he’s never been here, he’s never come to the house, it would be nice to have him over.” It was an awful thing to say, it really was. I said it anyway. I don’t know what he said back. Maybe he said, “Yes, why not?” but it was awful for him. I don’t know what I’ve been doing to him. I couldn’t help it.’
By now they were sitting. Alice looked away from the beginnings of Katherine’s tears. The kitchen was brilliant with elective cheerfulness, constructed with wallpaper and blinds and spotlights; its morning yellow sunlit and shining with well-kept order and cleanliness. But there was a woman weeping in it, somehow. Alice had walked lightly across the road, and found herself in a place without landmarks. She looked out of the window tactfully; incredibly, her family were there, getting on with the unloading.
‘You’ll be wanting to get back,’ Katherine said dully.
Alice turned back to her. Probably better, she told herself firmly, that the woman tell her all this. She was going to have to tell someone, and better her than one of the woman’s children. There were things your children should never hear. She’d forgotten the woman’s name. That was awful, and now surely irreparable.
‘That’s all right,’ Alice said. ‘It’s better that you tell someone.’
‘Yes,’ Katherine said. ‘That’s right. It’s better I tell someone like you all this rather than the children. Or a neighbour.’
‘Yes,’ Alice said, startled. ‘Of course, I am a neighbour now.’
‘Yes,’ Katherine said. ‘Yes, I suppose you are.’
‘Listen,’ Alice said. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something directly, because—’
‘Depends what it is,’ Katherine said, smiling, wiping her face with a tea towel – the Beauties of Chatsworth, Alice registered irrelevantly. There was something cheeky in her recovering voice; it wasn’t true, Alice thought, that you saw what people were really like only in a crisis.
‘You don’t have to tell me anything at all,’ she said. ‘You really don’t. But is that really the whole story?’
‘The whole story?’
‘I meant about Nick,’ Alice said. ‘Nick? That’s his name?’
‘Yes,’ Katherine said. ‘About Nick?’
‘You and Nick, I mean,’ Alice said.
‘Me and Nick,’ Katherine said. A formality came into her voice again as she saw what Alice had meant. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not having an affair, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’
‘Yes,’ Alice said. ‘That was what I was suggesting.’
‘Well,’ Katherine said, attempting a light laugh, ‘I suppose you did ask permission to ask a direct question, and I don’t know a more direct question than that. No, as it happens, Nick and I are not having some sort of mad passionate affair. I suppose there isn’t an enormous amount of point in my saying that. I wouldn’t be very likely to say anything different to you if we…’ she paused for a second ‘…we were in fact having an illicit affair. But one doesn’t happen to be.’
‘No,’ Alice said. ‘No, I believe you.’ It was true. She did believe it. Oddly, it was the way the note of deception had crept into the woman’s voice that convinced her. The woman, whatever else she was, had no gift for lying, and in most of what Alice had heard from her, the note of helpless truth had been audible. It was only at that point, asked directly if she were, in fact, having an affair, that the voice had started to listen to itself as if to monitor its scrupulous lies. And yet the voice was telling the truth; Alice had no doubt of that. The woman was not having an affair, as she said. But Alice had touched something secret and cherished; she had touched, surely, some characteristic and elaborate pretence. Katherine had lapsed into what, surely, was her usual allusive and interior style where Nick was concerned; she had treasured him up and made a precious mystery out of him before the only audience she had, her husband and children. There was nothing there; Alice could see that. But she’d played it out, and he’d believed what she’d wanted him to believe. The woman sat there in her kitchen, looking firmly ahead, away from Alice. She was smiling tautly, her expression now as she wanted it to be, and that must be bad to live with. An affair would be better; that was something to forgive, to walk away from. To have done nothing wrong, to make a secret of nothing, to coach yourself in the gestures of mystery and deflection, to turn your head away to suppress a manufactured expression of recalled rapture, all that, daily; from that there was no walking away.
‘Where’s he gone?’ Alice said.
‘Malcolm?’ Katherine said. ‘I don’t know. He’s just gone.’
‘He didn’t say anything?’ Alice said.
‘Nothing,’ Katherine said. ‘Not even a letter.’
Alice looked at her, seriously wondering. ‘He’s just disappeared?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Katherine said. ‘Just like that.’
‘But—’ Alice said. ‘Sorry, but – I mean – are you sure that he’s not – well, it could be anything, it could be—’
‘No,’ Katherine said. ‘He’s all right. I know that. He phoned his office this morning. I don’t know where from. He’d do that – he’d phone the office so as not to let them down. Me—’ She left it at that. ‘No, he’s not hurt or in an accident. If that’s what you mean. He’s obviously left me. He told the office that his mother’s been taken ill and he had to go over there all of a sudden.’
‘And she hasn’t been taken ill?’ Alice said.
‘Not urgently,’ Katherine said, and started laughing, an ugly sound.
‘Not—’
‘She’s dead, she’s been dead for five years. I’m surprised the building society didn’t remember that when he said so. It’s a stupid thing for him to say to anyone. Honestly, I don’t have any doubt what’s happened.’
‘I see,’ Alice said. She didn’t see at all. There must be other solutions to this situation; she just couldn’t see what they were.
‘It’s just the waiting,’ Katherine said.
‘Yes,’ Alice said. ‘I can see that. Not knowing.’
‘When there’s some news,’ Katherine said, ‘that won’t be so bad. Then I’ll know where he is, what’s happening, even, God forbid, if he’s done something stupid, but then we’ll know, there’ll be things to do. It’s the not knowing.’
‘Yes,’ Alice said. ‘Have you talked to the children?’
‘No,’ Katherine said. ‘Yes. Well, sort of. Not all this. There’ll be time enough.’
‘If I were you,’ Alice said, ‘I’d just go and sit with them. You know, be all jolly and cheerful, as if nothing much has happened. They’ll be worried, too. I don’t know, go and help your little boy, show an interest in the snake, that sort of thing—’
‘The snake?’ Katherine said. ‘How on earth did you know about
