’ll be real trouble.’

They went on under the street lights, walking very slowly, their hands still touching. Telling Josh about her mother had breached a dam inside Julia. The words poured out of her now, and she told him about home, and the High Street, and Blick Road, and about Mattie and the Embankment and ending up with Jessie and Felix in the square. They sounded such small doings compared with Josh’s but Julia didn’t care about that. It was important that he should know everything, that was all.

He listened gravely, nodding his blond head.

‘Now you know,’ she said at last.

‘Now I know.’

He was touched by her offering it all to him. It was very different, this walk in the deserted streets, from the conventional overture to the evening. Nor was this girl anything like one of the pair of pretty, giggling women he had ordered pink champagne for. Josh sighed. He touched Julia’s face with the tips of his fingers before he kissed her again.

‘It’s very late,’ he said.

‘I know.’ Time didn’t mean anything to Julia then.

Josh had been thinking. He had been staying with a girl, an ex-girlfriend, but even so he didn’t think that Carol would be happy to see him at three in the morning with Julia in tow. He knew that Julia shared a room with Mattie, back in their friend’s apartment. And it was far too late for a hotel, without any luggage.

‘I’d better take you home,’ he said gently.

Her hand tightened on his, but she only said, ‘It isn’t very far from here. I know the way.’ Julia smiled at him, and he saw the happiness in her face. ‘Tonight has been the most perfect evening I’ve ever had,’ she said simply.

Josh wanted to pick her up and hold her, and he knew that he was crazy, and that there was nothing to be done because it had happened now.

‘I kind of enjoyed it too,’ he said.

Outside the black-painted door in the square he held her again. Julia let her head fall against his shoulder, thinking, I don’t care what happens.

‘Can I see you again?’ Josh asked, and as soon as he had said it she knew how much she did care.

‘Oh, yes. Yes, please.’

Joshua couldn’t help smiling. ‘Give me your phone number then.’

‘There isn’t a telephone here.’

He looked up at the numerals on the shabby black door. ‘Okay. I know where you are.’ His hand touched her shoulder, lightly, like a friend’s. ‘So, I’ll be back.’

He walked away quickly, his hair a spot of brightness under the dark trees.

Julia let herself in and climbed the stairs. She couldn’t feel their dusty solidity under her feet. She was light, as if she could float, and the tight feeling inside her was all gone. It was a stream now, washing freely. She wanted to lie down in the warmth of it, with Josh, and let the current pour over them. Was that what love was? Julia was laughing. She could see Josh’s face so clearly. Your aviator, Mattie had said. The word was as beautiful as Josh himself. Julia tried the words aloud.

‘I love you,’ she said. ‘God help me, I love you.’