Down to the West End. The boys need some things, and so do I. Benjy’s going out to play for the afternoon, and Audrey will come in at tea-time …’
Martin looked up from the paper. It was a good sign that she felt safe enough to go into crowded stores again. He smiled at her, trying to gauge if it was anxiety or the effort of concealment that made her voice sound strained.
‘Good idea. Look, shall I come with you? I couldn’t manage all day, but I might take a couple of hours after lunch.’
‘There’s no need.’ Look down into the saucepan. Stir in one direction, then the other, take a deep breath. ‘It’s boring things, like a new duffel coat for Tom.’
I hate lying to him.
Martin watched her averted profile for a moment. And then he said lightly, ‘Okay. If you’re sure you’ll be all right. Take the joint account chequebook. There’s a couple of hundred pounds in that account.’
‘Thanks,’ Annie said. And so, she thought, she would have to rush into John Lewis’s on the way home, and buy things to make her husband believe that she had been shopping all day long. Annie realized that the sight of the food was making her feel sick. She wondered bleakly whether it was her love affair itself that was sordid, or whether it was the lying and the subterfuge that made it seem so.
She had telephoned Steve two days ago, when she knew that she couldn’t go any longer without seeing him. Her hands shook as she dialled the number, but they steadied again as soon as he answered. His voice sounded very warm and confident.
‘I can arrange for a whole day. Until the children’s suppertime, that is,’ she said.
‘When?’
‘On Thursday. Is that all right?’
‘Of course it is. I’ll take you to lunch somewhere.’
And so it had been arranged. Annie dropped the wooden spoon into the sink with the rest of the washing up.
‘Dinner’s ready, Martin.’
‘Wonderful.’
Another ordinary evening. Annie slept badly that night, restlessly turning between guilt and happiness.
In the morning, when the house was empty and quiet after the rush of work and school, she walked dreamily through the cluttered rooms. She put the cushions straight on the old chesterfield, and wound up the pretty little French clock that stood on the mantelpiece. Then she went upstairs. She touched the bottle of body lotion on her dressing table, then opened one of the drawers and looked at her underwear neatly folded inside. Annie owned an expensive set of cream lace and silk underthings, but Martin had given them to her for her birthday a year ago. Annie took out her plain, everyday things and slammed the drawer shut again. She lifted a blue corduroy dress off its hanger and put that on too, defiantly not looking at herself in the wardrobe mirror. When she was dressed she went into the bathroom and combed her hair into waves around her face. Almost as an afterthought she took out a pair of jet combs that Tibby had given her, saying, ‘I won’t need these now that my hair’s so thin.’ She pinned the waves of hair back, and stared into her own eyes. They seemed very bright, and there were spots of colour on her high cheekbones. She looked, Annie thought, as if she were about to do something very dangerous, and desperate.
At midday she put her grey coat on, bought to replace the blue one she had worn to go Christmas shopping, how long ago? She picked up the chequebook that Martin had left for her on the dresser in the kitchen, and put it into her bag. For a moment she stood looking at the telephone, thinking, I could still ring. I could tell him that I can’t come, after all. And then she thought of Steve, waiting in his empty flat for her to come to him. I must go. I can’t not do it, not now.
She left the house. She was going to slam the front door, but in the end she closed it behind her with a tiny, final click.
Steve lived at the top of an anonymous block not far from Harrods. Annie rode up in the mirrored lift, turning away from the unwelcome sight of her repeated reflection. When the doors opened on the top floor she stepped out into a long carpeted corridor. She hesitated, caught a last glimpse of her desperate, defiant expression, turned and marched smartly down the length of deep pile. She rang his bell and he opened the door immediately.
Steve kissed her cheek, his hand briefly lifting her hair from the nape of her neck. ‘Come in.’
She followed him inside. The room was bare, surprisingly high, decorated in shades of grey and cream. The few pieces of furniture were black, or glass and chrome. A long black table at the far end was piled with papers.
‘Have you been working?’ Annie asked. In this environment, Steve suddenly seemed a formidable stranger.
Then he smiled crookedly at her. ‘Trying to,’ he said, acknowledging the longing and the apprehensiveness that they both felt.
‘Would you like a drink?’
Annie remembered the conversation that they had had in hospital. Steve had said, ‘We’ve never met for a clandestine drink. I don’t know whether you like vodka martinis or white wine spritzers.’ This is clandestine enough, she thought. Why didn’t we understand before that it would come to this?
‘Just white wine,’ Annie said. ‘No soda.’
Steve nodded. She knew that he remembered too.
He went into the kitchen and Annie walked across the room to the black sofa, looking at the chic emptiness. He poured her wine and she drank it, tasting the gooseberry richness.
‘Why aren’t there any things?’ she asked suddenly. ‘No ornaments, or mementoes.’
Steve looked around, seeing the room afresh. ‘There aren’t, are there?’
‘It looks as if it came all together, in a package. Do you mind my saying that?’
Steve laughed. ‘Not a bid. It did. An interior decorator’s package. I suppose I haven’t wanted to remember anything in particular.’ His face softened. ‘Until now.’
‘Come and sit here,’ Annie asked, turning her face up to his. They sat side by side, their heads almost touching.
‘It isn’t very like your house, is it? Your house is full of memories.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s easier to be here.’
They drank again in silence, and when Steve spoke again it was in a light, deliberately cheerful voice, about something quite different.
When they had finished their wine Steve said, ‘I told you I was going to take you out for lunch. You’d better know that I can’t cook a thing.’
‘I thought you must have one minor failing,’ she answered, on the same cheerful note.
But under the bright surface they were both thinking that they knew all the big things about one another, the momentous things that made them who they were. Yet they knew none of the little, everyday ones that would have marked them out to their acquaintances. It was strange to have everything, and nothing, to learn.
It was a short walk to the restaurant. Steve seemed to be moving more quickly, leaning
