‘Perfect if it were an inch tighter. The belt needs one more hole.’ She looked cast down. ‘But how to make it? I suppose there must be a way. We’ve got till Wednesday. Do you know, I expect Karina, she’s so practical . . . But no. Not worth it. Jealous little madam, she is.’
‘Is she all right?’
Lynette shook her head. ‘I hardly see her. She never speaks . . . Well, you’ve seen how she is at breakfast. I come home in the afternoon and I always seem to have missed her. But I know she’s been in because there’s a Mussolini.’
‘A what?’
‘A sweater. Clammy and like a corpse and hanging upside down. And at dinner, of course, she can’t speak, for eating. Then she’s off across the corridor, making soup.’
I remembered Niall’s advice. ‘She has always had a pathological appetite,’ I said.
‘We could make a hole with a big nail,’ Julia said.
‘Yes, but we don’t have one about our person.’
Julia put her head into C2. ‘Have you got a big nail? Or have you got a pair of scissors, a really huge, powerful pair?’
Claire and Sue were sitting on their beds. They looked up and stared. Both of them were white-faced. Slowly, they shook their heads. Julia drew the door shut.
‘What’s up with them?’ she said.
‘Claire says that as a Christian she can’t connive at the taking of an unborn baby’s life.’
Julia snorted. ‘Who’s asking her to?’
‘Sue might need people to cover for her while she’s away for a few days. Tell a story for her.’
‘She should have it done on a Saturday,’ Julia said. ‘She’ll be discharged on Sunday, and then she can stay out of sight and say she’s got twenty-four-hour flu. That will cover it. Has she seen somebody yet?’
‘I think she might want to have it.’
Julia gave me one of her looks, what I called her rapacious looks: plundering the thoughts out of people’s hearts. ‘Tell me everything,’ she demanded.
‘Not in the corridor,’ I said.
We went from door to door, saying to the Sophies, ‘Has anyone got a corkscrew we could borrow?’
‘What! Celebrating?’ the Sophies trilled.
The next morning, on my way down Drury Lane, I called at the shoe-repairers. I drew Lynette’s belt out of my bag. It lay on the counter like an intractable serpent. ‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘could you make me another hole in this?’
It was done in a second. I took out my purse. ‘We wouldn’t charge for that, Miss,’ the man said. I thanked him. The smell of the shop – feet, leather, tobacco – made me slightly faint, but I felt pleased at getting something for nothing. It was unprecedented.
That evening, as everyone sat in C3 drinking coffee, I tried out the effect. Neither Sue nor I had been down to dinner. ‘A thing called beef cobbler,’ Lynette said. ‘The last word in grossness. Brown-coloured cartilage in gravy, with some sort of hard pastry islands foundering in viscous mud, a reptilian – oh, sorry, Fifi!’
‘It’s OK,’ Sue said. Her fingers padded the place below her cheekbones, like an anxious woman in an operetta; tenderly, she felt the bones of her face, as if seeking a pressure-point that would postpone nausea and her decision.
Julia sat on her bed with her knees beneath her chin and her arms looped around her shins. I realized that she was trying to be as small as possible so that she could observe Sue without scaring her. The worst had happened, and to one of us; the Tonbridge Hall nightmare had come true, and naturally it was of interest. Julia was still and quiet; myself, I wanted to scream. Mrs Webster sat on her shelf, looking jocular.
‘Turn round,’ Lynette said to me. ‘Good. Yes. The flowers are spectacular, and you are achieving triangulation.’
The belt sat below my ribs, its hard edge seeming to elevate them. I tried to slip my finger between wool and leather: I couldn’t. ‘And yet . . .’ I said. ‘A half-inch . . .’ Sue clasped her hands against her diaphragm, and moaned.
‘Oh, come on!’ Claire said. ‘It’s stupid, Sue, all this agonizing and attention-seeking. You know the answer, you know the right thing to do. The right thing for you, and for everybody concerned. Just make up your mind – have the courage of your convictions.’
Sue whimpered.
‘It’s taking a life,’ Claire said. ‘It is, you know it is.’ Her face reddened, her spots glowed. ‘Talk to Roger. Sit down and talk to him. Talk to your parents. A family conference, that’s what you need.’
‘I cannot believe,’ Lynette said idly, ‘that this advice is sound.’
‘Everybody will rally round. You’ll see. Listen, Sue, you know the selfish choice is never the right one. Think of the baby. It’s part of you. Part of him.’
Julia raised her head. Her cheeks flushed, and her lip curled. I didn’t think she would condescend to argue with Claire. Nor did she. ‘You get fucked first,’ she said. ‘Give advice after.’
Next morning – a mild bright day – I went back to the shoe-repairers. ‘I’m presuming on your good-will,’ I said.
I showed with my finger where the next hole should be punched. ‘There you are, my darling,’ the man said. ‘If it weren’t for the wife I’d take you home and fatten you up myself.’
