and their partnerships.
The voices rose around her and wove themselves in and out of the clink of cutlery and glasses and she chose to pick out one voice at a time and follow it through the twists of the conversation like a coloured thread through fabric. She heard Star, and the way that she spun her words so fluently and punctured Jimmy’s nonsensical chatter, and then she heard Darcy who pronounced and knew that his lazy drawl would be listened to, and Hannah’s cries and giggles, and Janice’s gossip that grew less coherent as the wine influenced her and Jimmy distracted her by grinningly stroking her bare forearm. Andrew directed the turns of the conversation from the head of the table, and through it she strained to hear Gordon’s low, unemphatic comments although he spoke almost as little as she did herself.
Nina tried to yoke the couples together in her mind, making Hannah’s trills counterpoint Darcy’s bass, setting Star’s sarcastic wit against Jimmy’s sly Irish loquacity and Andrew’s faint pomposity against Janice’s tipsy skittishness. But now they resisted her efforts to pair them and so to eavesdrop on them as couples. They split away into individuals, and then coalesced again into a group of friends, a group whose homogeneity in the end surprised her.
Andrew filled another set of the good glasses, this time with second-growth claret. Janice brought beef Wellington to the table and covered the plates with overlapping circles of rosy meat rimmed with golden pastry. There were immaculate vegetables in white and gold dishes, and Janice was praised again for the excellence of her dinner.
‘You’re not a very great talker,’ Jimmy said to Nina as they ate their beef.
The conversation had turned from ski-ing to cars. Hannah was resting her chin in her hands as she sighed, ‘I love my little 325. It’s soooo sexy.’
‘I don’t know much about cars,’ Nina answered neutrally.
‘But are you not interested in what they tell you about their owners?’
She thought, I can’t remember Gordon’s. She had spent more than an hour sitting in it, but she had no idea what variety it was. Something grey and solid. Not like him. That’s a stupid game.
‘What would you guess Darcy drives?’ Jimmy pursued.
‘Let me think. I know, a red Porsche.’
‘Wrong,’ he scoffed. ‘That’s what I would choose, if I could afford it. No, Darcy has a Maserati. Obviously. And a Range Rover for the mud and when he mixes with the county. Which are usually one and the same thing.’
‘Quite true,’ Darcy said equably from her other side. ‘Jimmy is only jealous, of course.’
Nina found herself laughing. Jimmy Rose was amusing, in his sharp way.
‘Who would not be jealous of the man who possesses Wilton Manor, a Maserati and Hannah?’
‘I thought I might buy myself a car,’ Nina heard herself saying.
‘Haven’t you got one? No heavenly chariot?’ Jimmy’s eyebrows peaked.
Quickly she said, ‘I used to have an Alfa Romeo Spyder, but I sold it.’
‘Beautiful machines,’ Andrew pronounced.
‘Sexy machines,’ Jimmy added.
‘You must buy another glamorous car because you are a glamorous person,’ Hannah told her with slightly drunken assertiveness, and Nina found herself smiling across the table at Star. Even though Star had talked and laughed almost as much as the others her voice was cool, and Nina had the impression that she had held herself aloof from the mood of the party. Perhaps it was her intention to act as an antidote to Jimmy, who had made more noise than anyone else.
‘Then you will have to advise me, Hannah.’
Andrew had cleared away the dinner plates and now there were individual chocolate souffles, with cocoa-brown crusts puffed high above the white rims of their dishes. There was another chorus of admiration.
‘The person to ask is Gordon.’ Hannah waggled her spoon at him. ‘Gordon knows the most, Gordon is an engine expert even more than Andrew, even though he’s staying pretty buttoned up tonight. What’s the matter, Gordon? Post-natal depression?’
Janice stood up, not very steadily. ‘Coffee for everyone? Andrew, what else have we got for people to drink?’
He sighed, ‘She’ll have a headache all day tomorrow, you know.’
‘So long as she doesn’t have one tonight.’ Jimmy winked.
Nina slipped out of her chair. Jimmy hopped to his feet and drew it back for her with a flourish. Janice waved a hand.
‘Use my bathroom, Nina. First on the left up the stairs. The downstairs one is probably full of trainers and rugby shorts. The boys never pick up a thing.’
It was a relief to escape the hot room and the smoke from Darcy’s cigar. The hall was cool and dark. Nina went slowly up the stairs, peering in the dimness at the gilt-framed pictures on the walls. She opened a door and saw the Frosts’ bedroom, with a light on in the bathroom beyond it. There was a thick carpet sculpted into patterns, and a long wall of mirrored cupboards. Janice’s negligee was laid out across one corner of the plump bed. Nina tiptoed like an intruder. On a tallboy there was a silver-framed photograph of a slimmer Janice in her wedding dress, one hand holding back a billow of net veiling. Nina picked it up, and the breath of her curiosity fogged the polished silver. She replaced the picture hastily and went on into the bathroom.
There were more mirrors in here, and polished chrome rails with neatly folded towels. The towels were cream with satiny flowers appliqued in the corners. Nina wondered if Andrew and Janice liked to admire themselves in their mirrors when they made love in here or in the bedroom, watching the reflections of their coupling receding into infinity.
She sat down without locking the door.
Gordon had left the table. He could think of nothing but finding Nina, and securing a few seconds of her for himself, away from the intolerable repetitive babble of the dinner party.
He opened the bathroom door and saw her. She looked up at him, shocked, like a scared little girl with her tights twisted around her knees and her ankles crossed.
‘What are you doing here?’
He was touched by her anger and shame at being caught in the act of peeing.
‘I wanted to see you. There’s nothing to hide.’
She finished, then dried herself and straightened her clothes with the neat womanly movements that he loved.
‘They’ll notice we’re both missing.’
‘No, they won’t. They’ll think I’m downstairs with the rugby shorts.’
They moved together, and after they had kissed he held her face between his hands and examined it intently.
‘I called you. I called you all weekend.’
‘I ran away,’ she told him simply.
‘Don’t run away again.’
‘There’s
