sorted out now. Aren’t they, Katherine?’
‘It’s my husband’s house.’
Why not say it’s yours too? The discordant new voice niggled in her head.
Colouring slightly she added, ‘Work’s about to start. It’s very secluded. It’s not going to spoil anyone’s view or anything like that.’
‘No? Well. Live and let live, I say, in any case.’ Three glasses of wine were passed over the bar. ‘I’m Vin, by the way.’
They introduced themselves. Polly took the glasses of wine and put them on the window table.
‘We don’t see much of Mrs Meadowe,’ Vin remarked. ‘Her late husband used to come in, after I took this place on. He always said I’d made big improvements. It was a proper dump before that, the old Griffin.’ He was leaning on the bar now, settling in for a talk.
‘We are all old friends of Miranda’s and Jake’s,’ Polly said.
Katherine understood that unlike herself or Colin she was used to the rhythms of country pubs. She knew how much chat to exchange and when to make a cheery move aside. Polly steered them to their table now, closing a deft bracket on the conversation.
The window gave an oblique view of the green. Cars and passers-by in the middle distance now seemed to move very slowly, as in a film playing at the wrong speed.
Polly took a satisfied swallow of her wine.
‘Look at you,’ she said to Katherine.
‘What?’
‘You look beautiful.’
Katherine was startled. After their damp walk she knew exactly how her hair would be frizzing and her nose shining like a fog lamp. Instinctively she put up her hand to fluff out a chunk of hair over one ear.
‘She does,’ Colin agreed. ‘You do.’
Katherine heard a click, like the shutter of a camera. She wished that she might have a picture of this moment, if a camera could have captured the surge of warmth that ran through her blood and loosened her muscles, the unlooked-for buzz of pleasure at finding herself drinking wine in the afternoon with Polly and Colin for company, with a view through the window of amber and crimson leaves, and a word like beautiful in her ears. She couldn’t remember anyone having applied it to her, ever, not even Amos.
How disconnected have you been? the voice chimed in.
‘I don’t think so,’ she began to murmur, but Polly leaned forward and briefly covered Katherine’s hand with hers.
‘It’s all right, you know. You can be beautiful, it’s allowed. You don’t need Amos’s permission. Does she, Colin?’
‘No,’ he agreed.
Katherine thought for a moment. Her instinct was to deflect the compliment, but then, why? She sat forwards, smiling, her fingers lacing around her glass of pub merlot with the chain of purple bubbles at the meniscus.
Everything is going to change.
What did that mean? She was taken aback by the idea.
A burst of loud music suddenly poured through the pendant strings of brown plastic beads and bamboo tubules that separated the back of the bar from the kitchen. Thank you for the music, a woman’s voice warbled.
‘Oi, Jess,’ Vin called over the din. ‘Turn that down, customers can’t hear themselves think.’
There was quite a long interval, and then the volume diminished a little.
One of the pale couples was leaving. A girl appeared in the doorway, where Colin had previously glimpsed the man in chef’s clothing. She came in and gathered up the dirty plates from the vacated table.
‘Hi, I was wondering if you’d be back,’ she called to Colin.
‘Hello Jessie,’ he answered.
Polly and Katherine turned to him in surprise.
‘We met the other night. I came in for a quick drink, and Jessie and her boyfriend were sitting here. We got talking.’
Jessie grinned. ‘You and I did. That loser Damon had buggered off, remember, it was just me and Raff.’ Her eyes flicked from Polly to Katherine. ‘Your, ah, husband gave me a lift home…?’ She made it a pointed question.
‘These are my friends, Polly and Katherine. I’m not married,’ Colin explained.
Jessie glanced at the folds of Colin’s scarf, and his expensive soft jacket.
‘No. So you’re all from Mead, then?’
She shuffled the plates into a precarious pile, scraping leftovers on to the uppermost one. ‘Whoops.’
Cutlery threatened to slide out of the plate sandwich and she dipped her hips and shimmied to tilt the load the other way. She looked very young and cheerful.
‘All of us,’ Polly answered. ‘We’re old friends, we’ve known each other for years, and my husband and I and Katherine and hers have moved up here to be together and not to sink into a decline in our old age.’
‘That’s cool. So it’s like, what did you call it in those days, a commune?’
‘No,’ they said, absolutely in unison.
Miranda was passionate about her scheme and each of the rest of them would have differently defined what they hoped Mead would become, but they had always been unanimous in declaring that it wouldn’t be a commune. Amos had said that communes stood for vegetarianism and free love and bad plumbing, and he would not be interested in any of those separately, let alone in combination.
‘The jury’s out on number two,’ Selwyn had muttered out of the corner of his mouth to Polly at the time. The memory of this made her smile. When she was amused, Polly’s eyes narrowed under heavy lids and her cheeks rounded into smooth apples so that she looked like a thumbnail sketch of a Japanese lady on a packet of egg noodles.
‘It’s more a collaboration, I’d say,’ Polly offered.
‘What about you, then?’ Jessie asked Colin.
‘I come and go,’ he told her.
‘Can’t see my mum doing anything like that. She lives in a bungalow,’ Jessie remarked, as if this entirely defined her.
Vin leaned heavily on the bar. Jessie seemed to feel his glare on her back.
‘I got a job, as you see,’ she announced to Colin, rolling her eyes. She raised her voice slightly. ‘Helping out in the kitchen, bit of cooking, washing up and that. There’s plenty of work around here, not a problem. Are you going to have lunch? We’re supposed to stop at two. Chef’s off today, we’re just microwaving, but I could do you lasagne and chips, or a baked
