‘Was that … not what you were expecting?’ I said.
She didn’t answer at first, just took a few steps back, giving me a slightly incredulous glance. ‘I think I’d better go,’ she said.
‘Poppy – ’ I began; but words failed me.
‘Look, Max.’ She came a little closer: that was something, at any rate. ‘Do you not get it?’
‘Get it? Get what?’
‘What tonight was about? What it was for?’
I frowned. What was she talking about?
‘Max –’ She gave a little sigh of despair. ‘You’re twenty years older than me. You and I could never be … a
She tailed off, but it wasn’t the hardest sentence in the world to complete, even for a dimwit like me.
‘OK. I see. I get it. Goodnight, Poppy. Thanks for walking me to the station.’
‘Max, I’m sorry.’
‘No need to be sorry. Don’t worry. I get it now. It was a kind thought. And your mother’s a very attractive woman. Lovely, in fact. Just not my … not my type, I’m afraid.’
She may have tried to answer me, I don’t know. I turned away and without looking back walked down the stairs towards the ticket barriers. My face was burning and I could feel tears of humiliation pricking my eyes. I brushed them away with the sleeve of my jacket as I fumbled in my pocket for my Oyster card.
You might have thought that things couldn’t have got any worse that night. But they did. Out of some weird masochistic impulse I checked the emails on my Liz Hammond account and saw that Caroline had written her a message, attaching – as requested – a copy of her latest short story. It was called ‘The Nettle Pit’.
I swear to you that my heart stopped beating for a few seconds when I saw this title. She
While the story was printing out, I went to fetch myself a drink. There wasn’t much in the house, so I had to make do with vodka. My hands were shaking. Why put myself through this, after that dreadful parting from Poppy? Wasn’t it enough that an evening on which I’d been pinning so many (false) hopes had already ended in catastrophe?
It was no use. I was powerless in the face of a morbid curiosity that made me drag my steps into the sitting room, vodka in one hand, ten printed sheets of A4 in the other. I flopped down on to the charcoal-coloured Ikea sofa, glared at the framed photograph of Caroline, Lucy and the Christmas tree which looked back at me mockingly from the mantelpiece, and then began to read. Began to read
‘“Cheating” is an interesting concept, don’t you think?’ said Chris.
‘How do you mean?’ said Max.
Caroline stood against the kitchen sink and watched the two men talking. Even from this seemingly insignificant exchange, she felt that she could detect a world of difference between them. Chris was a skilled and attractive conversationalist: however small the subject, he would approach it enquiringly, quizzically, endeavouring always to penetrate to the truth and confident that he would get there. Max was perpetually nervous and uncertain – nervous even now, in conversation with the man who was (or so he liked to tell everyone, including himself) his oldest and closest friend. It made her wonder – not for the first time, on this holiday – exactly why the fondness between these two men had endured for so long.
‘What I mean is, as adults, we don’t talk about cheating much, do we?’
‘You can cheat on your wife,’ said Max, perhaps a touch too wistfully.
‘That’s the obvious exception,’ Chris conceded. ‘But otherwise – the concept seems to disappear, doesn’t it, some time around teenagerhood? I mean, in football, you talk of players fouling each other, but not cheating. Athletes take performance-enhancing drugs but when it’s reported on the news the newsreader doesn’t say that so and so’s been caught
‘Look, I’m sorry –’ Max began.
‘No, I’m not talking about today,’ said Chris. ‘Forget about it. It’s no big deal.’
Earlier that afternoon Max’s daughter, Lucy, had been involved in a fierce and tearful argument with Chris’s youngest, Sara, over alleged cheating during a game of French cricket. They had been playing on the huge expanse of lawn at the front of the house and their screams of reprimand and denial had been heard all over the farm, bringing members of both families running from every direction. The two girls had not spoken to each other since. Even now they were sitting at opposite ends of the farmhouse, one of them frowning over her Nintendo DS, the other flicking through the TV channels, struggling to find anything acceptable to watch on Irish television.
Chris continued: ‘Is Lucy curious about money yet?’
‘Not really. We give her a pound every week. She puts it in a piggy bank.’
‘Yes, but does she ever ask you where the money comes from in the first place? How banks work, and that sort of thing.’
‘She’s only seven,’ said Max.
‘Mm. Well, Joe’s getting pretty interested in all that stuff. He was asking me for a crash course in economics today.’
