A cloud passes overhead, its dark bulk ominous, and she lifts her sunglasses up onto her head. Still winter after all.
The lights change and she presses her foot down, the car slow to respond. He maintains his Law of Week Nights: a full eight hours, padded silk lavender eye mask on. No sleep-filled rocking, not on a Tuesday. He has got his shit in a pile, his ducks in a row. Prim Prenderghast for Prime Minister! He is real and they are together; and yes the birds do fly off, but they land also, and she just needs to give it time.
It was like she said to Bri when forced to help her move furniture around her mother’s soon-to-be-rented-out bungalow: ‘Loads of people like to take things slow, don’t they? It’s a normal part of—’
‘Over there, by the wall,’ Bryony had huffed, with insufficient interest, Manon felt.
‘It doesn’t mean he’s not into it. Hell, I’ve been in loads of situations where I’ve felt pressure and it makes you back off, you know? It’s just a human reaction.’ She was stumbling backwards, the soft pads of her fingers burning under the weight of Bryony’s mum’s Parker Knoll. ‘So the most important thing I can do—’
‘Coffee table now,’ said Bryony.
‘Is stay calm and not put any pressure on him. Y’know, slowly, slowly, catchee monkey.’
It is so nearly there, this almost-love, if she could only stop herself from being too much. Every part of her reaches for him, un-haveable Alan. And as she lands, he flies off.
In the wanting, in the yearning, which is so opposite to all the reluctant dates and ambivalent sex and the not-quite-liking anyone, she feels she has become more fully Manon; an ocean of Manon washing over him. Enough for both of them. She could live in the wanting. What could be more joyful than being certain of your feelings? An end to all those stop-start relationships. She feels sorry, now, for all those poor women out there compromising or fearful of commitment, wondering whether it would work out, or if there might be someone better. She’d been like that for seven long years with the boy from university, and when they’d split up she’d had no idea if it was the right thing, but anyway, all that’s behind her now.
All is perfection in the new Alan era, and everything – his big shoes, his flappy coat, his Fungus the Bogeyman head adorned with silk and lavender eye mask, his Weekday Rules – has a rightness to it. What a wonderful father he’ll make, train sets scattered across his beautiful barn. He is so funny. Sometimes, when he makes a joke, she laughs so hard she does a little wee, although she can’t think of a funny thing he’s said exactly, not a precise example.
She pulls up, nose of the car pushing at the underside of a bush, turns the key, and all is quiet like a heart stopping. She hauls her bag onto her knees as the car ticks and feels for her phone, the private one, just in case his love has emerged in text form, but the screen is unchanged. So she reaches out to him, as per, setting her fingers typing:
Gawd, only Tues + am already knackered. Roll on takeaway night, angel cakes. Mx
Davy
He takes a sip of stewed coffee and watches out of the third floor window, a hand in his trouser pocket jangling his keys. He can see Manon slam her car door and then stop, holding her face to the bright sun, basking in it with her eyes closed. As if she is sodding holy.
No more crying in the car park; no more laying her forehead on the steering wheel; no more snatching the lattes from his hand or wiping away smears of mascara. These days, it is Davy who grows impatient with the traffic, as if congestion were further evidence of all that’s wrong in the world. His planet’s out of alignment. A girl has been missing for more than a month; another is dead. They haven’t done their job, thinks Davy, and everything is at odds.
Manon has become … breezy. Light. Polite to colleagues, interested in their adorable childrearing anecdotes when she used to make silent vomiting motions behind their backs.
‘Aw, what did the twins do on the weekend, Nigel? Run you ragged, did they?’
It annoys Davy beyond measure, the bounce in her step.
They’ve been watching Tony Wright this past week but he hasn’t put a foot wrong. The PM on Taylor Dent has come in but tells them nothing: Whether death occurred before or after the body was immersed into water is impossible to say. Injuries consistent with river damage. Toxicology inconclusive.