can turn into a story, snigger over; it’s an explanation they can give themselves, for what would otherwise remain the complete mystery of human relationships. There were other mysteries, which loomed large to her and hardly loomed at all for Gavin: what are we here for, what will happen next? It was no use trying to explain to him that without the fortune-tellers she had become afraid to act at all; that she liked to know that things were her fate, that she didn’t like life to be arbitrary. It was no use telling him either that she thought she might be psychic herself. The incident of the posthumous phone call, if it had ever sunk into his mind, had been chemically erased by the vodka he had drunk the night she moved out; this was lucky for her, because when next day he found his computer trashed he thought he had only himself to blame.
“Don’t you want to ask anything?” she asked. “Like where I’m living?”
“So where are you living, Colette?” he said sarcastically.
“With a friend.”
“Jesus, you’ve got a friend?”
“But from next week I’ve arranged a house share in Twickenham. I’ll have to start paying rent, so I need the flat to be sold.”
“All we need is a buyer.”
“No, all we need is a seller.”
“What?”
“Put it on the market.”
“I have. Last week.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” She slammed her glass down. “Why didn’t you just come out and say that?”
“I would if I could get a word in edgewise. Besides, I thought you’d get a tip-off from the spirits. I thought they’d say, a strange man is walking around your bedroom with a steel measure.”
Colette threw herself back in her seat; but it was strangely curved, and pushed her forward again, so her diaphragm was against the table’s edge. “So how much did they suggest?” He told her. “That’s far too low. They must think you’re an idiot. And they could be right. Leave it, Gavin, leave it. I’ll get on to it tomorrow. I’ll phone them myself.”
“They said, realistic price for a quick sale.”
“More likely they’ve got a mate lined up, who they’re selling it on to.”
“That’s your trouble.” Gavin scratched his armpit. “You’re paranoid.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You use words without any idea what they mean. All you know is stupid jargon out of car mags. Recarro seats. Spicy lesbo chicks. That’s all you know.”
Gavin turned down his mouth and shrugged. “So. You want anything?”
“Yes. I want my life back.”
“From the flat.”
“I’ll make a list.”
“Anything you want now?”
“The kitchen knives.”
“Why?”
“They’re good ones. Japanese. You don’t want them. You won’t cook.”
“I might want to cut something.”
“Use your teeth.”
He took a pull on his lager. She finished her spritzer.
“If that’s all?” she said. She gathered her bag and her jacket. “I want everything in writing, about the flat. Tell the agents, all the paperwork must be copied to me. I want full consultation at every point.” She stood up. “I’ll be ringing every two days to check on progress.”
“I’ll look forward to that.”
“Not you. The agent. Have you got their card?”
“No. Not on me. Come back and get it.”
Alarm flared inside her. Was he intending to mug her, or rape her? “Send it to me,” she said.
“I don’t have your address.”
“Send it to the office.”
When she got to the door it occurred to her that it might have been his single, clumsy effort at reconciliation. She glanced back. His head was down, and he was leafing through his magazine again. No chance, anyway. She would rather take out her appendix with nail scissors than go back to Gavin.
The encounter, though, had bruised her. Gavin was the first person, she thought, that I was ever really frank and honest with; at home, there wasn’t much premium on frankness, and she’d never had a girlfriend she was really close to, not since she was fifteen. She’d opened her heart to him, such as it was. And for what? Probably, when she opened her heart, he hadn’t even been listening. The night of Renee’s death she had seen him as he truly was: callow and ignorant and not even ashamed of it, not even asking her why she was so panicked, not even appreciating that his mother’s death woudn’t, by itself, have affected her like that: but shouldn’t it have affected him? Had he even bothered to go to the crematorium, or had he left it all to Carole? When she thought back to that night, which (she now knew) was the last night of her marriage, a peculiar disjointed, unstrung sensation occurred in her head, as if her thoughts and her feelings had been joined together by a zip, and the zip had broken. She had
