Again, it’s hard not to dissolve.
‘This year’s collection of emergency rain clothing.’ I do a twirl in my bin-bag ensemble. ‘We got soaked through and I didn’t want to get the seats wet in Art’s car.’
Ella comes to hug us both. ‘Well, I’m just glad that you’re both safe and sound. Despite the foul weather, was the walk good?’
Try not to gush too much, I tell myself. Don’t mention the ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ bit. ‘It was very nice.’
‘Yes,’ Noah agrees. ‘Very nice.’ I hear a gulp in his throat and hope no one else does.
‘Though the wise call was probably to stay in the pub,’ I offer.
A smug look crosses Harry’s face at that.
‘Yes, very wise.’ Noah again.
‘We were just about to order dinner,’ Ella says. ‘Would you rather go home and change, Grace?’
You know, I wouldn’t. I’m quite happy as I am. A little shared joke just between me and Noah. ‘I’m fine like this,’ I insist. ‘As long as you don’t mind being seen out with me.’
‘You look ridiculous,’ Harry comments.
But I don’t mind at all. I want to stay in this idiotic outfit and, strangely, I feel quite sexy wearing nothing but a waterproof jacket and a bin bag. Only Noah knows that I’m going commando underneath and that sends a thrill to places that it shouldn’t. That man definitely brings out the Little Miss Mischief in me. I probably do look a complete state, but who cares? I realise that I can’t compete with Ella and Flick, who still look unutterably immaculate, but did they dance in the sea? Did they drink tea with cool surfers? Did they discuss their hopes for the future over hot chocolate and cake with a lovely, lovely man?
No. They did not.
‘I’ll get some menus,’ Art says and he jumps up.
‘Come and sit here, darling.’ Flick pats the vacant seat next to her and Noah goes to her side.
A bit of my happy bubble bursts. There’s an empty chair next to Harry, so I sit down too. ‘Miss me?’
‘I’ve been trying to phone you,’ he concedes. ‘But it was just dead at your end.’
‘Never mind. We’re here now.’ I’m hot in my waterproof jacket and I unzip it a bit. ‘Did you have a nice afternoon?’
‘Few drinks,’ he holds up his glass. More than a few, I’d say. I might look ridiculous, but at least I’m sober. ‘Read the paper. Tweeted a bit.’
Of course.
‘Everyone else OK?’ I ask.
‘Why wouldn’t they be?’ Bit bristly.
I shrug. ‘No reason. Just asking.’
Flick is playing with Noah’s wet hair, smoothing his fringe from his eyes, treating him as if he’s been gone for a week. Flick smiles at me and winks as she pulls Noah closer to her. She’s happy to have him back. Why wouldn’t she be?
I look at her with mixed emotions. I know in my heart that she’ll never have an afternoon like that with him and I feel so sorry for her. But then I’ll never have the nights with him that she does and I feel sorry for me too. Noah laughs at something she whispers to him. Seems as if he’s forgotten me already. Which is exactly how it should be.
Chapter Twenty-Four
We eat an excellent dinner. For a few hours, all the tensions disappear and we’re just good friends having a laugh together once more. I wolf down my chicken casserole as if it’s my last meal. All that exercise has given me an appetite. I even have a couple of glasses of red wine and barely glance at what Harry’s drinking. Art makes us all guffaw by telling us stories of the many and varied forms of bad behaviour that his bands indulge in. Flick tries to out-anecdote him with tales of her troublesome authors. We all tease and joke. For the rest of the evening, we forget our niggles and are just having fun on holiday as a group.
It’s closing time when, happy and full of good food and wine, we finally drive back to the cottage. Art reclaims the keys to his Mercedes, but Ella drives it home as she’s the only one who’s not been drinking all day. I sit with Harry in the back of Noah’s Range Rover, still with my black bin-liner pants on. Flick keeps her hand possessively on Noah’s thigh all the way back and, somewhat overtly, I think, slides it up and down on the denim of his jeans, caressing him. When I can bear to watch it no longer, I lean against Harry and spend the rest of the journey staring resolutely out of the window.
When we get back to the cottage, it’s gone midnight and, frankly, I feel dead on my feet. All I want to do is fall into bed and, hopefully, get more sleep than I did last night. More importantly, I’m hoping that Noah is tired too after our long walk and he’ll also fall asleep before his head hits the pillow.
While Art goes through to light the fire in the sitting room, Ella stays in the kitchen to make hot drinks for us all. The others make themselves comfortable on the squashy sofas while I slip upstairs to change out of my bin bag into my jeans and a sweatshirt. It would take very little persuasion for me to climb straight into bed. But, having been missing for most of the day, I feel I should be sociable now. So, reluctantly, I go back downstairs and join Ella in the kitchen.
‘That looks better,’ she says when she sees me.
‘Think so?’ I pose so that she can check out my new ensemble.
‘I’m not saying that the bag-lady look didn’t suit you but…’ We giggle.
