The china button was still cracked and when the doorbell rang inside, the sound was so familiar she might have heard it yesterday. From the top of the steps, she could see through the bay window into the sitting room where a girl in a black body-con dress and biker boots was perched on the arm of the old tapestry chair talking to a man in torn jeans. Through the glass came the muffled conversational buzz of a large group of people.
The door swung open and there was Jacqueline. Before Rowan had a chance even to drop her umbrella, she was pulled into a hug so tight it made her ribs buckle. Under Rowan’s hands, Jacqueline’s vertebrae felt like stones through her silk shirt, shocking. She must have been thinner anyway; she couldn’t have lost so much weight so quickly. She was warm, though – Jacqueline had always seemed warmer than other people, as if her natural thermostat ran hotter – and with another pang of nostalgia, Rowan smelled her smoky bergamot scent. ‘Goes round smelling like a pot of Earl Grey,’ said Marianne’s voice in her ear.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Rowan said.
The hug tightened for a second and then Jacqueline let her go and stepped back. The shock of seeing her face up close – a network of capillaries marbled her cheeks and her eyelids were so swollen that they didn’t fully open. She scanned Rowan’s face as if she were looking for something. ‘You haven’t changed.’
‘God, I hope I have.’
A glimmer of a smile. ‘Well, maybe a bit. Come in – come and have a drink.’
‘Jacqueline?’ A woman in a long white apron appeared at her shoulder. ‘Sorry to interrupt: could I just ask you quickly . . . ?’
‘Go on in, Rowan, I’ll catch up with you in a moment. You’ll know lots of people. If I see Adam, I’ll tell him you’re here.’ Jacqueline turned to the woman in the apron as another indicated to Rowan that she’d take her coat.
The hallway had the same dust-and-paint smell it had always had, though today the scent of warm pastry was also in the air. There was the same wallpaper with the same green trellis pattern, the same telephone table with its lamp with the bronze elephant base. Rowan had a momentary mental image of Marianne sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, twisting the phone cord around her finger and rolling her eyes. It had probably been Peter Turk on the other end, telling one of his shaggy-dog stories.
At the entrance to the sitting room Rowan took a glass of wine from a man with a tray – disorientating to see waiting staff here – and began to edge her way around the crowd. Though the double doors were open and the dining room was full of people, too, the room felt claustrophobically packed. It was large, running almost the whole width of the house, and the furniture had been pushed back but the only pocket of space she could see was by the fireplace. She made her way towards it, holding her glass aloft and trying not to knock anyone else’s, catching snippets here and there above the quiet roar of conversation.
She soon understood why there was a space. A fire had been lit to make the room look welcoming but with so many people crammed together, the extra heat was stifling and she felt light-headed within a minute. She undid her collar button, taking the opportunity to scan the crowd. Among the sea of faces and backs of heads, was there someone who knew something? Who knew what had compelled Marianne to get in touch with her after all this time? That, one way or another, had taken her to the roof-edge? Despite the heat, the idea sent a shiver down Rowan’s arms.
On the mantelpiece, the Glass family photographs occupied their ranks of frames. The largest, unchanged since the last time Rowan had been here, was a simple silver one with rounded corners that held a picture of the family in the Mediterranean somewhere – Corsica, was it? The picture was twenty years old now, more even: Marianne looked to be nine or ten, Adam twelve, although he’d been so skinny in those days he could have passed for ten, too, with his narrow chest and xylophone ribs. They were having lunch at a beach restaurant, plates of calamari in front of them, glasses of wine and Coca-Cola making condensation rings on the white paper tablecloth. In the background, the sea was visible as a blue stripe beyond a handful of parasols. Marianne was grinning and her front teeth looked enormous, adult-sized in a face that was still a child’s. She was wearing a stripy bathing costume with a halter-neck similar to the one that her mother had on, though Jacqueline’s, Rowan thought, was working significantly harder, containing those boobs.
And there was Seb. He was laughing, leaning back in the canvas chair, a glass of white wine in his hand. He looked like a French film star taking a break from the Cannes Festival, his eyes and teeth bright against his tan, his chest covered with thick black hair. It wasn’t the physique of your typical academic at all but he’d always run and played squash, and he’d swum at the health club on the Woodstock Road, too. He had taken care of himself.
‘Rowan.’