put the cereal box down on the table and looked at Gwen. ‘Is it really important? I mean, do we have to set a particular date now?’
‘No. I mean – yes, it’s important. It’s harder for him to find the time once term starts.’
‘So he can’t come after I’m gone? I won’t be here long.’
‘He’s wonderful. You should meet him.’
‘Well, I don’t want to waste that, do I? A wonderful man? But I’m really not in the mood to meet a man right now, Gwen. It’s about the last thing I need. Don’t you think?’
Where does mood come into it? Gwen wondered. Either he’s the right man or he’s not. And knowing she was grooming things ever so slightly, pushing her luck, she said, ‘It’s not a date or anything. He’s an old friend of Lawrence’s – of both of ours.’
‘So you told him you want us to meet?’ Despite her fanfared emotional helplessness and her sleepy look, Hilary was nobody’s fool.
‘He comes here to supper – all the time. You happen to be staying with us.’ Gwen lifted her hands, absolving herself of setting anything up. ‘I haven’t told him a lot about you.’
‘What – that I’m roadkill? That someone needs to drag me to the shoulder before I get run over again and my guts squish out? Gwen, you said he’s wonderful, and you said that it’s important. So shouldn’t I be – well, at least shouldn’t I be looking my best? Maybe a few more days of real sleep, some exercise. I have to be ready to make an effort. Right now, I can’t really think or talk about anything apart from – from everything that’s happened to me since Eddie died.’
‘Maybe you should try. You need to get your mind off what’s happened. Just do something else. Distract yourself for a while, and let some time pass.’
‘Can’t I do that with you and Will and Lawrence? You guys are enough. And frankly, you’re all I can cope with right now. Christ, you’re bossy. And you must be at least two cups of coffee ahead of me.’ Hilary gave Gwen a camp smile. She stood up and looked around the counters until she spotted the coffee machine that during the weeks she had stayed in the flat she had never used because she had hurried out each morning as if to meet her destiny. The clear glass jug was dark with coffee at the bottom and the little red light was on.
Without a word, Gwen opened a cupboard, handed Hilary a mug, went to the fridge for the milk, hangdog, slack-footed. She was suddenly remorseful. ‘Hil. I’m sorry. Roland’s not a lot more than just us. That’s how well we know him. It’s just one evening.’
‘Do whatever you’d do if I weren’t here,’ Hilary said as she slurped. ‘But I reserve the right to hide in my room – or leave before he shows up.’
Gwen saw she might get her way; she decided to drop it for a while. ‘I got you some money,’ she said. ‘Don’t know if you need it or not.’ She pulled it from her pocket, held it out.
Hilary was surprised and embarrassed. Of course I need it, she thought. But despite herself she said, ‘I can’t take that, Gwen. God.’ What she was thinking was, Why does it feel like she’s forcing it on me? Is it just because she didn’t give me time to ask before she offered? And how the hell will I ask for it now?
‘Just in case you maybe don’t have pounds?’ Gwen put the money on the counter, and there it lay, burning a hole in the slate. ‘Do you want to go for a run with me now you’re up?’ Gwen asked. ‘We could do a little circuit down across Hammersmith Bridge and along the south side of the river to Putney?’
Hilary’s eyes focused hard at her; the glassy, washed-away blue brightened, sparked with enthusiasm. ‘So forget cereal. Give me five minutes.’
Outside, the first morning of October glowed at them; summer grown brittle, a little shabby, along the car-lined street. Gwen set off in front because the pavement was narrow and uneven, blistered by tree roots, and because she knew the way.
‘These poor trees,’ Hilary said, looking up and around. ‘They made me sad in the summer with their branches lopped off, trying to squeeze a leaf out of those knobs they have left. It looks even worse now that the green is turning.’
‘It’s what cities do, yeah? Cramping us all, making us into grotesques. The council prunes the trees like that because the roots are getting at everyone’s foundations. Lifting them and breaking the walls.’
‘All about insurance probably.’ Hilary puffed out the words in even bursts. ‘Just like the States.’
‘Getting like that here. How people think they can be insured against nature, against what grows, I don’t know. There are just so many of us on the planet now. Everything, everyone, has to give way. In the country, you know, those trees would have room to achieve their true shape. It’s why I can’t paint here, except to finish things. I have to have the countryside. The city doesn’t feel big enough. Or even – convincing. All hemmed in and restricted.’
Hilary called out to her as Gwen trotted ahead: ‘I don’t go fast any more, Gwen.’
‘Neither do I. Don’t worry.’ Gwen tempered her pace ever so slightly, her feet making almost no sound as she loped along. ‘Your legs are so much longer than mine, I thought you’d be tripping over me.’
‘Why’d you move from the cottage, then? I thought you guys liked the city?’
‘We like it. We need it anyway. Maybe people need a lot of things, not just one thing. It seemed like a question of survival for me – to grow. Some kind of abrasion. I was alone too much. And the company out there wasn’t any you’d really choose on purpose. But now that we’re here in town, I actually spend a lot of time trying to avoid people because there are just too many around. Especially if you have a child. All the school stuff. And if you really want to get any work done.’ Gwen’s voice grew expressionless with conserving breath.
For a little while, Hilary followed her in silence, feeling her brain sigh and expand with physical relief, feeling muscles let go that she hadn’t realised were tense. Her back was stiff, her ankles were swollen, but these were local irritations, aeroplane-wear; underneath them, she felt strong, a flow of energy starting as her skin grew warm and damp.
At the Great West Road, by Hammersmith roundabout, they had to wait for the lights to get across the rush of traffic. They stamped around, hands on hips, elbows flapping, then crossed underneath the thumping flyover and the cool, stony shadow of the church, its great, gold-rimmed clock almost on noon. The wide world and the bright air opened all around them as they bounded on to the pale green arch of the bridge; the long slings of cable swooped up over their heads, the silver-brown river slid long and slow through the broad, exposed mudflats beneath, their shaking footsteps were lost in the size and glory of it all. Cars and buses roared by, and the acrid exhaust mingled in their noses with the salt stench of the ebb tide.
Down they plunged on the far bank, through the translucent, yellow foliage and the dank air hovering under the bridge, then settled their pace side by side on the pebbly path. Seagulls wheeled and called over the lonely, squint-making shine of the river, foraging the urban bend as if it were the ocean’s edge. A pair of clean white swans nestled and waddled in the algae-streaked pools.
Hilary and Gwen grew easy with one another, slimy with sweat, breathing the layer of air that runners breathe, a chin length higher as the head tilts up and back ever so slightly. And in the depths of the mind, they
