the fingertips. As he looked down to Hal, a halo of sunshine slid around on his black hair. The ends of the hair were closer to his shoulders than when I had last seen him.
I demanded, ‘Where did you come from?’
‘The front door.’ His other hand gloved one of mine and he pulled me down so that he could kiss me. His lips were cool and papery on mine. I suspect that he knows I am made uneasy by his aim for my mouth. And that is why he persists. These kisses do not come from the old days, our student days, when we were flatmates. In those days, if we had kissed whenever we met, we would have been forever kissing. I cannot remember when our lives became separate enough to require these bridging kisses.
‘The front door was open?’
‘No, I used the key.’
‘The key?’
‘The spare, under the brick by the drainpipe.’
Discovered. The best I could manage was, ‘It’s not by the drainpipe.’
He steadied my gaze with his own – those eyes of no particular colour, but dark – and revised, sarcastically, ‘Okay, let’s say six or seven inches away from the drainpipe.’
‘And, anyway, how did you know that I was going to be back?’
‘Oh,’ he smoothed a curtain of hair behind one ear, ‘you never go far.’
I slapped the loaf on to the table.
‘Don’t be cross with me,’ his tone was impeccably even.
‘This is like something from an Iris Murdoch novel.’
‘I wanted to see you.’
‘You could have rung.’
‘You haven’t been returning my calls.’
Suddenly I remembered the last one, last week: a simple, Call me, Cupcake. I slid on to a chair, lowered my elbows on to the table and my face into my hands. ‘Don’t take it personally.’
‘I won’t.’ His smile was slow, considered.
I closed my eyes. ‘I’ve been so – oh, I don’t know – unorganised.’ As if I had had a lot to organise.
‘I know.’ A momentary silence, before he was explaining, ‘I’m on my way to a site visit ten miles up the road.’
‘Oh,’ I opened my eyes, ‘work.’
‘Yes. I don’t spend every minute of my working life striking an artistic pose over a drawing board in a studio in Clerkenwell.’
‘No, you dirty your hands occasionally on the steering wheel of your company Audi.’
I rose to go to the kettle. ‘So, is this a one-off, or will you be over this way again?’
‘A couple of mornings over the next couple of months.’
‘Oh, well then,’ suddenly this was fun, ‘you can come here for coffee, we can have breakfast, I can buy some brioche.’
‘I work with men in hard hats: I don’t eat brioche.’
‘Would you be emasculated by the odd blob of apricot jam on a croissant leg?’
‘The coffee will do nicely.’ From his pocket he took a small, pharmaceutical-looking packet, printed with a name which suggested nicotine chewing gum.
I nodded towards it: ‘I thought that you gave up when Oonagh was born.’ Three years ago?
Delving into the packet, he glanced upwards from beneath one eyebrow. ‘I did.’
‘So why the gum?’
‘Why not?’
‘But you’re supposed to use them to help you to give up; you’re not supposed to use them all the time, for years and years.’
He mimicked, ‘Supposed to … not supposed to …’ and slotted two pieces into his mouth.
‘And how are those blissfully smoke-free babies of yours?’
‘They’re beautiful and they make me laugh: what more could I want from my girls? Oh, except for some sleep, for a few hours each night. And patience, twenty-four hours each day. Don’t believe a word if you receive one of those newsletters at Christmas telling you that Oonagh took her Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award before going off to do VSO in Belize, and that Caitlin has set The Songs of Innocence and Experience to her Grade Eight violin pieces. The truth is that Oonagh has an aversion to toilets, and Caitlin screams unless she’s attached to her mother.’
‘And how is Sarah?’
His head tipped backwards in a soundless laugh. ‘Put-upon.’
He never talks of Sarah without affection. The apparent success of their relationship is intriguing. Drew had been involved with so many consciousness-raised, sexually-confident, clever-clever women, and then suddenly there was Sarah. They met when she came to work behind the bar in one of his haunts, never having worked anywhere but pubs and shops. Within a couple of weeks, there was an unplanned pregnancy, which was surprising because Drew never makes mistakes; and then, more surprisingly, the decision to marry. But although their domestic lives are necessarily interdependent, their social lives seem to have remained resolutely separate. I rarely see her; but whenever I ring to speak to Drew and she picks up the phone, we perform the full range of pleasantries with enthusiasm. I love to listen to her Scottish voice, the slides as impressive as those of a trombone.
Philip came home half an hour or so after Drew had arrived. Drew and I had giddied each other with gossip: friends in common, other friends, in-laws, property prices. Drew greeted Philip with a kiss on both cheeks. Now, while I am here, in the park, he is watching Philip cook. He had wanted to know what Philip was making; Philip had explained that what appeared to be a pancake was going to be a roulade.
Drew laughed, ‘Rolling your own.’ But then, suddenly and defensively, ‘Listen, you two, I grow my own basil, these days.’
I made the mixture for ice-cream; the bowlful is chilling now, in the fridge. Some local friends – a couple of couples – are coming for dinner, this evening. I make puddings; puddings are all that I make. The icing on the cake, in this household. While I was stirring the syrup into the cream, and Drew was nosing over my shoulder, Philip said, ‘I love that recipe.’
I barely heard him over the whoomphs of the wooden spoon in the mixture, the muffled knocks on the bottom of the bowl.
‘I love the simplicity,’ he was saying, ‘just the strawberries and cream, a little sugar and balsamic vinegar.’
‘Vinegar?’ Drew sounded affronted, and close to my ear.
I said, ‘Nothing’s quite as sweet as you think it is.’
He laughed. ‘No one’s quite as philosophical as you are.’
Philip mused, ‘The sour with the sweet,
