she must have looked, back turned to the room and arms plunged in the sink.
‘I have mingled,’ she said. The man was very good-looking. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed him before, then tried briefly to work out how much wine she had drunk before abandoning the calculation. ‘Then I saw that this needed doing. I thought I’d help Jane out a bit.’ There was no need to justify herself; she hoped she wasn’t doing it because he had black curly hair and a face that made her think of a prize-fighter’s before the puffy disfigurement.
‘Jane?’
Harriet was startled. ‘This is Jane’s party. Jane’s house. You were dancing with her an hour ago.’ She felt lighthearted. She didn’t immediately connect the lightheartedness with relief at finding that he didn’t know who Jane was.
‘That Jane. I’ve just met her. I’m staying with some people and they brought me along. I didn’t know anyone when I arrived, including Jane.’
He shrugged, an attractive, apologetic shrug, and Harriet smiled at him.
‘I’ll stop washing up if you can find me a drink.’
He rummaged amongst the half-full bottles and poured out two glasses of wine. They stood in the corner by the fridge, where Harriet had found Charlie at the beginning of the evening, and made the conversation of strangers meeting at a party. The man’s name was David. The more Harriet looked at him, the more attractive he appeared.
‘Are you married, Harriet?’ David was looking down at her hands.
‘I was,’ she said neutrally.
‘So was I.’
A moment ago they had been talking about restoring houses. The mutual admission seemed at once to put them on a different footing. Harriet felt breathless and then surprised. The music from the other room had stopped for a while, but now it suddenly began again. The party was in its last, noisy throes. David took her glass out of her hand.
‘Come and dance with me.’
The living room was darkened, almost empty now. One other couple was dancing, with the music booming around them. David took her hand and they began to dance. He held her differently from the drunk teacher. The difference was that he did it right. Harriet closed her eyes, letting the music take her over. David was humming under his breath, his face close to hers. She thought how good it was to be held. How good, and how easy. They danced for quite a long time, and then something happened. David shifted his position slightly, moving from one side to squarely in front of her. He put his hands round her waist, and she knew that he was going to draw her hips against his. Then he would kiss her.
Harriet opened her eyes. The music became just a noise, although The Police were singing the same song. She didn’t want anyone to kiss her. It was a long time since anyone but Leo had done so, and she didn’t want this now. But all the time she was thinking don’t, Harriet also knew that it would be exciting to take this man home with her, and let him warm her bed and her body. It was a long time since she had done anything of the kind, but she hadn’t forgotten. They would steal into a dark room, and then blink at each other in the unwelcome light. They would take hold of each other, and their clothes would drop in tangled heaps as the two of them fastened together.
She remembered how imperative it was, and all the myriad welcome demands that came afterwards. Not just for a night and a day, something told her, but for a long time afterwards.
Only Harriet was impatient. She didn’t have any time, now, to give to the absorbing conspiracies of love.
She looked carefully at David’s face. It was a good face, one that would have stared out of a crowd at her. And behind David she saw two more of her friends, preparing to leave. Harriet slipped neatly and definitively out of the grasp of his hands.
‘I must go and say good-night.’
In the good face, the undamaged pugilist’s face, she saw a shadow of irritation. It was like a man, Harriet thought. At the same rebuff a woman might have revealed hurt, or anger, or anxiety. In a man, it was simply annoyance. She crossed the room quickly and rather unsteadily. She told herself that she had had a lot to drink, that she mustn’t drink any more.
After she had said goodnight to the couple who were leaving, Harriet went upstairs. She locked herself into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath. She studied Jane’s asparagus and spider plants grouped in their wicker basket, the bowls of soap and jars of cosmetics and creams, and the moon-face of the bathroom scales. She breathed deeply and evenly, remembering that she had felt breathless, like a silly girl. She decided that she had had a fortunate escape, and ignored the steady impulse to run downstairs and find the man again. That would be the first of the inevitable steps that would lead them back to her borrowed flat. When they reached it she would unbutton the blue shirt and wind her fingers in the black curls. It would be good and it would hurt nobody.
‘Shit,’ Harriet said aloud.
She stood up and looked at herself in the mirror over Jane’s washbasin. Then she rummaged in Jane’s quilted make-up bag and found the plum-coloured lipstick. She applied it to her own mouth, and found that it didn’t suit her either.
She didn’t know how long she had been locked in the bathroom; it was absurd to cower in there any longer. She flushed the lavatory unnecessarily and unlocked the door.
In the kitchen Jane and the last stragglers were drinking coffee.
‘I’d love some,’ Harriet said. She took the wedding mug that Bernard the vegan had used earlier and tried to interest herself in a conversation about gender bias in nursery education. She was looking out of the corner of her eye for the blue shirt, hoping that it wouldn’t reappear. When it did, there was a thick, dark sweater over it. David had come, with the couple who had brought him, to say good-night to Jane. He kissed Jane on the cheek and thanked her, but he held out his hand to Harriet. She shook it, with the certainty that he was laughing at her.
‘Perhaps we’ll meet again,’ David said. The northern accent seemed pronounced now.
‘Perhaps.’ Perfectly straightforward, neither encouraging nor unnecessarily chilly. Harriet was proud of herself but although she couldn’t see his grin, she knew it was there. She formed some words experimentally in her head, smug and arrogant amongst them.
As she watched him go, ducking his head in the doorway, she discovered that she was quite strongly tempted to run after him. She stood absolutely still, and heard the front door open and close.
Then she let her shoulders drop. It had indeed been a narrow escape. Was this going to happen, then, this knock-kneed surge of barely focussed lust, whenever she met a new man, just because Leo was no longer glowering at her side? Harriet smiled at the thought. She didn’t have time to indulge herself with anything of the kind. Tonight was an aberration, and the man’s impact was fading already. She couldn’t even remember the configuration of his boxer’s features.
‘I’ll make another pot of coffee, shall I?’ Harriet volunteered to Jane.
At last, the stayers drifted away. They engaged themselves, as late guests always did, in vehement conversations held half in and half out of the front door. But finally only Jane and Harriet herself were left to survey the damage in the kitchen.
Jane shoved a line of dirty glasses to one side and sank down on one of her pine chairs.
‘I’m
