disappointment. Then the crowd surged forward and deposited Mattie in front of her. Mattie dropped her suitcase and flung her arms out, and then they were hugging each other, hopping and swaying and laughing. Mattie still smelt the same. Coty perfume and a faint whiff of cigarette smoke.
‘You look different,’ Julia accused, and Mattie grinned and fluffed up her fake-fur collar.
‘Must be the new coat. Do you like it?’
‘I don’t know.’ She grabbed her arm and pulled. ‘Come on, let’s get the bus. Then we can talk.’
They ran, and when they reached the bus they clambered up to the top deck. They squashed into the front seat and lit cigarettes, exactly as they had done hundreds of times on the way home from school. The familiarity of it, and the pleasure of seeing each other, dissolved Julia’s resentment and the new worldliness that Mattie was rather proud of. At once they were back on the old footing.
‘What has happened?’ Julia asked.
‘Guess.’ Mattie’s eyes were wickedly sparkling.
‘You …’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Mattie.’ Julia’s head jerked round to see who was listening. She pressed even closer and then implored, ‘Tell me. Tell me what it was like.’
Mattie tilted her head against the black fur and pursed her lips, as if she was considering it. At last, judiciously, she said, ‘It was all right.’
Julia thought of Josh, and the cottage, and the brief, blurred glimpse she had been allowed of something that was momentously strange, and different, and important. And then she exploded, ‘All right?’
Mattie was half laughing, but she was serious too. ‘Exactly. It wasn’t wonderful. But it wasn’t awful either.’
Julia took her hand in the black suede glove and held it tightly. ‘Tell me. Tell me about him, for a start.’
Mattie smiled. ‘He’s nothing like Josh,’ she began.
Then, while the bus jolted and swayed down Gower Street, Mattie told her. She described room thirteen and the tall brown furniture, and the smell of Air-Wick. She told Julia about the theatre office and Sheila Firth and the burgundy in the restaurant, and about John Douglas’s rubber-tipped stick and the moment of tenderness when he had licked the sea-salt off her face. She also described the warmth and comfort she had felt the next morning, afterwards, when they lay quietly together. She didn’t say anything about how she had felt when she had asked about Jennifer Edge.
Julia nodded at everything, but she was clearly still waiting. ‘But what did it feel like?’ she ventured, at last, when Mattie didn’t volunteer it.
Mattie tried for the words. She knew what Julia was expecting. Like fireworks going off. Like a waterfall. Waves breaking. Something like that. What she had really felt was so far from any of those things that she couldn’t even manage to make it up.
‘I told you,’ she said softly. ‘It was all right.’
They stared at each other for a minute, resignation confronting disbelief.
Julia whispered anxiously, ‘Is he … is he nice to you?’
Mattie held up the hem of her coat. ‘Sometimes. But do you know what? He’s going to give me a part. That’s what I really want …’
Julia snorted with laughter and put her arm round Mattie’s shoulder. Mattie laughed too.
‘Oh Mat, I’m so happy you’re home.’
‘I’m happy to be home.’
‘I thought you were different. But you aren’t.’
‘Do you know, on the first morning I thought it must be written on my face? I walked past everyone thinking, They all know. They can see.’
They laughed so much then that all the other passengers stared at them.
Julia rubbed the condensation off the window with her sleeve and peered out.
‘Oxford Street. Hurry up, Felix is making you a wonderful dinner.’
The flat over the square was warm and welcoming.
‘Home,’ Mattie murmured.
Jessie was immobile in her corner, and her clothes compressed the flesh beneath into swollen ridges. It was an effort for her to reach up and plant one of her resounding kisses on Mattie’s cheek, but the Christmas tree that Julia and Felix had bought and decorated glowed beside her and the soft light made her look rosy.
‘Are you all right, Jessie?’
‘As right as I’ll ever be. Give us another kiss. What’s your news, then?’
‘Lots of news. I’m going to be an actress.’
‘That’s what they call it?’
Felix materialised from his room, like a shadow in his black jersey. He kissed Mattie too, brushing her cheek with his mouth. She looked older, he thought, as if some experience had rubbed off on her. That made him glance at Julia, and for the hundredth time he noticed her gnawing impatience. Julia hadn’t had Mattie’s luck, whatever that was.
‘Felix? Get some glasses, there’s a duck. It’s Christmas.’
Felix went into the kitchen for a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. At least it was easier to live here with Julia when her aviator was away. He isn’t mine, Julia had once snapped viciously when Felix said that. Why do you call him mine?
He isn’t mine either, Felix might have answered. But he said nothing and Julia had stood up, walking to the door and then twisting back again in the confined space. It was better at times like this when Josh wasn’t here, although Felix still thought about him. He thought about aeroplanes too, imagining flying at night and the pilot’s face lit up by the red glow of the instrument panel.
As he tore the capsule off the wine and twisted the point of the corkscrew downwards Felix heard the women laughing. Jessie wheezed and coughed delightedly, and then Mattie said something that set off a fresh burst of laughter.
Carefully Felix eased the cork out and wiped the neck of the bottle with a clean cloth. He felt the women’s mysterious femininity as solid as a wall.
The next day, Christmas Eve, Mattie put the presents she had bought for Ricky and Sam and Marilyn and Phil into a string bag. There were presents for Rozzie and her husband and the babies too, even something for Ted, and the red and gold paper bulged cheerfully through the netting.
‘I’m going home to see them all,’ Mattie told Julia. ‘Are you coming?’
‘I have to work today. The bloody office doesn’t close until four o’clock.’
There would be mince pies, and the managers would come into the typing pool to wish them all a Merry Christmas. Julia was dreading it.
‘We could go after you
