Hannah. Don’t worry if I’m late.’
Lucy ran out to the car she shared with Cathy. It was dark, but there was a faint luminosity in the sky that promised lighter evenings. She backed the car hastily and made a turn that sent an arc of gravel pattering over the grass beyond the driveway. Hannah, carrying Laura and the hot milk, saw her tail lights through the glass of the front door as a pair of red eyes in the darkness.
Jimmy Rose waited in his car.
They had arranged to meet at a place they had used before, in a quiet lane between Grafton and Wilton. It was the same field gateway where Gordon had sat on Boxing Day after making his last visit to Nina, and Jimmy also could see the distant lights of Darcy’s house on its hill. After a few moments he was able to distinguish the lights of a car coming towards him. The glow brightened and switched direction with the sharp bends in the lane, and he knew that she was driving much too fast.
The dazzle of lights approached him, separated abruptly into twin beams as Lucy braked her Renault, and raked over his face as she swung into the gateway beside him. In the darkness that followed the door of her car opened and slammed shut, and he saw the pale blur of her face and hands as she ran to the passenger door of his car. A second later she was inside in the warmth beside him.
They kissed without speaking, her fingers splayed on the back of his neck as she pulled him closer to her.
‘You were driving too fast,’ he said at last, when he lifted his head.
Lucy’s smile showed her white teeth and the glint of her tongue in the dim light.
‘I always drive too fast.’
‘You’re a silly girl. I don’t want you to smash yourself up.’
She answered him by winding her arm around his neck again, searching for his mouth with her tongue, an eager girl. Jimmy’s hand found her knee, then her long thigh in some thick, dark stocking material and the stretchy hem of her tiny skirt.
‘Ah, God, Lucy, I’ve missed you. A week’s too long.’
‘It isn’t my fault that we haven’t seen each other for a week.’ Her voice was soft, teasing him, but Jimmy had sharp enough ears to hear the scratch of complaint in it.
‘Of course it isn’t. If I could do anything more I would, you know that. Only the truth is that you shouldn’t be wasting your time with an old married man like me.’
He felt the muscles of her smooth cheek move against his. Her hand touched his leg and then insinuated itself between his inner thigh and his groin. Jimmy winced pleasurably at the effect of it and shifted his position a little.
‘It isn’t a waste of time,’ Lucy whispered.
Jimmy knew that. It wasn’t difficult to respond to Lucy Clegg, but she took her own pleasure in him in turn as eagerly and directly as anyone he had ever known. He shifted his hand under her jacket to the front of her blouse, sliding his fingers inside it to find warm silky skin as his mouth searched for hers again.
But Lucy sat up abruptly and flicked her hair back from her face.
‘Where are we going tonight?’ she asked.
‘Ah, to heaven and back, I hope.’
‘Where are we going first? I want to go somewhere, Jimmy, not just to sit in the car. I’ve got all dressed up for you.’
There was a distinctly plaintive note now. Jimmy sighed inaudibly.
‘I can see. You look, and smell, fantastic.’
In fact he did not much mind what Lucy wore, so long as it came off easily. But she rewarded him for the compliment by sliding closer again, warming his face with her breath.
‘I want to go somewhere with you, for once, the two of us as if you were really mine.’
For once? Jimmy thought. He had only been seeing Lucy Clegg for two months, but perhaps that brief interval felt like a much longer time to a nineteen-year-old.
‘I am yours,’ he soothed. ‘Look, here I am. It’s these precious hours that count, not the ordinary ones in between.’ He was thinking rapidly as he spoke. ‘Come on, I’ll take you for a drink.’
There was a pub about ten miles the other side of Wilton that should be safe enough, and there would still be time afterwards. Star would be back from the Williamford parent-teacher evening, but that couldn’t be helped. He would think of something. It was Darcy finding out that he really wanted to avoid; it was comfortable knowing he was away.
Jimmy switched on the ignition, and Lucy’s triumphant smile was illuminated for him in the glow from the dashboard. She put her hand back on his thigh, her fingers grazing against him so that his dwindling erection immediately recharged itself.
*
Star came home and found the house in darkness, although Jimmy had not mentioned that he was going out. She went into the kitchen and made herself a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea, listening to the mixer tap dripping into the sink without bothering to turn it off or to switch on the radio to drown it out. She carried her supper into the dining room and sat down at the table with a pile of exercise books that were waiting to be marked.
Star picked up her red pen, but the silence of the house pressed into her. She could feel it like a weight on her head and on her hands.
When she looked at the walls she saw that the striped wallpaper was beginning to peel at the joins, and there was a film of dust on the shallow skirting. The vertical blinds at the windows were of a design she no longer liked; everywhere her eyes turned there seemed to be evidence of neglect. Jimmy and she lived in this house, but it was a long time since they had done anything to improve or cherish it. Star tried to offer herself the excuse that they lacked the money; it was true that they had her income, but Jimmy’s conference- organizing business had recently almost collapsed. He had never been as successful as the other Grafton men, but until quite lately they had been able to make wry jokes about that to one another. Now there were no jokes, but she knew quite well that there was enough money to look after the house, if either of them had cared sufficiently about it.
The truth was, Star thought, that it was good enough as it stood to enclose what existed within it.
She twisted the top off her pen and drew the pile of books closer to hand. Even in here she could hear the drumbeat of the dripping tap.
It was five minutes to midnight, and she was on the second-to-last book, when she heard Jimmy’s car pull into the space in front of the house.
‘Hello there,’ he called out as the front door rattled shut behind him. ‘Shall I lock up?’
Star waited until his sandy face appeared round the door, his pointy eyebrows raised.
‘Unless you’re planning to go out again,’ she said.
‘Would I be, at this time of night?’
‘How would I know that?’
‘Oh, dear God, what’s the matter now? How was the school evening?’
Star gazed down at the work in front of her.
