eyes are swollen from crying. None of the children are with her, thank goodness. Cagney and I stare at her in disbelief. This is a strange day.
‘I really, really have to say thank you, to you both.’ Dougal’s mother puts her long arms on her hips, then removes them and clasps her hands nervously, then flicks hair from her eyes, then wrings her hands in front of her. An awful thing has happened to her this morning. I feel some of the rage ebb in my stomach like sweet relief, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude to this woman for shattering whatever it was that had gripped Cagney James and me just moments ago. I wasn’t myself – that is my only excuse.
‘Please, there is no need to thank us … me.’ I glare at Cagney. ‘Anybody would have done the same thing. I’m just glad it’s … you know … as OK as it can be.’
She smiles a weary smile at us both, and flicks the hair at her eyes again.
I take a step towards her, away from Cagney.
‘The boys are with their father. Dougal is terrible – shaken and upset and … anyway, Terence, that’s my husband, Dougal’s father, when I explained, well, he can’t thank you both enough, of course. And he suggested that you both come to dinner, next week – we live locally, in Kew – and that we might say thank you that way, although of course it will never be enough to say thank you, but he suggested it, so I thought I might still catch you here …’
I am horrified. I gag with disbelief. This poor woman has been through an unspeakable horror only hours ago, the kind of hell that a mother can only dare imagine, and she is offering to make us dinner? It is the most inappropriate thing I have ever heard.
‘Oh, I really don’t think that’s necessary. I think we probably just want to forget all about it …’
‘Oh, my goodness, no, you must come. Terry wants to thank you himself, and it’s the least I can do. It won’t be anything elaborate. Probably duck, or whatever the butcher has in fresh …’ Her voice trails off and her eyes become a matt version of their previously glossy selves. I have a feeling they will be permanently matt soon: any joy she has is being slowly replaced by fear …
But her reaction is as if she has dropped a plate from my chinaware, or spilt red wine on my trousers. It is so horribly embarrassing I don’t know what to say. I stand open-mouthed, completely aghast. So she carries on talking.
‘Of course, you must bring your partners, or somebody, of course you must, but do please say you’ll come. Next Friday?’
I turn to face Cagney, who at least looks equally as appalled.
‘I just … I don’t …’
‘Please do say you can make it.’
‘Well then, I guess, I suppose … I can make it.’ I shudder as I accept.
‘That’s fantastic. Thank you. And you?’
‘Cagney James. I can make it on Friday.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name. I’m Deidre Turnball.’ She offers her hand for me to shake and, as anticipated, she just rests her fingers in my palm for a few moments before offering it to Cagney as well.
‘Sunny Weston.’
Deidre scrambles for a pen and paper in her bag, and scrawls down ‘The Moorhouse, 12 Wildview Avenue’ for us both, and offers us separate scraps of paper. She has written ‘7 o’clock’ as well. I stare at it with disbelief.
‘See you then,’ Deidre says, flicking her hair from her eyes, turning quickly and striding elegantly away.
I look down at the paper, and hear a car toot its horn, and an old man leans out of a minicab and shouts my name.
‘She hasn’t left her phone number,’ I say numbly.
‘Probably ex-directory as well,’ Cagney replies, reminding me he is there.
I look up at him, and he looks baffled, and embarrassed as well. And then I remember that the last thing he had said to me, before Deidre appeared, was some kind of insult. I try to speak, but when nothing comes out, I exhale loudly in his direction, and walk away.
I sit in the back of the cab, close my eyes, and go over what has happened.
I can’t believe the morning I have had.
I can’t believe I have to have dinner with Deidre, and Dougal, and the whole Turnball family, next Friday, at 7 p.m.
I can’t believe I have to see Dougal again so soon. I can’t imagine what it will do to him to see me again so soon.
I cannot believe I have to sit at a table and play polite with a man as offensively archaic as Cagney James.
And I bet it won’t be low fat.
I meet Lisa for Box-a-fit at midday. It will clear my head before this afternoon. Unless there is a natural disaster I always see my therapist on a Monday at three. I have known my two closest friends, Lisa and Anna, for over twenty years – we practised Bucks Fizz dance routines in the playground together at eight, and attended Duke of Edinburgh sessions as a teenage triumvirate, if only to go to the discos, and not the hikes.
Lisa is married now, of course, as is Anna. They both settled down aged twenty-five with university boyfriends, who had quickly replaced sixth form boyfriends in the girls’ freshman year. Anna isn’t a member of this gym, or any gym now, as far as I am aware. She is still trying to breast-feed her first child, Jacob, who is eleven weeks old. Both Anna and Lisa have failed to recognise me on a number of occasions when we have agreed to meet outside tube stations or cinemas. They are used to seeing the old me.
Anna says, ‘You don’t even look like you any more, Sunny. Even your smile isn’t as wide …’
Lisa strides towards me confidently as I wait outside the gym, her long blonde curls swinging naturally down her back, pulled off her face with two clips at the sides. She has a slight fluffy hair halo, because she doesn’t use any product on her hair. She never has. Natural is Lisa’s defining characteristic. Her broad face is clean and shiny. I can see a couple of tiny red veins on otherwise smooth cheeks, and she has the finest of lines playing with the corners of her eyes. She does, however, have a large angry swollen spot on her chin that glares at me menacingly as she gets closer. Lisa has never worn make-up during the day, and even on a big night out she will apply one lick of mascara to each set of eyelashes, and a hastily slicked streak of lipstick to each lip. I always admired how she looked so healthy and clean, but now I wonder whether a dab of Touche Éclat here and there would be such a sin.
Lisa ran everything, from the 100 metres to cross country when we were at school, and she is still super fit, of course – naturally fitter than I am. But that would only show in a half-marathon, not in a class like today’s, with just over an hour’s worth of fitness needed. You wouldn’t be able to tell, if you glanced through the window to the fitness studio
