‘Come on.’ Winifred was leaving the church now, looking back for her cousin, and Laura stepped forwards into the shivering cold of the street where the clouds over London were already dyed lavender in anticipation of twilight. Christmas ran on well-known grooves for the Highgate house. Mrs Venn was back, so that warm mince pies were waiting for them when they reached the house. As Laura took one, she asked Mrs Venn awkwardly about her son and heard that he was doing well, thank you: a village in Dorset, a blacksmith’s family.
‘You must miss him.’ It was the wrong thing to say, and Mrs Venn hardly responded. The mince pies had a strange dark taste that Laura could not like, and she left hers crumbled on her plate. Giles came back that evening from where he was working in Scotland. He was obviously exhausted; he said that he had hardly slept in days, and stayed in bed most of the time, only getting up for meals. The atmosphere among the family was much as Laura remembered it when she had first arrived – solid and easy, even if subdued, as if all the changes that had taken place beyond these walls had little effect on those within them.
When the telephone rang on the morning of Boxing Day, it was Laura who went into the hall to answer it, thinking that it was sure to be Mother – they hadn’t spoken for so long and they should at least exchange Christmas wishes. At first she could not place the measured man’s voice asking to speak to Giles, but when she asked who was calling the answer seemed unsurprising.
‘Edward Last.’
She didn’t lay aside the receiver and call for Giles; instead she remained still and told him it was Laura.
‘I was ringing to see if we might all meet for luncheon,’ he said.
Without thinking, Laura imitated his tone: bland and unsurprised. ‘That would be lovely,’ she said. He suggested the following Wednesday, and she accepted, and when he said they could meet at Manzi’s, she agreed. She did not tell him that she did not know where the restaurant was or that she thought that Giles would be back in Scotland by then. His laconic manner, exaggerated on the telephone, allowed the space for her to behave in this uncharacteristic way. She thanked him, put the telephone down, and looked up to see Giles on the stairs.
‘That was your friend, Edward,’ she said.
‘Last?’
‘He wondered if we could all meet for lunch next Wednesday.’
‘Lunch? Did he really? Odd of the old chap. I’ll be back in Scotland. Got to get back to these tests, the pressure is on.’
‘I’ll just go with Winifred then – or I’ll call him back and cancel.’
‘Funny,’ said Giles, looking down at her. ‘I could have sworn it was Winifred on the telephone as I came down – you sounded so English.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes. You don’t usually.’
That made Laura selfconscious, so she went back into the living room where she had left Winifred playing Patience. Yet she did not mention the telephone call to her, nor did she ask Giles if he had Edward’s number so that she could telephone to cancel.
The next Wednesday she was at work in the bookshop. Her supervisor was a middle-aged man who seemed to find her an irritant rather than a help when it came to most tasks. When she had asked if her colleague Ann could cover a long lunch break for her as she had to visit the dentist, he had agreed as if her absence would hardly be a loss to him. All morning she acted as if her mouth was bothering her, and at half past twelve she told Ann she was off. She went to the lavatory at the back of the shop and peered into the small mirror. Her pores seemed enlarged, her skin oily, and she took out her powder compact. Just then there was a knock on the door. ‘Hold on,’ she called. She still needed to urinate, and found when she pulled down her underwear that she had started to menstruate, earlier than expected. It was all right, she had only just begun, and she had a pad in her bag, but in her haste she pinned it crookedly, and all the way walking up Piccadilly in the freezing wind she felt aware of her stained underwear and the pad rubbing against the top of her thigh.
She was just on time at Manzi’s, but they showed her to an empty table. As the minutes passed, she began to worry that he was not coming. Should she go without eating, without paying? How gauche would that be? She shook her head at the waiter who came to find out what she wanted to drink, and then to her relief there he was, taller than she remembered, walking through the crowded room.