“That filthy scumbag,” wailed the girl.
“That’s the spirit,” Gemma said. “You’ve got to put it behind you, sweetheart.”
“Not till she’s billed him,” Colette said. “Surely. I mean, there’ll be deposits. On the venue. And the honeymoon, air tickets paid for. Unless she goes anyway, with a girlfriend.”
“At least she’s got to text and ask him why,” Cara said. “Or she’ll never achieve closure.”
“That’s right,” Gemma said. “You’ve got to move on. I mean, if you’ve had bad luck in your life, what’s the use of brooding?”
“I disagree,” Colette said. “It wasn’t bad luck. It was bad judgement.”
“Will you shut it?” Gemma said.
“There’s no point in her moving on until she’s sure she’s learned something from it.”
She glanced up. Alison was wedged in the doorway. “Actually I agree with Colette,” she said. “Just on this occasion. You have to think about the past. You ought to. You can work out where it went wrong. There must have been warning signs.”
“There, there,” Gemma said. She patted the girl’s bare bronzed shoulder. Charlotte sniffed, and whispered something; Gemma said, “Witchcraft, oh no!” But Charlotte continued to insist, blowing her nose on a piece of kitchen roll that Al handed to her; until at last Gemma whispered back, “I do know someone in Godalming. If you really want to make him impotent.”
“I expect that will cost you,” Colette said. She thought, I wonder, if I went in for it, could I get a trade discount? That would be one in the eye for Zoë. She said, “Some girls in your position would go the direct route. What do you need a witch for, when you could go around there with a carving knife? More permanent, isn’t it?”
She remembered her own moments of temptation, the night she left Gavin. I can be reckless, she thought, at secondhand.
“You’d go to jail,” Gemma said severely. “Don’t listen, sweetheart. What do they say? Revenge is a dish best eaten cold?”
Al moaned and clasped a hand to her belly. She made a dash for the kitchen sink, but it was too late. “Oh, that’s all I bloody need,” said the bride-to-be. She jumped from her stool to fetch a mop and bucket.
Afterwards, Colette said, “I told you prawns were dodgy in weather like this. But you can’t curb your appetite, can you? Now you’ve embarrassed yourself.”
“It wasn’t the prawns.” Hunched in the passenger seat, Al sounded snuffly and depressed. “Prawns are protein, besides.”
“Yes,” Colette said patiently, “but you can’t have the extra protein and the carbohydrates and the fat, Al, something has to give. It’s a simple enough principle to get into your head, I’ve explained it a dozen times.”
“It was when you rattled the matches,” Al said. “That’s when I started feeling sick.”
“That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Colette said. She sighed. “But I’ve ceased expecting sense from you. How can you be frightened of a box of matches?”
Between the bride’s sudden jilting and Al’s sudden vomit, the hen party had broken up early. It was not quite dark when they let themselves into the Collingwood. The air had cooled, and the cats of Admiral Drive tiptoed along the garden fences, their eyes shining. In the hall, Al put her hand on Colette’s arm. “Listen.”
From the sitting room came two gruff male voices, rising and falling in amicable conversation.
“A tape’s playing,” she said. “Listen. Is that Aitkenside?”
Colette raised her eyebrows. She flung open the double doors from the hall; though as they were glass, the gesture was superfluous. No one was within; and all she could hear, from the machine on the table, was a faint hiss and twitter that could have been the machine’s own workings. “We ought to get some more sophisticated recording equipment,” she said. “I’m sure it must be possible to cut out these blips and twitters.”
“Shh,” Alison said. “Oh dear, Colette.”
AITKENSIDE: Here, Morris, you don’t get a good gherkin these days. Not like you used to get. Where would you go for a good gherkin?
MORRIS: You don’t get a good pickled onion. You don’t get a good pickled onion like we used to get after the war.
“It’s Morris.”
“If you say so.”
“Can’t you hear him? Maybe his course is finished. But he shouldn’t be back.” Al turned to Colette, tears in her eyes. “He should have moved on, higher. That’s what happens. That’s what always happens.”
