her jumpiness.
‘Babes, it’s me.’ Saskia’s husky voice pours into her ear like warm oil.
Despite having been educated at an elite girls’ boarding school, and growing up riding ponies and skiing, Saskia’s diction wouldn’t be out of place at a gathering of Pearly Kings and Queens.
Her Mockney affectation sometimes irritates Melissa, but she is also one of the warmest people she has ever met. She laughs like a navvy and can infect Melissa with a dose of humour when she is otherwise unable to feel it. Her loyalty during the Sam episode will never be forgotten by Melissa. Saskia knows all too well what it is like to be cheated on, and the father of her teenage son was sent packing a few years previously.
‘What’s up?’ she says, stifling a yawn. The idea of lying down on the scuffed, smelly seat of the car and taking a nap feels worryingly tempting.
‘Not much,’ says Saskia. ‘Just wondered if you need any last-minute help? I know you have caterers in but I’m about if you need me.’
‘That’s really sweet, Sass, but I think I’m all sorted.’
There’s a brief silence before Saskia speaks again. ‘And has there been any change of heart …?’
Melissa sighs. ‘Nope. He claims it’s “totally unavoidable”. Can you believe him?’
Saskia groans and then Melissa hears the suck and pop of her cigarette.
‘Fuck Mark,’ says Saskia. ‘I’m going to be there to make sure it’s the best damned party ever. Nathe is coming along and he can be your barman or something.’
Melissa smiles. ‘I can always rely on you.’
‘Love ya.’ Saskia hangs up.
The car has been stuck in a jam for the last few minutes and Melissa cranes now to see what is going on.
‘Some sort of hold-up, is there?’ she says to the driver, whose eyes are now framed in the rear-view mirror as he looks back at her.
‘There’s a lorry that was fannying around unloading something at the back of Asda, but it looks like we’re moving now. In a hurry?’
Melissa nods and then turns to the window. She has no interest in chatting through the rest of this journey. As the taxi hums back into movement again, the driver doesn’t attempt any further conversation.
They turn down leafy streets where the houses are set back from the road. Several of the houses have original stone sculptures on the gateposts, and when Tilly was little she loved what she called the ‘stone piggies’ that stand sentry at Hester’s gate.
Melissa swears under her breath as she sees the other woman walking just ahead. Hester has managed to get back before her. Not prepared to risk being stuck with her on the doorstep, Melissa switches on a smile for the driver.
‘Could I ask you to pull over just here?’ she says and she sees his rectangular gaze, harder now.
‘Sure,’ he says.
She spends some time pretending to look for money, until she is sure Hester is safely inside.
I am starting to wonder whether I did the right thing in leaving the library so hastily.
The afternoon has trickled by in a succession of mindless television programmes, which flicker and squawk away in the background. I’m not watching any of them really, but I’m loth to turn them off. They provide a buffer against the silence.
I keep picturing them all in the pub, getting steadily more inebriated. Faces will be flushed now with alcohol, bulbous elderly noses spidered with red veins, mouths open and revealing yellowing dentures as they laugh and laugh and laugh. At me. I’m sure they will be having a right old time of it. ‘Silly, funny old Hester,’ they’ll say. ‘Isn’t she the strange one?’
Damn them all.
I know full well what Terry would have made of this.
He was always telling me I was too quick to act, too rash. He’d get that look, the one that seemed to suggest he was a man who required a superhuman level of forbearance.
‘Hester, you need to give people a chance,’ he’d whine. ‘You’re so quick to judge.’
What he really meant was, ‘Hester, you should let people walk all over you.’
I never anticipated how much he would still haunt me, fifteen years after he died. He seems to be there, yacking away in my head, almost all the time.
My mouth feels stale and I go to pick up my cup of tea but discover that it is quite cold. I must have been sitting here even longer than I had realized. This happens sometimes. I sit down to watch television, and before I know it, it’s time to put Bertie out and I don’t even remember what I’ve been watching. I gulp it down anyway, wincing a little at the way it coats my mouth with a milky film.
It is then that I hear the purring of a vehicle stopping outside. I get to my feet and go to the bay window that looks out onto the street. An Ocado van has just pulled up outside, directly below my window. The driver, a balding coloured man of indeterminate middle age, hefts himself out of the front and noisily opens the doors on the side of the van. I part a gap in my nets, noticing the sickly greyness that tells me it’s time I washed them again, and stand to the side of the window just so. From this position I can clearly see the contents of the large plastic crates as they are disgorged from the back.
For some reason Melissa has her delivery arrive without carrier bags and it means that I can see exactly what she has ordered from week to week. She has no qualms, it seems, about showing the world all the intimate items, the tampons and deodorants, the panty liners and cotton buds, but I suppose we are all different.
I can tell a lot about the domestic cycles of the house from the shopping. I know when Tilly is home from school because there are slabs of Diet Coca-Cola in the mix, or when Mark is away because the expensive bottled beers he favours are missing. When Melissa is on her own, the shopping contains a lot of organic, low-calorie ready meals. Heaven knows why she needs to diet. Melissa has a wonderful figure and, if anything, could do with a little more meat on her bones.
But this time as I watch the crates emerging from the back of the van it becomes apparent that this is no ordinary delivery.
There’s always rather a lot of alcohol but today I see boxes of what looks like champagne. And is that … Pimm’s?
More crates are yanked from the van with a scraping sound and now I see forests of French sticks in one. Another is positively crammed with expensive soft fruits such as mangoes and bright strawberries. The colours glow, jewel-like, in this grey afternoon and fill me with a dull ache of longing somewhere around my sternum.
Glancing at my own fruit bowl, I see it contains one banana, stippled and overripe, and a forlorn tangerine that has lost its gloss and looks dry to the touch. I sigh and turn back to the window.
The driver closes the doors of the vehicle
