Laura said that she had never really met Amy – though of course she remembered her, disembarking the Normandie with her hat like a little flag, entering Sybil’s house in a white coat, sitting in the Dorchester in monochrome. She wondered why she was over in the States, and was surprised when Edward told her that she had married again, for a third time, to an American who wanted to get into politics. ‘You can’t stay in for the next three months. That’s why you’re feeling low, with nothing to do.’
All day Laura toyed with the idea of going to the party, and she even went out to a hairdresser in the afternoon. There had been a half-hearted snowfall in the morning, but it was already turning to slush on the sidewalks, falling in dirty streaks off the Dupont Circle fountains. She looked into the shop windows; blush lace underwear in the window of Jean Matou, a crocodile handbag … pretty colours, soft textures, but she couldn’t summon up the energy to go in and see them more closely. In the hairdresser’s mirror, which only showed her from the chest up, she could almost slip into her other self, the girl who used to watch herself with expectation in mirrors and shop windows, wondering what people were thinking about her. The woman next to her, middle-aged with dyed aubergine hair, caught her eye in their reflection and smiled at her. ‘That style suits you,’ she said in a foreign voice, nodding at the way the hairdresser had cut Laura’s hair to just below her ears, ‘much better than when you came in.’ But when she came home to put on a grey cocktail dress that Ellen had sent her in a box of clothes she had worn in her own pregnancy, Laura felt another wave of nausea, and she telephoned Edward and told him she was too unwell to go out.
A bunch of pinks that she had left too long smelt stagnant on the hall table when she went downstairs to make herself a cup of tea, and she picked up the vase and took it down to the kitchen. The stems dripped on the grey dress as she took out the flowers. As she was walking up the long stairs to bed, pain radiated through her pelvis; she unzipped the dress and left it in a heap on the floor, and lay in her underwear on top of the bedclothes, her hands on her belly. Edward did not come in until the small hours, but although Laura woke when he got into bed, she could not stir herself to speak to him. The next morning, however, when she heard the sound of the shower, she dragged herself out of bed to make him coffee and ask how his evening had been.
‘We went on to another party – Amy is wild.’ Edward shook his head. Laura was puzzled. He must have seen a side of that collected woman that she could hardly imagine.
‘Did she get very drunk?’
‘Not just drunk. They were going on again when we left. Monica and Archie gave up when I did, though. Your brother-in-law Kit was there too. Someone said he is aiming to get into journalism. He doesn’t seem the type, to me.’
Laura asked Edward what he meant, but he was unforthcoming: drinking his cup of coffee, knotting his tie, looking for his briefcase, he seemed distracted by thoughts of the day to come. After he left, Laura roused herself and cooked some breakfast. She had arranged to see Monica for lunch and shopping, but although the house seemed so empty, the thought of going out into the city was unappetising. She went to telephone Monica to say that she was feeling too unwell to go out.
‘Thank the Lord, I’m so ill too,’ Monica said in a thin voice, and then offered to come over instead. ‘I’ll bring you something for lunch – what are you craving? Tell me. When I was preggers, I only craved cold martinis and chips with vinegar, and my doctor told me that was the worst I could possibly do for my baby.’
When Monica arrived, pale under her usual make-up, Laura at first thought she would be a welcome distraction. But she quickly found her chatter disturbing. ‘Goodness me, Edward and his friends put it away, don’t they?’ she said, peering at herself in the hall mirror. ‘I look like death. I needed the night out, though – everything at home is unbearable.’ She paused and walked into the living room, still talking, almost as if Laura wasn’t there. ‘At home! I suppose that’s the problem. It isn’t home. I wish we were at home, I do wonder why I married a Foreign Office type when I only really like England.’