‘Everyone’s ordered coffee,’ she says. So together we set about making it. Ella spoons the fresh coffee into the cafetière. ‘How did you get on with Noah today?’
‘Great.’ I keep my voice as steady as I can. ‘He seems lovely.’
‘Certainly better than any of Flick’s other boyfriends.’
‘The ones that we’ve seen, that’s for sure.’
‘Think they’ll stay together?’
I aim for a disinterested shrug. ‘I’ve no idea.’ If Flick has anything to do with it, then I’m sure they will.
‘I think she’s right,’ Ella whispers. ‘He doesn’t seem as keen to me.’
‘Who knows what’s going on in his head? He’s a man.’ Be flippant. Be light.
‘You like him, though.’ Ella gives me a searching look.
I wonder exactly how much she has seen. I wonder, does she realise that my heart is banging in my chest simply because we’re talking about him?
‘What’s not to love?’ I say as non-committally as I can muster.
How can I even begin to voice the fact that I think I have fallen head over heels for my friend’s man? How would that sound, even to Ella, who is possibly the most tolerant and non-judgemental person on the planet? Even she doesn’t like it when Flick parades her married men around. How would she feel if she knew that, in my heart, I’m betraying Flick? I don’t know how I can even be thinking like this when Flick deserves happiness as much as anyone. They say that you can’t help who you fall in love with, but I firmly believe that you can help what you do about it. And I am going to do nothing. Except quietly wonder to myself, in dark moments, what might have been.
I line up the mugs and try to divert the conversation away from Noah. ‘How did you enjoy today? Sorry to leave you in the pub.’
‘I think the rest did me good,’ she admits. ‘But I was bored out of my head. I so wanted to come with you guys. That clifftop walk is one of my favourites, but I just felt that I needed to stay with Art. Let’s face it, he did jolly well to walk so far!’
‘Everything OK between you?’
Ella sighs. ‘It’s fine. I think. I love being with him, Grace, but sometimes I wonder if the feeling’s entirely mutual. Even after all these years we’ve been together, he still likes his space, his freedom.’ She fills the cafetière with hot water and stirs it with a melancholy air. ‘I just like being with him, whereas Art always likes an audience. He’s never happier than when we’ve got a house full of ragtag musicians draped over the sofas and he’s holding court.’
The strains of his guitar drift through from the sitting room and Ella rolls her eyes as if to say that proves her point.
‘I wa
nt to settle down, but I’m frightened even to discuss it with him. I’m tired of not knowing where he is or who he’s with. Sometimes if I ring him late at night when he’s away, I can hear that there’s someone else in the room, but I never like to ask who. Being kind, it could be one of the band members but, more often than not, I think it’s another woman. It tears me up inside even now.’
‘Oh, Ella.’
‘What will it be like in ten years’ time, Grace? Am I still going to spend most of my time at home alone, wondering what he’s up to?’
‘You need to talk to him.’
‘The sad thing is, I know in my heart that Art is perfectly happy with the way things are. He won’t see any reason to change. What makes it all so stupid is that part of me loves his “rolling stone” nature. That was one of the qualities that first attracted me to him.’
Art and Ella met when she got her place in Camden, scraping a living as an artist and topping up her income by working as a receptionist in a gallery. The pub on the corner of her street was a rowdy, biker place – it now serves deli-boards featuring houmous, chorizo and complicated dishes involving beetroot to the trendy young things from the music television station near by – and Art used to play guitar there in a band on Saturday nights. Ella pretended that she liked their music, but they were truly awful. I think Art was the only one with any talent. Pretty soon after that, he gave up playing professionally and moved into management. They’ve been together for about the same time as Harry and me, eight years or so, but I bet they’re lucky if they’ve actually spent three of those together.
‘What if we bring children into the equation?’ she continues. ‘Will I be left bringing them up on my own? Who would want that?’
‘Is it likely?’
Ella turns away from me. ‘He says that we can’t afford them. That his work is too unpredictable.’ Now she’s cross. ‘We have two flats between us and two top-of-the-range Mercedes in the drive, for heaven’s sake.’ Art bought her car for her as a birthday present for her thirtieth birthday in a typically grand gesture. Nice but, like me, Ella would probably be happier in a battered, old runaround. ‘Exactly how much money do you need?’
‘Everyone who has kids says that if you thought about it too much, you’d never be able to afford children. Or, indeed, find the right time to have them.’
‘I had such a happy childhood, Grace. My parents were wonderful people. They were nothing but supportive and loving throughout my life. We were never a wealthy family, but I wanted for nothing. It was a great sadness to them that they were never able to have more children. I think they would have made their very own Waltons family if they could. They always let me know that I was cherished. I’d love to be able to do that for kids of my own.’
‘You were very lucky.’
‘That’s all I want, to settle down with a proper husband, one who’s around every night, have a couple of freckle-faced kids. Maybe even a dog. Is that too much to ask? Why have our generation of women made it so hard for ourselves to do that? When did we stop regarding that as a good and noble thing to do? Why do we have to push ourselves to be successful at something else, rather than being happy to be defined as a home-maker and mother?’
