the summer, as Thelma’s criticisms multiplied, Eddie found himself warming towards Angel. The process was gradual and subtle. She would smile at him as they passed in the hall, or ask him what he thought the weather was going to do this morning and listen to his answer as if his opinion really counted. When Thelma was being more than usually absurd, Angel would occasionally glance at Eddie; and when their eyes met there was the delicious sense of a shared secret, of shared amusement.
Eddie was flattered and alarmed by these hints. Women had never shown any interest in him before, especially not beautiful women like Angel. Not that he liked her specifically as a woman, he told himself, but as a person. And there was no doubt that her beauty affected the way he responded to her: it added significance to everything she said and did.
Then came the first Sunday in September. It was a fine late summer day, and after breakfast Eddie decided to walk up to the Heath. (Since his father’s death he had lost his fear of going out.) He happened to glance back as he was walking up Haverstock Hill and noticed, some way behind him, Angel walking slowly in the same direction. Her presence irritated him. On his walks he liked to be among strangers. He quickened his pace and cut down the next side road. He looked back more than once but there was no sign of her. He thought that she had probably continued up Rosslyn Hill to Hampstead Village.
He spent a pleasant hour on the Heath. It was a place he avoided in the evenings because parts of it were rough and dangerous and, they said, haunted by men doing horrible things to each other. But in daytime at weekends and during the holidays the Heath was full of children, some with grown-ups, some without. Eventually he found a bench on Parliament Hill and watched irritable fathers flying kites for bored children. Below him stretched the city, brick and stone, glass and tarmac, blues and greys and greens, trembling like a live thing in the haze.
To Eddie’s delight, two girls of about eight began to do gymnastics near his bench. They were of an age when they were still unselfconscious about their bodies, when competition came naturally to them. One was wearing jeans, but the other – a girl with a pale, serious face spotted with freckles – wore a sweatshirt over a skimpy dress. Eddie watched her covertly. He tried to decide whether she was consciously teasing him, as Alison used to do in that far-off summer when she swung higher and higher, revealing more and more, and pretending that she didn’t know he was watching her. He stared at her, wondering how soft the skin would be above the bony knees.
Then, with an abruptness which made him gasp, this pleasant reverie was shattered.
‘Aren’t they sweet?’ Angel sat down beside him. ‘All that energy. Where do they get it from?’
Eddie stared wildly at her. Her sudden appearance would have shocked him in normal circumstances and brought about another attack of shyness. But this was worse. Had his face revealed something of his thoughts? Angel was a nanny. She would be alert for strange men who watched children.
‘It’s a lovely day for the Heath. The best part of summer.’
‘Yes,’ he managed to say. ‘Very sunny.’
The breeze blew a strand of her hair towards him. She smoothed it back into place. For an instant her sleeve brushed his and he smelt her perfume. She was wearing a blue sweatshirt and jeans. Her left hand was now lying on her leg, long-fingered, smooth-skinned, the nails not quite oval but egg-shaped, with the narrow ends embedded in the fingers; she wore no rings.
He looked away, worried that she might think he was staring at her. To his relief the two girls were running down the hill, shrieking to someone below. He no longer had to worry about betraying his interest in them.
‘Would you like one?’ Bewildered, Eddie turned towards her, for a moment thinking she was referring to the girls. But Angel was holding out a packet of Polos to him, the foil at the end of the tube peeled back. He took one because a refusal might offend her. For a moment they sat in silence. The mint seemed unnaturally strong, and he coughed.
‘I like coming here,’ Angel said. ‘So nice to see the children playing.’
Eddie bit hard on the Polo, and it disintegrated. Two boys on the fringe of puberty raced by on their bikes. One of them dropped a crisp packet as he passed.
‘When they’re older, they’re not nearly so appealing. Don’t you agree?’ She seemed not to expect an answer. ‘But I wouldn’t like to have children around all the time. They can be very tiring. What about you?’
Hastily he swallowed the fragments of Polo, the sharp edges snagging against his throat. ‘I’m sorry?’
She smiled at him. ‘I wondered if you’d like children of your own. I know I wouldn’t.’
‘No.’ The word came out much more vehemently than Eddie had intended. He thought of the boys on the bicycles, of Mandy and Sian at Dale Grove Comprehensive, and of all the children who grew up. He was frightened that he might have revealed too much, so he took refuge in a generality. ‘I think there’re far too many people in the world as it is. Five and a half billion, isn’t it, and more being born every day.’
Angel nodded, her face serious. ‘That’s a very good point.’ Her tone implied that she’d never considered the question from that angle before. ‘Still, they are sweet when they’re young, aren’t they? That’s what I like about my job. I get most of the fun, but none of the long-term responsibility.’
‘That must be nice.’
They sat there for another five minutes, talking in spurts about the city below them and its history. Slowly Eddie relaxed. He was surprised to find that he was enjoying the conversation, or rather the novelty of having someone to talk to.
‘By the way, how did our road get its name?’ Angel asked. ‘I asked your mother but she didn’t know.’
‘It’s because back in the Middle Ages the land round there used to belong to the Bishop of Rosington.’
A cloud slid across the sun.
‘I thought it might be that. It’s getting cold.’ Angel hugged herself, dramatizing the words. ‘Shall we find a cup of coffee? There’s a café on South End Green.’
Before Eddie knew what was happening, they were walking down the hill together. He felt lighter than usual, floating like a spaceman. This can’t be happening to me. Part of him would have liked to run away, but this was swamped by other feelings: running away would be a very rude thing to do; he was flattered to be in Angel’s company, and even hoped that someone he knew would see them; and he also liked the sense, obscure but powerful, that by being together he and Angel were somehow fooling his mother. For once, Eddie was not alone; he was part of a couple, and two was company. Soon they were sitting at a table by themselves, with coffee sending up twin pillars of steam between them.
‘This is nice.’ Angel smiled at him. ‘It’s good to get out. I worry about your mother sometimes. She spends so much time in the house.’
‘Oh, she likes being at home. She’s always been like that, even when my father was alive.’
‘As long as it makes her happy.’
‘She’s getting old,’ Eddie said, meaning that he couldn’t imagine how old people could be happy.
Angel answered the thought, not the words: ‘Old age is very sad. I’d hate to be old.’ For an instant, her face changed: she pressed her lips and frowned; wrinkles gouged their way across her skin,