“I don’t know.” Colette threw her bag down. “You said yourself, you get these cross-recordings from the year before last. Maybe it’s old.”
“Maybe.”
“What’s he saying? Is he threatening you?”
“No, he’s talking about pickles.”
AITKENSIDE: You don’t get a mutton pie. Whatever happened to mutton? You never see it.
MORRIS: When you go on the station for a samwidge you can’t get ham, you can’t get a sheet of pink ham and some hot mustard like you used to get, they want to go stuffing it with all this green stuff—lettuce—and lettuce is for girls.
AITKENSIDE: It’s all wog food, pansy food, you can’t get a nice pickled egg like you used to get.
MORRIS: Could have some fun with a pickled egg, see a pickled egg and Bob Fox he would start up without fail. Pass it round, lads, he’d say, and when MacArthur comes in you just drop it on the table, say aye-aye, MacArthur, have you lost something, old son? I seen MacArthur turn pale. I seen him nearly drop in his tracks—
AITKENSIDE: I seen him clap his hand to his empty socket—
MORRIS: And Bob Fox, cool as you like take up his fork and stab the little fucker then squeeze it up in his fingers—
AITKENSIDE:—all wobbling—
MORRIS:—and take a bite. Tee-hee. I wonder what happened to Bob Fox?
AITKENSIDE: Used to knock on the window, didn’t he? Tap-tap, tap-tap . That was Bob.
Towards dawn, Colette came down and found Al standing in the kitchen. The cutlery drawer was open, and Al was staring down into it.
“Al?” she said softly.
She saw with distaste that Al had not bothered to tie up her housecoat; it flapped back at either side to show her round belly and shadowy triangle of pubic hair. She looked up, registered Colette, and slowly, as if half asleep, pulled the thin cotton wrap across her; it fell open again as her fingers fumbled for the ties.
“What are you looking for?” Colette said.
“A spoon.”
“There’s a drawer full of spoons!”
“No, a particular spoon,” Al insisted. “Or perhaps a fork. A fork would do.”
“I should have known you’d be down here, eating.”
“I feel I’ve done something, Colette. Something terrible. But I don’t know what.”
“If you must eat something, you’re allowed a slice of cheese.” Colette opened the door of the dishwasher and began to take out yesterday’s crockery. “Done something terrible? What sort of thing?”
Alison picked out a spoon. “This one.”
“Not cornflakes, please! Unless you want to undo all the good work. Why don’t you go back to bed?”
“I will,” Al said, without conviction. She moved away, the spoon still in her hand, then turned, and handed it to Colette. “I can’t think what I did,” she said. “I can’t quite place it.”
A shaft of rosy sunlight lay across the window ledge, and an engine purred as an early Beatty backed out of his garage. “Cover yourself up, Al,” Colette said. “Oh, come here, let me.” She took hold of the housecoat, wrapped it across Al, and tied a firm double bow. “You don’t look well. Do you want me to cancel your morning clients?”
“No. Let them be.”
“I’ll bring you some green tea at eight-thirty.”
Al moved slowly towards the stairs. “I can’t wait.”
Colette opened the cutlery drawer and slotted the spoon among its fellows. She brooded. She’s probably h
ungry, considering she sicked up all the party snacks. Which she shouldn’t have been eating anyway. Maybe I should have let her have some cereal. But who is this diet for? It’s not for my sake. It’s for her sake. Without me behind her, she goes right off the rails.
She stacked some saucers into the cupboard, tip-tap, tip-tap. Did Al have to look so naked? But fat people do. Laid open to the morning shadows, Al’s white belly had seemed like an offering, something yielded up; a sacrifice. The sight had embarrassed Colette. Colette disliked her for it.
The summer heat took its toll on Al. In the week that followed, she lay awake through the nights. In the heat of the day her thighs chafed when she walked, and her feet brimmed over the straps of her sandals.
“Stop moaning!” Colette said, “We’re all suffering.”
“Sometimes,” Al said, “I have a sort of creeping sensation. Do you get that?”
“Where?”
