a bloke you like you go straight after him.’ Like a whippet after a hare, she thought. ‘You say to yourself, no, I must do strategy, play it cool, but you don’t heed your own advice – you’re very much, how shall I say it, bed on the first date. Well, why not? I mean, life’s too short.’
‘I can’t do this, I’m sorry.’ The client half rose.
Alison put her hand out. ‘It’s the shock. About your dad. It takes a bit of getting used to. I wouldn’t have broken it to you like that if I didn’t think you could take it. And straight talking – I think you can take that too.’
‘I can take it,’ Colette said. She sat down again.
‘You’re proud,’ Al said softly. ‘You won’t be bested.’
‘That describes me.’
‘If Jack and Jill can do it, you can do it.’
‘That’s true.’
‘You don’t suffer fools gladly.’
‘I don’t.’
It was an old Mrs Etchells line; she was probably using it right now, three tables down: ‘You don’t suffer fools gladly, dear!’ As if the client was going to come back at you, ‘Fools! I love ’em! Can’t get enough! I go out round the streets, me, looking for fools to ask them home to dinner!’
Alison sat back in her chair. ‘The way I see you now, you’re dissatisfied, restless.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve reached a place in your life where you don’t much want to be.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re ready and willing to move on.’
‘Yes.’
‘So do you want to come and work for me?’
‘What?’
‘Can you type, drive, anything like that? I need a sort of, what do they call it, Girl Friday.’
‘This is a bit sudden.’
‘Not really. I felt I knew you, when I saw you from the platform last night.’
‘The platform?’
‘The platform is what we call any kind of stage.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. It’s historical, I suppose.’
Colette leaned forward. She locked her fists together between her knees.
Alison said, ‘If you come into the front bar in about an hour, we can get a coffee.’
Colette cast a glance at the long queue behind her.
‘OK, say an hour and a quarter?’
‘What do you do, put up a “closed” sign?’
‘No, I just put them on divert. I say, go see Mrs Etchells three tables down.’
‘Why? Is she good?’
‘Mrs Etchells? Entre nous, she’s rubbish. But she taught me. I owe her.’
‘You’re loyal?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Is that her? Wrinkly old bag with a charm bracelet on? Now I’ll tell you something. She’s not loyal to you.’
She spelled it out: she tried to poach me, tried to catch me as I was looking about for you: cards, crystal and psychometry thrown in, thirty quid.
Alison blushed, a deep crimson blush. ‘She said that? Thirty quid?’
‘Fancy you not knowing.’
‘My mind was somewhere else.’ She laughed shakily. ‘Voilà. You’ve already earned your money, Colette.’
‘You know my name?’
‘It’s that certain something French about you. Je ne sais quoi.’
‘You speak French?’
‘Never till today.’
‘You mustn’t mind-read me.’
‘I would try not to.’
‘An hour and a quarter?’
‘You could get some fresh air.’
On Windsor Bridge, a young boy was sitting on a bench with his Rottweiler at his feet. He was eating an ice-cream cone and holding another out to the dog. Passers-by, smiling, were collecting to watch. The dog ate with civil, swirling motions of his tongue. Then he crunched the last of his cornet, swarmed up on to the bench and laid his head lovingly on the boy’s shoulder. The boy fed him the last of his own ice cream, and the crowd laughed. The dog, encouraged, licked and nibbled the boy’s ears, and the crowd went ohh, feech, yuk, how sweet.
The dog jumped down from the bench. Its eyes were steady and its paws huge. For two pins, or the dog equivalent, it would set itself to eat the crowd, worrying each nape and tossing the children like pancakes.
Colette stood and watched until all the crowd had dispersed and she was alone. She crossed the bridge and edged down Eton High Street, impeded by tourists. I am like the dog, she thought. I have an appetite. Is that wrong? My mum had an appetite. I realise it now, how she talked in code all those years. No wonder I never knew what was what and who was who. Not surprising her aunts were always exchanging glances, and saying things like, I wonder where Colette gets her hair from, I wonder where she gets her brains? The man she’d called her father was distinguished by the sort of stupidity that made him squalid. She had a mental picture of him, sprawled before the television scratching his belly: perhaps, when she’d bought him the cuff-links, she’d been hoping to improve him. Her uncle Mike, on the other hand – who was really her father – he was a man whose wallet was always stuffed, hadn’t he been round every week, flashing his fivers and saying, here, Angie, get something nice for little Colette? He’d paid, but he hadn’t paid enough; he’d paid as an uncle, but not as a dad. I’ll sue the bastard, she thought. Then she remembered he was dead.
She went into the Crown & Cushion and got a pineapple juice, which she took into a corner. Every few minutes she checked her watch. Too early, she started back across the bridge.
Alison was sitting in the front room of the Harte & Garter with a cafetière and two cups. She had her back to the door, and Colette paused for a moment, getting a view of her: she’s huge, she thought, how can she go around like that? As she watched, Alison’s plump smooth arm reached for the coffee and poured it into the second cup.
Colette sat down. She crossed her legs. She fixed Alison with a cool stare. ‘You don’t mind what you say, do you? You could have really upset me, back there.’
‘There
