tell her not to throw her strength away on morality; that’s not the path for Jessica. Tell her –’
‘If she does the work she’s meant to do on this … this … module, she’ll still be in line for an ‘A’?’ Linda cut in, breathless, thinking about the number of times she’d told Dominique Saunders and others that Jessica was going to get an ‘A’ in A Level Physics – and Mathematics – at the age of fifteen. Trevor Jameson at the County Times was going to run a whole feature on her when she did – and here was some foreign woman whose garage wasn’t even an integral part of her house talking to her about nuclear bombs; about Jessica and nuclear bombs. Why was this all anyone ever talked about any more? She lunged forward as her lungs collapsed, her entire weight on the edge of the saddle … fuck the bomb.
‘Mrs Palmer? So … you’ll talk to Jessica, Mrs Palmer?’ Mrs Klusczynski no longer sounded convinced. ‘I had to give her a detention, I’m afraid. Whatever I think of what she did, I have to make it clear to the rest of the class that walking out in the middle of a lesson is unacceptable behaviour, and …’
‘You gave her a detention?’
‘Don’t worry, an hour’s supervision in the special needs room is all it really amounts to.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Tonight, yes, between four and five.’
‘But I’m having a dinner party tonight. The Niemans are coming to dinner, and … Jesus, that’s enough.’ She flicked the switch down and changed gear, at last finding some sort of karma between the balls of her feet and the pedals. ‘Jessica was meant to be helping with the canapés …’
Mrs Klusczynski put the phone down, pulling a tissue out of her cardigan sleeve and wiping her mouth, which was tingling. She had phoned Mrs Palmer to talk to her about her daughter, and Mrs Palmer was having sex. She was sure of it. She looked at her watch – it was ten a.m. – and carried on dabbing at her mouth. There had been music in the background as well. Mrs Palmer had taken a phone call concerning her only child while having sex to music. She stared at the tissue, which was stained black – why was that? – then through the windows in their chipped, cream-painted metal frames. Standing up on the rungs of the stool, she could see the entire school playing field. It had stopped snowing.
Linda pressed the phone against her chest and rested her chin on it as she recalled what it was she had been trying to remember about Mrs Klusczynski, who lived at No. 16. It had happened the summer they moved in. Mrs Klusczynski had been to meet the local-authority bus that used to drop off her son, who was prone to, on average, seven fits an hour, and Linda was watching mother and son walk back up the street, when it happened: Peter had one of his fits and collapsed onto tarmac that was melting in the heat. She remembered Joe, who was coming home early from work, leaving the car in the middle of the road and breaking into a run – she’d never seen Joe run before. He took off his suit jacket and put it under Peter Klusczynski’s head, and she watched from behind the blinds in the lounge as he carried the boy indoors, into their kitchen, sat him at the old dining-room table – the one they used to have before the glass-topped one – and gave him water to drink. Mrs Klusczynski hovered at the front door in a canary yellow sundress and Linda stayed in the lounge because she didn’t know what to say to her. At that moment she didn’t understand Joe bringing the boy into their house like that.
‘You all right?’ she heard Joe say.
‘Peter?’ Mrs Klusczynski’s voice came through the front door.
Afterwards Joe walked mother and son up the street. Linda saw him and the Polish woman talking together and the car still parked in the middle of the road with the door open. For a moment, the world felt as if it had suddenly emptied and she was the only one standing there, watching, only there was nothing left to watch, and someone somewhere was laughing at her.
By the end of the aerobics class, Dominique Saunders’ leotard was wet and the ‘D’ pendant on her necklace was stuck to her collarbone. She crouched down at the side of the hall where some orange plastic chairs were stacked, rocking back on the heels of her Reeboks while trying to regulate her breathing and not worry about the fact that Linda Palmer still wasn’t sweating.
Mrs Kline from No. 10 sat slumped beneath the Union Jack the Guides used for church parade, in a well-worn peach and turquoise tracksuit. The sort of tracksuit you put on, Dominique thought, to gorge and cry in. The sort of tracksuit she didn’t possess; not even as a secret. Mrs Kline was sitting with her legs stretched out across the brown carpet tiles that covered the floor of the Methodist Church hall, wiping sweat off her forehead and studying the palm of her hand.
Dominique wondered what had made Mrs Kline, who weighed sixteen stone and who had done the class barefoot, decide to take up aerobics. She didn’t strike her as the sort of woman losing weight meant anything to.
Linda knelt down next to her, her blonde perm letting off hairdresser-fresh aromas, and they watched as Mrs Kline put a pair of summer sandals on over some socks. It took her a while to get to her feet and when she did she walked unevenly towards where Dominique and Linda were sitting. Dominique realised, too late, that she was coming to speak to them, and that she should have said something before now anyway, given that they were all neighbours.
‘Haven’t seen you here before,’ Dominique said.
‘No. Well.’ Mrs Kline smiled shyly.
‘Thought you’d come along and give us a try-out?’
‘Well. Yes.’
‘Well. Great.’ Dominique hung back on her heels.
‘Well,’ Mrs Kline said, clutching the empty carrier-bag her sandals had been in. ‘Bye.’
‘What was she thinking of coming here?’ Linda said, realising that the story of Mrs Kline at Izzy’s aerobics class – that she could try out first on Joe when he got home – would go well with the gazpacho tonight. ‘Does somebody who’s murdered her husband and buried him at the end of the garden have the right to come to an aerobics class?’
‘That’s only rumour,’ Dominique said.
‘Well, I thought we were going to have to resuscitate her after the high kicks and that’s not fair on Izzy – having someone in the class she might have to administer first aid to.’
They watched the Reverend Macaulay talking to Izzy as she stacked the blue aerobics mats away.
‘What’s he doing?’ Linda said.
‘Telling her about the design for the new stained-glass window behind the altar.’
‘How d’you know that?’
‘There was something in the local paper about it.’
‘But how d’you know that’s what they’re talking about?’
‘That