“It runs down my spine. My fingers tingle. And bits of me go cold.”
“In this weather?”
“Yes. It’s like, my feet won’t walk properly. I want to go one way, and they want to go a different way. I’m supposed to come home, but my feet don’t want to.” She paused. “It’s hard to explain it. I feel as if I might fall.”
“Probably multiple sclerosis,” Colette said. She was flicking though Slimming magazine. “You ought to get tested.”
Al booked herself in at the health centre. When she rang up, the receptionist demanded to know what was the matter with her, and when Al explained carefully, my feet go different ways, she heard the woman sharing the news with her colleagues.
The woman’s voice boomed down the phone. “Do you want me to put you in as an emergency?”
“No, I can wait.”
“It’s just, you need to be sure you don’t wander off,” the woman said. There were cackles in the background: screeches.
I could ill-wish them, Al said, but I won’t, on this occasion. She thought, are there occasions when I have ill-wished?
“I can fit you in Thursday,” the woman said. “You won’t get lost on the way here?”
“My manager will drive me,” Al said. “By the way, if I were you I should cancel your holiday. I know you’ll lose your deposit, but what’s a lost deposit compared to being kidnapped by Islamic terrorists and spending several months in leg irons in a tin shack in the desert?”
When Thursday came, Colette did drive her, of course. “You don’t have to wait with me,” Al said.
“Of course I do.”
“If you leave me your moby, I could call a cab to take me home. You could go to the post office and post off my spells. There’s one going airmail that needs to be weighed.”
“Do you really think I’d leave you, Alison? To get bad news by yourself? Surely you think more of me than that?” Colette sniffed. “I feel devalued. I feel betrayed.”
“Oh, dear,” Al said. “Too many of those psychic hens. It’s bringing your emotions out.”
“You don’t realize,” Colette said. “You don’t understand how Gavin let me down. I know what it’s like, you see. I wouldn’t do it to someone else.”
‘There you go again, talking about Gavin.”
“I am not. I never mention him.”
When they got into reception, Al scrutinized the practice staff behind their glass screens. She couldn’t see the one who had laughed at her. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but when I saw she was booked on a Nile cruise I just couldn’t resist. It’s not, it’s really not, as if I wished her any ill. I only told her.
“This is interesting,” she said, looking around. It was just like the doctors’ waiting room that the punters always described: people sneezing and coughing on you, and a long long wait. I’m never ill, she thought, so I don’t know, first-hand. I’m ailing, of course. But not in ways doctors can cure. At least, I’ve assumed not.
They waited, side by side on stacking chairs. Colette talked about her self-esteem, her lack of it, her lonely life. Her voice quavered. Al thought, poor Colette, it’s the times we live in. If she can’t be in a psychic show, she fancies her chances on a true confession show. She pictured Gavin, stumbling over the cables, drawn from dark into dazzling light, from the dark of his own obtuse nature into the dazzling light of pale accusing eyes. She heard the audience groaning, hissing; saw Gavin tried, convicted, hung by the neck. It came to her that Gavin had been hanged, in his former life as a poacher. That’s why, she thought, in this life, he never does up the top button on his shirt. She closed her eyes. She could smell shit, farmyard manure. Gavin was standing with a noose round his neck. He wore sideburns, and his expression was despondent. Someone was bashing a tin drum. The crowd was small but keen. And she? She was enjoying her day off. A woman was selling mutton pies. She had just bought two.
“Wake up, Al,” Colette said. “They’re calling your number! Shall I come in with you?”
“No.” Al gave Colette a shove in the chest, which dropped her back in her chair. “Look after my bag,” she said, throwing it into her lap.
When she walked in, her hand—the palm burning and slightly greasy from her second pie—was still outstretched. For a moment the doctor seemed to think he was expected to shake it. He looked outraged at the familiarity, then he remembered his communication skills.
“Miss Hart!” he said, with a smile that showed his teeth. “Sit ye down, sit ye down. And how are you today?”
He’s been on a course, she thought. Like Morris. There was a stained coffee mug by his elbow, bearing the logo of a popular pharmaceutical company.
