‘It’s not so easy, in real life. To make contact with people.’
‘No, it isn’t. I sometimes think I don’t actually like anyone that much. That all I ever want is to be on my own. And then I can’t cope with it – with myself, just myself all the time, and it’s like I become the worst company of all – and there’s this awful realisation that I need people and it’s almost humiliating,’ she says.
He looks at her and smiles.
‘I don’t know where that came from.’
He shakes his head. ‘I totally get it. I live in that great barn and sometimes on a Sunday morning it’s like heaven, sitting in front of that massive window with my coffee, with the sun coming in, reading. And then by 11 a.m. I’m desperate for someone to call round, but of course they don’t, because I live in the arse end of nowhere.’
She laughs. ‘Except the police, occasionally.’
‘Or a corpse. Well, he didn’t come knocking.’
‘No. Have you recovered?’
‘I don’t think there was anything to recover from, really. I mean, it was shocking and I spent a day thinking about death more than usual – and I’m someone who thinks about death a lot. But it’s not like I knew him or cared for him. It was the fact he was young that bothered me.’
‘Yes.’
‘I suppose you can’t talk about the case.’
‘No.’
She rubs her eye, hard, feeling the crystals work into her eyeball.
‘That eye looks sore,’ he says.
‘Yes, I don’t know what it is. Feels like I’ve got something stuck in it which I can’t get out. Been like this on and off for a fortnight.’ And she feels the moment race towards her, unannounced, an awful parody of Brief Encounter, where he will feel invited to come close to her face and look deep into her eyes to see what’s there. She hadn’t intended that at all.
‘Looks like conjunctivitis to me,’ he says.
‘Really?’ she says, disappointed.
‘Yes. You can get antibiotics for it over the counter.’
Out in the street they find their cars are nose to tail. His is an anonymous silver Ford, just the kind she’d expect from a systems analyst wearing tennis shoes. The seats look as if they’ve been recently vacuumed.
‘This is me,’ she says, waiting for him to comment on her Seventies mustard Citro?n with the black leather seats. Waiting for him to take in the package.
‘This is your car, is it?’ he says mildly.
‘Yup.’ She pats the roof.
‘Right, then,’ he says. He is digging one hand in his trouser pocket. He brings out a handkerchief and holds it to his nose. It blooms white and big across his face, and he pushes it side to side, bending his nose. She has never seen anyone under seventy use a handkerchief.
‘Do you fancy …’ she begins. ‘We could … go on somewhere?’
He looks at his watch. ‘I think everywhere will be packed with awful drunkards right about now. Sorry,’ he says, stifling a yawn, ‘I’m going to have to call it a night. This is burning the candle for an old fart like me.’
‘Right, yes, of course. I suppose we’re in opposite directions.’
‘I suppose,’ he says. ‘Well, Happy New Year.’
She wonders if he is going to bend to plant a kiss on her cheek but he shifts slightly. He places a hand on her upper arm and she lifts her cheek but he turns away.
She watches him duck into his warm, practical car.
Sunday
Manon
Bryony’s husband Peter opens the oven door with padded hands like paddles and lifts out an angrily spitting pan. He holds it before him, the furious beast, the God of their lunch, and the room fills with the atavistic smell of meat fat. The trail of it curls across the room to Manon in the corner armchair – the salty maple smell of the meat – and together with the dry white wine she is sipping, it works on her stomach juices to produce the sweet anticipation of being fed.
The windows of the kitchen are fogged, as if the world Bryony and Peter have created – the roast lunch, the baby she is putting down for a nap, the toddler playing Lego in the next room – has erased the outside because it is not needed. This world, their world, is inside.
‘Looking good, elephant woman. Shouldn’t you get that seen to?’ says Bryony as she enters the room.