‘Maybe it was at the same time that men became unreliable and were as likely to dump us for a younger model when the fancy took them.’
Perhaps our mothers were the last generation who were able to rely on their men as the breadwinner and protector of the family. Since then the traditional family unit has become much more fractured. To the detriment of everyone.
Ella sighs. ‘Makes me glad that I am a successful artist with money in the bank in my own right.’
At that moment, Art comes through to the kitchen, rubbing his hands together. ‘What are you two gossiping about now?’
If only he knew.
‘Nothing much.’ Ella shrugs dismissively and we exchange a glance. ‘Girls’ things.’
Art gives a mock shudder and I thump him. ‘Where’s that coffee got to?’
Ella smiles at him. ‘Just coming, baby.’
‘Any more brandy?’ He pokes about on the big dresser, shifting around the range of half-empty bottles.
‘I think you and Harry polished off what was left last night. We’ll have to restock when we do the next supermarket run. Have a rummage in the cupboard underneath and see what there is. There are all kinds of random bottles at the back. I think there are a few bottles of spirits, too. There might be some of Dad’s whisky. Though it will probably have an inch of dust on it.’
He twines his arms round her waist and hugs her, and at the same time that Ella’s hands go, protectively, to her stomach, I notice that her waist isn’t the skinny little thing that it was. And then I twig: the not drinking, the urge to settle down. Is Ella pregnant? I look at her again. I’m sure she is.
‘Here.’ I take the tray of coffee cups from her. ‘Let me carry that.’
We exchange another glance and she knows that I know. But it’s clear that someone else in the room doesn’t. All she has to do now, I guess, is break the news to Art.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Flick is all over Noah like a rash. They’re on the sofa together and she’s snuggled into him with her legs slung over his. She can’t stop touching and stroking him. It seems as if she’s trying to prove that she’s all loved-up. Is this for my benefit? If it is, I can hardly bear to look.
Even if Flick is annoyed with me, I can’t stop thinking about today and how Noah and I got on as if we’d been friends for years. I wish I could stop. There’s no doubt that I should just put him firmly out of my mind and not be thinking about ways that we can be alone together again. That way madness lies.
‘What shall we do tomorrow?’ Ella pipes up. ‘Anyone fancy going to the beach? The weather forecast is good.’
‘The forecast was good for today,’ I remind her. ‘But we got soaked.’
Noah and I exchange a furtive glance and we both break into a smile.
‘Only some of us,’ Flick says crisply.
‘Well,’ Ella intervenes, ‘it’s supposed to be a sunny day.’
‘Why don’t we go up to Portgale beach?’ Noah suggests. ‘I was talking to a couple of surfer guys today who said you can rent gear there. If anyone fancies trying their hand at surfing.’
‘I don’t think so…’ Flick says and then tails off.
‘I’d like a go,’ Art says. ‘I haven’t been on a surfboard in over twenty years.’
‘Me too.’ Might as well put in my vote.
‘Harry?’ Ella.
He shakes his head. ‘Count me out. I’d rather be in the pub.’ That goes without saying.
‘No one has to surf,’ Ella offers. ‘It’s a lovely beach. The perfect place just to sit and watch the sea. And there’s a pub right on the front, Harry.’
‘Sorted! Let’s all go to the beach,’ Flick says decisively. ‘I might want to give it a go myself when I see that surf.’
‘The beach it is, then,’ Ella says.
An hour later, we’re all in bed. I’m tired down to my bones and all I want to do is sleep. I’m under the duvet, drifting off to the soporific shwooshing of the ocean.
Harry, against form, hasn’t even tried to get on to Twitter and is lying next to me. He must have tweeted himself out in the pub. My eyes grow heavy and I’m really knackered after all my walking today.
Lovely, lovely sleep is coming, coming, coming.
Then I feel Harry’s hand on my breast. He starts playing with my nipple and it’s really annoying. I want to bat his hand away. All night, he’s hardly exchanged two words with me and now this? A second later I realise that the rhythmic sounds are coming from next door again and I’m sure that’s what’s getting Harry aroused. This is all I need.
‘I’m sorry, Harry,’ I mumble, ‘but I’m really tired.’ And I want to bury my head in the pillow.
‘Come on, Grace,’ he wheedles. ‘When did we last have sex? I can’t even remembe
r.’
That’s usually because you’re pissed or on Twitter or both and have no interest, I think, but I bite my tongue. This holiday is supposed to be about us getting back to where we used to be in our relationship, not about arguing.
He starts to kiss me, and he tastes of red wine and whisky and, for the first time ever, I find myself repulsed by my husband. I’m shocked to my core, but Harry is oblivious. The muffled pleasured moans from Flick only seem to serve to make him more determined and he pulls down my pyjama shorts. I pull them back up.
‘Harry, no,’ I say. ‘Not now. Someone will hear us.’