ease, and thought that at the same age both she and Toby’s father would have been paralysed with shyness in the unlikely event of being asked to confront a roomful of their parents’ friends.
I’m getting old, she thought, amused.
‘Have you done your homework, Toby?’ Andrew de- manded.
‘Yeah, Dad, it’s okay,’ the boy answered, raking at his hair again.
‘I hear you played well yesterday,’ Darcy offered.
‘Not too badly.’
They began to talk about a school football match. Nina had nothing to contribute, and in any case she did not know how to talk to twelve-year-old boys. Under the cover of momentary invisibility she let herself glance across at Gordon. His eyes met hers.
She was shaken at once by a sense of intense familiarity.
Her knowledge of his shape and of the lines of his face was so intimate and tender that it seemed shocking to contemplate it in the midst of this neutral gathering of friends.
She felt that she knew this man so well that it was as if Richard was here, sitting in an armchair in Andrew Frost’s den. The room would certainly be called the den. Nina’s mouth curved and she saw her smile answered in Gordon’s eyes. They looked at each other with amazed pleasure for another two seconds, and then Nina turned her head away.
It was inconceivable that the conversation around them had not stopped, that everyone else in the room had not fallen into silence as they took stock of what must be blind-ingly obvious. But they were all still talking, and no one had even glanced at them. Nina’s heart was knocking irregularly and her mouth seemed full of sand.
She took a long gulp of her wine and at once she felt drunk, her head and limbs seeming to drift an alarming distance apart.
Janice leaned forward with her hand on her son’s shoulder.
‘Is Will ready for bed? And if you’ve finished your work, Toby, you could think of an early night as well.’
‘Oh, Mum.’
‘Do as your mother says,’ Andrew told him.
There was no real protest in the boy’s response, or reprimand in Andrew’s. With her sharpened perceptions Nina understood that they were playing the roles of parents and child in the ordinary loving Frost family for the benefit of the rest of them. Hannah Clegg was nodding and smiling. Façades, Nina thought, and remembered the handsome, happy couples as she had first seen them. The sense that she was beginning to look beyond the obvious came sharply back to her. Her eyes met Gordon’s again, guiltily, greedily.
‘I’ll go up to check on Will, and then we can eat,’ Janice was saying. The boy gave his hair a last shake and wished them a languid goodnight.
A moment later there was a general move. Darcy escorted Nina, with the fingers of one hand just touching the small of her back. She knew that Gordon followed behind her, but her legs functioned well enough to carry her through to the kitchen.
Janice was in her apron, behind the kitchen counter. ‘I told you it was only a family supper,’ she apologized to Nina. ‘If we eat in the dining room it seems rather formal and serious, like entertaining clients.’
Andrew passed behind her and patted her bottom. ‘I prefer the dining room, myself.’
‘Stay home in the morning to do the extra clearing up then,’ she answered coolly. ‘Nina doesn’t mind. Do you, Nina?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Sit where you like, everyone. Not next to your partners, please.’
Nina found herself placed between Darcy and Jimmy Rose. Gordon was on Jimmy’s other side, out of her sight. The table was elaborately laid with linen napkins, heavy silver cutlery and thickets of polished glasses, contradicting Janice’s insistence that this was a casual evening. Evidently perfectly at home, Darcy walked behind the chairs pouring white Alsace into a glass at each place.
‘Toast,’ Hannah declared loudly, when everyone’s glass had been filled. With her luxuriant hair pinned up she looked different, and older, as if her eyes and mouth were drawn upwards by tiny, taut threads.
‘To friendship.’
‘To loving friendship.’
Surprisingly, it was Star who amended it. From her place opposite she nodded her grave head at Nina. There was a moment’s silence around the table, until Jimmy satirically echoed his wife.
‘To loving friendship.’
They all drank, except for Janice who was busy behind her kitchen counter.
She brought an oval dish to the table. Resting in a bed of green salad leaves was a terrine of vegetables, in which tiny batons of carrot and courgette and flowers of broccoli floated in a clear golden jelly amidst a rain of green peppercorns. Nina knew how long such things took to concoct, and wondered again about the protestations of simplicity. This was competitive cooking.
‘Oh, Janice, look at this. It’s so pretty,’ Hannah said.
Janice pursed her lips. ‘Have you ever seen Marcelle’s version? This is a pale imitation. Hers just glows with goodness.’ She added, for Nina’s benefit, ‘Marcelle is a wonderful cook.’
‘I remember, from your Hallowe’en party,’ Nina said. Then she heard Gordon’s quiet voice, only it seemed to set currents stirring in the air between them.
‘Michael is a lucky man.’
‘Is he, would you say?’ Jimmy Rose smirked.
Janice took her place at the end of the table opposite to Andrew. She was pleased by the reception of her terrine. Raising her glass, she said, ‘I want to drink the toast, too. To loving friendship, Star. That’s what it’s all for, isn’t it? The hard work and the risks and the planning and the worrying, all the difficult things each of us does, to make the lives we have and to keep hold of them … It’s so we can enjoy the pleasure of evenings like this, with our friends around us. Good friends, loving friends. We’re missing Vicky, but she’ll be home tomorrow, and at the same time we’re welcoming Nina.’ She looked earnestly around the table. ‘This is what counts, isn’t it? Us being here together, for food and wine and talk?’ Janice’s cheeks were crimson.
‘Of course it is, darling,’ Andrew murmured.
‘Eloquently put, Janice,’ Darcy said, and she gave him a defiantly grateful smile.
‘Well, I don’t care. You know I’m not particularly clever, and you may think I’m sentimental. But I love you all, and this is my favourite way to spend a Sunday evening.’ She emptied her glass with a flourish.
Hannah clapped her hands. ‘Hear, hear,’ she called. ‘May there be many more evenings like this one.’
‘Darling, there will be. Exactly like this,’ Darcy said softly. ‘Why should there not?’
Nina listened more than she talked.
It
