We entered, Raymond wiping his feet elaborately on the doormat. I copied him. It was truly an unforeseen day when I would look to Raymond for social guidance.
He handed over the flowers and the clinking bag, and Laura looked pleased. I realized that, despite her entreaty at the hospital, I ought to have brought something to hand over too. I was going to explain that she had told us not to, and I had simply done her the courtesy of respecting her wishes, but before I could speak, Raymond blurted out, “These are from Eleanor and me.”
She peered into the carrier bag—I fervently hoped it wasn’t Haribo and Pringles again—and thanked us both. I nodded in acknowledgment.
She showed us into the living room, where Sammy and his family were seated. Banal pop music was playing softly, and a low table was covered with little bowls of beige snacks. Laura was wearing a dress, wrapped around her like black bandages, and teetered in heels with a two-inch platform. Her blond hair was—I grappled for the correct terms—both tall and fat, and tumbled well past her shoulders in glossy waves. Even Bobbi Brown might have thought the amount of makeup she was wearing de trop. Raymond’s mouth hung slightly open, just wide enough to post a letter through, and he seemed somewhat dazed. Laura appeared entirely indifferent to his response.
“Raymond! Eleanor!” Sammy shouted, waving from deep within an enormous velvet armchair. “Laura, get them both a drink, would you? We’re on the Prosecco,” he said, confidentially.
“No more for you, Dad,” his elder son said. “Not with those painkillers.”
“Och, come on, son—you only live once!” Sammy said brightly. “After all, there’s worse ways to go, eh, Eleanor?”
I nodded. He was, of course, absolutely right. I should know.
Laura appeared with two flutes of urine-colored fizzy liquid—much to my surprise, I drank mine down in three gulps. It was dry and biscuity, and extremely delicious. I wondered if it was expensive, and whether it might in due course come to replace vodka as my beverage of choice. Laura noticed, and topped up my glass.
“You’re like me—I only drink bubbles,” she said approvingly.
I looked around.
“You have a very beautiful home,” I said.
She nodded.
“It’s taken me a couple of years to get everything the way I like it, but I’m happy with it now,” she said.
I was struck by how coordinated everything was, how clean and gleaming. There were textures everywhere—feathers and flock, velvet, silk—and jewel colors.
“It’s like an aerie where a beautiful bird would nest,” I said. “A quetzal, or an imperial eagle.”
She appeared to be struggling for an appropriate response, strangely. Surely a simple “thank you” would have sufficed?
After a silence, not too uncomfortable because of the fizzy bubble drink, she asked me about work, and I explained what I did, and how I knew Raymond. We looked over at him—he was perched on the arm of Sammy’s chair, laughing at something one of her brothers had said.
“You could do worse, you know,” she said, with a sly smile. “I mean, if you tidied him up a bit, decent haircut . . .”
It took me a moment to grasp what she meant.
“Oh no,” I said, “you completely misunderstand. I already have someone. He’s handsome and sophisticated and talented—a cultured, educated man.” Laura smiled.
“Aren’t you the lucky one! How did you two meet, then?”
“Well, we haven’t, as yet,” I explained, “but it’s only a matter of time.”
She threw her head back and laughed, a deep throaty sound that seemed wrong coming from such a slight, feminine woman.
“You’re hilarious, Eleanor,” she said. “You’ll have to come round for drinks some time. And if you ever decide to cut your hair, bear me in mind, yeah? I’ll give you mates’ rates.”
I thought about this. I had been slacking somewhat with my makeover list, after the frankly disconcerting wax experience at the salon and the unremarkable changes that had been wrought on my nails. I supposed I ought to press on with it. Normally, I wasn’t at all interested in my hair and I hadn’t had it cut since I was thirteen years old. It ran down to my waist, straight and light brown—just hair, nothing more, nothing less. I barely noticed it, in truth. I knew, though, that for the singer to fall in love with me, I’d need to make much more of an effort.
“This is, in fact, serendipitous timing, Laura,” I said, drinking more of the delicious bubbles—my glass seemed miraculously to have refilled itself. “I had been planning something of a reinvention. Might next week be suitable for you to effect a change of hairstyle?”
She picked up her phone from a console table and tapped away.
“How’s Tuesday at three?” she said.
We were allocated twenty-five days of annual leave, and I had used three—a recovery day after painful root canal work, one of my biannual daytime Social Work visits, and an extra day I’d added onto a bank holiday weekend in order to allow me to finish a particularly lengthy but thrilling volume on the history of ancient Rome without interruption.
“Tuesday would be splendid,” I said.
She shimmered off toward the kitchen, and reappeared with a tray of malodorous, warm snacks which she passed around the room. The space had filled up with people, and the overall volume level was very loud. I stood for several minutes examining the bibelots and objets which she had artfully placed around the room. More from boredom than necessity, I went to use the bathroom, a tiny cloakroom under the stairs which was also shiny and warm, gleaming white and scented, improbably, with figs—the smell, I eventually realized, emanating from a lit candle in a glass jar on the shelf below the mirror. Candles in a bathroom! I suspected that Laura was something of a sybarite.
I walked into the room at the end of the hall, which was, as I had correctly guessed, the kitchen. This room was also full of people and noise, but I could make out black marble work tops, gloss cream cabinets and lots of chrome. Her home was so . . . shiny. She was shiny too, her skin, her hair, her shoes, her teeth. I hadn’t even realized before; I am matte, dull and scuffed.
Feeling the need to escape the noise and heat for a moment, I opened the back door and stepped out onto a patio. The garden was small and contained little in the way of botanical life, being mostly paved with concrete slabs or covered in slippery decking. Dusk was falling, but the sky felt small here, and I felt penned in by a high fence which ran on all three sides. I breathed in, deeply, hoping for cool night air. Instead, my nasal passages were assaulted by tar, nicotine and other poisons.
“Nice night, eh?” said Raymond, loitering unnoticed in the shadows and, just for a change, puffing on a cigarette. I nodded.
“I came out for some fresh air,” he said, without a hint of irony. “I shouldn’t drink fizz, it knocks me for six.” I realized that I was somewhat discombobulated myself.
“I think I’m ready to go home now,” I said, a little unsteady on my feet. It was, however, a lovely feeling.
“Come and sit down for a minute,” Raymond said, steering me toward a pair of wooden armchairs. I was glad to do so, as my new boots rendered my balance somewhat precarious at the best of times. Raymond lit another cigarette—he seemed to be becoming a chain smoker.
“They’re a nice family, aren’t they?” he said.
“Laura is going to cut my hair,” I blurted out. I’ve no idea why.
“Is she now?” He smiled.
“You like her,” I stated, nodding sagely. I was a woman of the world, after all.
He laughed.
“She’s gorgeous, Eleanor, but she’s really not my type.” His cigarette end glowed red in the semidarkness.
“What is your type?” I asked, finding to my surprise that I was actually interested.
“I don’t know. Someone less . . . high maintenance, I guess. Someone . . . wait a minute.”
I was more than content to sit still while he walked off, returning minutes later with a bottle of wine and two garishly decorated paper cups sporting cartoon rodents on skateboards.