Gravity gave her a short sharp pull. ‘We’ve got gazpacho for starters, Joe. After the gazpacho, we’ve got salmon en croute with Hollandaise sauce. Do you really think the Niemans are going to want to finish with treacle pudding? And custard? Why don’t we just throw a brick at them while we’re at it.’
‘I like treacle pudding.’
‘We’ve got mandarin cheesecake,’ she said.
‘But I bloody hate mandarin cheesecake.’
‘What’s wrong with everyone tonight?’
Joe disappeared into the garage again.
Linda stopped stirring to watch some lumps the size of Atlantic icebergs forming in the sauce. ‘Joe,’ she called into the garage. ‘Are you coming back in? Joe?’
Silence.
‘I could do with some company in here. It’s been a long day.’
Silence.
‘You know sometimes I wish I was a bloody schizophrenic – at least I’d have my other self to talk to.’
Joe appeared in the garage doorway, a second can of beer in his hand.
‘So what d’you want to talk about?’
She watched him drinking his beer, one hand in his trouser pocket, and one bare foot on the kitchen step. She didn’t know. ‘Aren’t you cold? You should go and put some socks and shoes on.’
‘I’m going into the garden.’
‘You can’t go out like that.’
He picked up some rubber clogs Linda had ordered from the back of a Sunday Times supplement, which was the only part of the paper she read.
Pouring the sauce down the sink, she watched through the window and falling snow as he went into the shed and came out with a deckchair, planting it in the snow next to where the fishpond was just about still visible. He had his back to the house and his feet in their rubber clogs stretched out over the frozen pond. What was he thinking?
She made a second batch of Hollandaise sauce then laid the table before going upstairs to shower. Jessica’s bedroom door was shut but the music had been turned down. She would have gone in – to make sure Jessica had changed and Ferdie hadn’t marked the bed – but she was afraid. Were other women afraid of their daughters?
So instead she showered, put on the new dress she’d bought at Debenhams the other weekend, where they’d also bought Joe’s polo shirt, then went into Jessica’s bedroom, wearing heels and fully made up. Jessica was lying on the bed with Ferdie stretched out beside her. She was still in her school uniform.
Over the summer they’d painted and refurnished Jessica’s room so that it was better suited to the needs of a fifteen-year-old girl taking A Levels three years early. That was at least four months ago and it still smelt of freshly unpacked MDF. The new furniture was dwarfed by a black and white CND poster Jessica had insisted on putting back up, alongside an even larger floor-to-ceiling poster of Snoopy. Without ever knowing why, Snoopy had always depressed Linda – even now, when she was on the antidepressants that came with the Slimshake starter pack to help overcome any emotional instability likely to be encountered switching to a liquids-only diet. On the wall above the stereo, the Advent calendar Jessica was still adamant about buying had nine open doors. Linda looked through the black sugar-paper snowflakes stuck to the bedroom window, down at the garden. Joe was still out there, and beyond him was the oak tree, which she’d started to feel inexplicably threatened by since Wayne Spalding’s visit that afternoon. She drew the curtains then turned to face the bed again.
‘Jessica?’
Jessica didn’t move.
On the pinboard above the desk there was a photograph of Jessica aged eight on the beach at Brighton, with Belle. They were both smiling. The photograph next to it was of an even younger Jessica on Joe’s shoulders; her hair was almost covering her face and she was yelling something at the camera. There was a river and castle behind them, in the distance. Linda tried to remember where they might have been that day, but couldn’t. She remembered the sandals Jessica was wearing – and the dress – but she couldn’t remember the day. Above the photographs were a series of images she’d first noticed a week ago when she came into the room to dust, and that she’d since asked Jessica to take down – of a captured Iranian soldier with ropes attached to his wrists and ankles, spread-eagled in the dust, about to be quartered by Iraqi-driven Jeeps. Jessica had to explain all that to her – and that American Indians used to torture prisoners in the same way, using horses. Why had Jessica told her this? Did she expect her to have an opinion on it or was she just giving her some sort of chance? Jessica’s German teacher had torn the pictures out of Das Spiegel for her. ‘She knows this is the kind of thing I’m into,’ Jessica had said – implying that she, Linda, didn’t.
‘Jessica,’ she said again, resisting the urge to pick up the can of Impulse body spray on the corner of the desk and shake it to see if it was being used. She watched her daughter roll onto her back, one arm resting protectively over Ferdie’s flank. ‘I told you to get changed.’
Jessica rolled back onto her side again and watched Ferdie blinking at her, wondering if he was trying to send her a message in Morse or something. Was it possible to blink in Morse? Probably – with either dedication or desperation.
Not wanting to push it any further, Linda went downstairs and arranged some Ritz crackers on the serving plate then took the cottage cheese and pineapple out of the fridge and started spooning it onto them in bite-size dollops. Joe was still in the garden, sitting on the deckchair by the frozen fishpond. Maybe he’d fallen asleep. Was it possible to fall asleep in a shirt and rubber clogs when it was minus five degrees Celsius? Didn’t people die if they fell asleep in the snow? Then she started laughing, thinking how funny it would be if she was in here putting cottage cheese and pineapple on Ritz crackers while Joe was out there dying.
Joe, hearing laughter, looked up and turned towards the kitchen window.
The Niemans arrived at seven forty, before the Saunders, which meant that even though there were two Niemans to two Palmers, Linda felt outnumbered. They arrived in coats, hats, scarves and gloves, looking like identical (European) twins with their matching spectacles and matching haircuts.
Joe had forgotten to close the door to the downstairs loo and the smell of bleach was hanging heavily between them as they all stood awkwardly in the hallway.
‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ Daphne said. ‘Winke was in Brighton today.’
‘Brighton?’ Linda echoed, excited. ‘Joe was in Brighton today as well.’
Winke gave Joe a slow, almost suspicious look, but didn’t say anything.
‘What were you doing in Brighton?’ Daphne asked sharply.
Joe had a brief but strong memory of Belle’s hairdresser stood in front of him with a pair of scissors in her hand, and forgot to reply.
‘He was at the Britannia Kitchens roadshow – at the Brighton Centre,’ Linda said. She waited for some sort of reaction to this, but there wasn’t any. ‘Quantum Kitchens – our company – had a stand.’
‘I wasn’t
