in?’ he asked.
‘No. He’s over in the district office. Why?’
‘Oh his missus is downstairs wanting him. Probably wanting his money more like. I’ll go and tell her she’ll have to get the shopping on tick.’
Will’s wife downstairs? An opportunity too good to miss.
‘No, it’s all right,’ I replied, before I realised what I was saying, getting up quickly and abandoning the Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s performance of Yeoman of the Guard in mid sentence, ‘I’ll pop down and tell her.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said the lad and walked off whistling.
My heart was banging as I clattered down the narrow crowded stairs. I stopped on the turn and hung on to the rickety banister to try and get my breathing under control. IN twothreefourfivesix OUT twothreefourfivesix. Will’s wife. Will’s wife. What would she be like? What sort of girl would make Will give up his freedom? What would she look like, sound like? IN twothreefourfivesix OUT twothreefourfivesix. It was no good. I hadn’t got time to breathe properly. I strode on down.
But, closer to the front office, I slowed down, my steps heavier. Did I really want to meet Will’s wife? Did I want to see who he’d chosen, who he had children – three children! – with? What would I say to her? How painful would it be? What sort of trick was this? How was I expected to play it? Too late, despite myself, I was pushing through the battered door. Whatever she was like, I had to know.
There were only two people in the scruffy reception area, with its old-fashioned heavy wooden counters and scuffed tiled floor – a woman and a small child. The woman was wearing a workaday brown coat. She had her back to me, leaning down to talk to the child, yet there was something very familiar about her. Something I recognised, something I knew almost as well as I knew myself. The hair was the wrong colour, the wrong style but … She turned around.
‘Caz!’
This time, I didn’t get the blank look I had had from Will. Instead there was a moment’s puzzlement and then Caz’s face lit up.‘Hello!’ she said. ‘Are you the American? I’ve heard about you. I’m Carol, Billy’s wife.’
Caz? Married to Will? Somewhere in the universe, someone was playing a very sick joke on me. And it couldn’t be Caz and Will, could it? The two people closest to me in the world wouldn’t do this to me, would they, not even as a joke, not even for a reality TV programme?
‘You? You’re really married to Will?’ As I asked it, I heard the catch in my voice. Were Will and Caz really in league against me?
‘Married to Billy. Yes ’fraid so. For eleven years and counting. Is he in?’
‘No, sorry. He’s had to go out to one of the other offices.’ How did I manage to answer so calmly and politely?
Eleven years? Eleven years? Will was still in school eleven years ago. Why was he married to Caz? Caz of all people. This had to be a wind-up. And if it was, it was a pretty sick one.
‘Oh well, never mind. It’s not important.’ She smiled and turned to leave.
‘Can I give him a message?’
I didn’t want her to go. I needed to keep her there, to talk to her. I needed to know more.
‘No, it’s all right.’ She hesitated. ‘Well yes, go on then. Tell him I’ve got a job. Next term, when this one,’ she indicated the little girl who was staring up at me with a shy smile and Caz’s bright inquisitive eyes, ‘starts school, I do too. I’m going to be a school cook. They told me today. Isn’t that grand?’
Her face was alight with happiness. This was Caz pretending to be delighted about being a school cook? Caz whose idea of sophisticated cooking was putting a bit of parsley on a ready meal? We needed to talk, away from the office, away from any cameras.
‘That’s brilliant!’ I said, entering into the game, for it had to be a game. ‘Why don’t we celebrate? Look, I’ve got half an hour to spare. Why don’t we go to Silvino’s? My treat? I’ve just been paid.’
This world might be pretend, but at least the coffee would be real. And I guessed Gordon wouldn’t miss me from the office for half an hour. Caz – in true Caz fashion – hesitated for less than a split second.
‘Oh yes, if you’ve got time,’ she said and turned to the little girl. ‘Well Libby, isn’t this turning out to be a good day?’
She sounded so like Caz, my Caz, that my heart sang. With Libby holding firmly on to Caz’s hand, we went across the Market Place to Silvino’s, squeezing past the women in their damp macs with bags of shopping and dripping umbrellas. The menu was strong on teacakes and buns and buttered toast, but the smell and the steam was of coffee, proper Italian coffee. And in among the noise of the steam, and the black-and-white-clad waitresses bustling back and forth between the crowded tables, was Silvino himself, I guessed, a tiny round beaming Italian in a long apron and a wide smile. Part of me just wanted to sit back and savour the normality of it, but there was something far more important to deal with …
‘Right,’ I said, once we’d ordered, and Caz was undoing Libby’s coat buttons for her. ‘Come on Caz, tell me what this is all about.’
‘What? The job? Well, it—’
‘No, not the job, you daft bat, this reality TV thing. Where are the cameras? What are the rules? Who else is in it? Who’s running it? Were you just dropped in it too? How do we get out when we want to?’
The smile faltered on Caz’s face for a moment. She sat back from the table, put a hand on Libby’s arm as if to protect her and looked at me, baffled and wary.
Then I noticed that just as Will didn’t look exactly the same as Will in this place, that Caz, or Carol, didn’t look quite like Caz either. Her hair was a different colour. Well that’s no surprise. Caz has been colouring hers for so long that not even she can remember what colour it was originally. But Caz’s hair is always glossy and shiny, this Carol’s hair looked a bit dull. To be honest, it looked as though it needed washing. Caz’s never looked like that. Even when she was ill, the first thing she did was wash her hair because she said it made her feel better.
Then her teeth. Caz has neat, straight, white teeth. This Carol had slightly crooked teeth. And this Carol had lines … the beginning of wrinkles around her eyes and on her forehead. And now she too was looking at me as if I were a stranger – and a slightly mad stranger at that.
Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure …
I put my head down. I felt utterly defeated.
‘I’m sorry. It’s just that you and Will, Billy, look exactly like my closest friends back home. And it’s such a shock to discover that maybe you’re not them after all.’
‘Oh you poor thing!’ said Carol, in such a Caz-like way that I was sure it must be her. ‘How awful, especially if you’re feeling homesick. It’s such a long way from America. Are they nice, these friends?’
‘The best, the absolute best.’
‘Well, let’s just hope Billy and I will do instead,’ she said in a wonderfully cheering, normal sort of a way. ‘Now come on, drink your coffee and