“I take it you’re here about your weight?” he said.
“Oh no,” she said. “I can’t help my weight, I’m afraid.”
“Huh. I’ve heard that a time or two,” the doctor said. “Let me tell you, if I had a pound for every woman who’s sat in that chair and told me about her slow metabolism, I’d be a rich man now.”
Not that riches would help you, Al thought. Not with a liver like yours. Slowly, with a lingering regret, she pulled out her gaze from his viscera and focused on his Adam’s apple. “I have tinglings down my arms,” she said. “And my feet, when I try to go home, my feet take me somewhere else. My fingers twitch, and the muscles in my hands. Sometimes I can’t use my knife and fork.”
“And so?” said the doctor.
“So I use a spoon.”
“You’re not giving me much to go on,” the doctor said. “Have you tried eating with your fingers?”
It was his little joke, she saw. I will bear it, she thought. I won’t abuse my powers by foreseeing about him. I’ll just be calm, and try and be ordinary. “Look, I’ll tell you what my friend thinks.” She put Colette’s theory to him.
“You women!” the doctor exclaimed. “You all think you’ve got multiple sclerosis! It beats me, why you’re all so keen to be in wheelchairs. Shoes off, please, and step on these scales.”
Al tried to ease her feet out of her sandals. They were stuck, the straps embedded in her flesh. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, bending down to unbuckle them, peel the leather away.
“Come on, come on,” the doctor said. “There are people waiting out there.”
She kicked away her shoes and stepped on the scales. She stared at the paint on the wall, and then, nerving herself, she glanced down. She couldn’t see past herself, to read the figure.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” the doctor said. “Get the nurse to test your wee. You’re probably diabetic. I suppose we ought to get your cholesterol checked, though I don’t know why we bother. Be cheaper to send a patrol officer to confiscate your crisps and beer. When did you last have a blood-pressure check?”
She shrugged.
“Sit here,” he said. “Never mind your shoes, we haven’t time for that, you can get back into your shoes when you get outside. Roll up your sleeve.”
Al touched her own warm skin. She was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt. She hardly liked to draw attention to it. “It is rolled u
p,” she whispered.
The doctor clasped a band around her arm. His other hand began to pump. “Oh, dear, oh, dear. At this level I would always treat.” He shot a glance upward, at her face. “Thyroid’s probably shot, come to that.”
He turned away and tapped his keyboard. He said, “We don’t seem to have seen you before.”
“That would be right.”
“You’re not registered with two doctors, are you? Because I should have expected a person in your state to be in here twice a week. You’re not moon-lighting? Signed up with another practice? Because if you are, I warn you, the system will catch up with you. You can’t pull that stunt.”
Her head began hurting. The doctor typed. Al fingered her scalp, as if feeling for the lumpy thread of an old scar. I got that somewhere in my past lives, she thought, when I was a labourer in the fields. Years passed like that, back bent, head down. A lifetime, two, three, four. I suppose there’s always a call for labourers.
“Now I’m going to try you on these,” the doctor said. “These are for your blood pressure. Book in with the nurse for a three-month check. These are for your thyroid. One a day. Just one, mind. No point you doubling the dose, Miss—er—Hart, because all that will do is ensure your total endocrine collapse takes place sooner than scheduled. Here you are.”
“Shall I come back?” she asked. “To see you personally? Though not too often?”
“See how it goes,” the doctor said, nodding and sucking his lip. But he was not nodding to her in particular. He was already thinking of the next patient, and as he wiped her from the screen, he erased her from his mind, and a well-drilled cheeriness overtook him. “Oh, yes,” he said, rubbing his fore-head, “Wait, Miss Hart—not depressed at all, are you? We can do a lot for that, you know.”
When Colette saw Al shuffling down the passage into the waiting area, trying to keep her unbuckled sandals on her feet, she threw down her magazine, drew her feet from the table, and leaped up, balancing sweetly like a member of a dance troupe. It’s nice to be lighter! she thought; Al’s diet was working, though not for Al. “Well? So have you got MS?”