“What about your hardstanding?” the man said. “I don’t suppose you’ve given a thought to your hardstanding. Have you?”
As they walked back to the car, Colette said, “You know, I really think, when men talk, it’s worse than when they don’t.”
Alison looked at her narrowly, sideways. She waited for more.
“Gavin never said much. He’d say nothing for such a long time that you wanted to lean over and poke your finger in him to see if he was dead. I used to say, tell me your thoughts, Gavin. You must have thoughts. You remember when we met him, in Farnham?”
Alison nodded. She had smelled, trailing after Gavin, the reek of a past life: an old tweed collar rancid with hair oil. His aura was oatmeal, grey, it was as tough as old rope.
“Well,” Colette said. She flicked her remote to open the car doors. “I wonder what he was doing in Farnham.”
“Having a run out?”
“He could shop in Twickenham.”
“Change of scene?”
“Or Richmond.” Colette chewed her pale lip. “I wonder what he wanted in Elphicks? Because when you think, he gets all he needs at car shops.”
“Perhaps he wanted a new shirt.”
“He has a wardrobe full of shirts. He has fifty shirts. He must have. I used to pay a woman to iron them. Why did
“Still,” Al said. She eased herself into her seat. “Some years have passed. Since you were together. They might be—I don’t know—frayed? His neck might have grown.”
“Oh yes,” Colette said. “He looks porky, all right. But he never did up his top button. So. Anyway. Plenty shirts.”
“But a new tie? Socks, underpants?” She felt shy; she’d never lived with a man.
“Knickers?” Colette said. “Car shops every time. Halfords. Velour for the proles, but leather for Gavin, top spec. They stock them in six-packs, shouldn’t wonder. Or else he buys them mail order from a rescue service.”
“A rescue service?”
“You know. Automobile Association. Royal Automobile Club. National Breakdown.”
“I know. But I didn’t think Gavin would need rescuing.”
“Oh, he just likes to have a badge and a personal number.”
“Have I got a personal number?”
“You are in all the major motoring organizations, Alison.”
“Belts-and-braces approach?”
“If you like.” Colette swung them out of the shed sellers’ compound, carelessly scattering a party of parents and children who were clustering about the hot-dog stand. “That’s done their arteries a favour,” Colette said. “Yes, you have several, but you don’t need to know them.”
“Perhaps I do,” Al said. “In case anything happened to you.”
“Why?” Colette was alarmed. “Are you seeing something?”
“No, no, nothing like that. Colette, don’t drive us off the road!”
Colette corrected their course. Their hearts were beating fast. The lucky opals had paled on Alison’s fists. You see, she thought. That’s how accidents happen. There was a silence.
“I don’t really like secrets,” Alison said.
“Bloody hell!” Colette said. “It’s only a few digits.” She relented. “I’ll show you where I keep them. On the computer. Which file.” Her heart sank. Why had she said that? She’d just bought an elegant little laptop, silver and pleasingly feminine. She could perch it on her knees and work in bed. But when Al loomed up with a cup of coffee for her, the keyboard started chattering and scrambled itself.
“So what about when you lived with Gavin, did he tell you his personal number?”
Colette tilted up her chin. “He kept it secret. He kept it where I couldn’t access it.”
“That seems a bit unnecessary,” Alison said, thinking, now you know how it feels, my girl.
“He wouldn’t put me on joint membership. I think he was ashamed, to phone them up and mention my car. It was all I could afford, at the time. I used to say, what’s your problem, Gavin? It gets me from A to B.”
Alison thought, if I were a great enthusiast for motoring, and somebody said “It gets me from A to B,” I think I would sneak up on them and smash their skull in with a spanner—or whatever’s good to smash skulls in, that you keep in the back of a car.
“We’d have rows.” Colette said. “He thought I should have a better car. Something flash. He thought I should run up debt.”
Debt and dishonour, Al thought. Oh dear. Oh dear and damnation. If somebody said to me, “What’s your problem?” in that tone of voice, I would probably wait till they were snoring and drive a hot needle through their tongue.
“And as it worked out, I was putting so much into the household—his ironing and so on—I went through a whole winter without cover. Anything could have happened. I could have broken down in the middle of nowhere —”
