comparing notes on their centres—the food, the towels, that kind of thing—and I was always part of the conversation because they kept asking me about other centres, if this or that was normal. Ruth’s walk was much steadier now and when we came to the fence, and I held up the wire, she hardly hesitated.
We got in the car, again with Tommy in the back, and for a while there was a perfectly okay feeling between us. Maybe, looking back, there was an atmosphere of something being held back, but it’s possible I’m only thinking that now because of what happened next.
The way it began, it was a bit like a repeat of earlier. We’d got back onto the long near-empty road, and Ruth made some remark about a poster we were passing. I don’t even remember the poster now, it was just one of those huge advertising images on the roadside. She made the remark almost to herself, obviously not meaning much by it. She said something like: “Oh my God, look at that one. You’d think they’d at least
But Tommy said from the back: “Actually I quite like that one. It’s been in the newspapers as well. I think it’s got something.”
Maybe I was wanting that feeling again, of me and Tommy being brought close together. Because although the walk to the boat had been fine in itself, I was starting to feel that apart from our first embrace, and that moment in the car earlier on, Tommy and I hadn’t really had much to do with each other. Anyway, I found myself saying:
“Actually, I like it too. It takes a lot more effort than you’d think, making up these posters.”
“That’s right,” Tommy said. “Someone told me it takes weeks and weeks putting something like that together. Months even. People sometimes work all night on them, over and over, until they’re just right.”
“It’s too easy,” I said, “to criticise when you’re just driving by.”
“Easiest thing in the world,” Tommy said.
Ruth said nothing, and kept looking at the empty road in front of us. Then I said:
“Since we’re on the subject of posters. There was one I noticed on the way out. It should be coming up again pretty soon. It’ll be on our side this time. It should come up any time now.”
“What’s it of?” Tommy asked.
“You’ll see. It’ll be coming up soon.”
I glanced at Ruth beside me. There was no anger in her eyes, just a kind of wariness. There was even a sort of hope, I thought, that when the poster appeared, it would be perfectly innocuous—something that reminded us of Hailsham, something like that. I could see all of this in her face, the way it didn’t quite settle on any one expression, but hovered tentatively. All the time, her gaze remained fixed in front of her.
I slowed down the car and pulled over, bumping up onto the rough grass verge.
“Why are we stopping, Kath?” Tommy asked.
“Because you can see it best from here. Any nearer, we have to look up at it too much.”
I could hear Tommy shifting behind us, trying to get a better view. Ruth didn’t move, and I wasn’t even sure she was looking at the poster at all.
“Okay, it’s not exactly the same,” I said after a moment. “But it reminded me. Open-plan office, smart smiling people.”
Ruth stayed silent, but Tommy said from the back: “I get it. You mean, like that place we went to that time.”
“Not only that,” I said. “It’s a lot like that ad. The one we found on the ground. You remember, Ruth?”
“I’m not sure I do,” she said quietly.
“Oh, come on. You remember. We found it in a magazine in some lane. Near a puddle. You were really taken by it. Don’t pretend you don’t remember.”
“I think I do.” Ruth’s voice was now almost a whisper. A lorry went past, making our car wobble and, for a few seconds, obscuring our view of the hoarding. Ruth bowed her head, as though she hoped the lorry had removed the image forever, and when we could see it clearly again, she didn’t raise her gaze.
“It’s funny,” I said, “remembering it all now. Remember how you used to go on about it? How you’d one day work in an office like that one?”
“Oh yeah, that was why we went that day,” Tommy said, like he’d only that second remembered. “When we went to Norfolk. We went to find your possible. Working in an office.”
“Don’t you sometimes think,” I said to Ruth, “you should have looked into it more? All right, you’d have been the first. The first one any of us would have heard of getting to do something like that. But you might have done it. Don’t you wonder sometimes, what might have happened if you’d tried?”
“How could I have tried?” Ruth’s voice was hardly audible. “It’s just something I once dreamt about. That’s all.”
“But if you’d at least looked into it. How do you know? They might have let you.”
“Yeah, Ruth,” Tommy said. “Maybe you should at least have tried. After going on about it so much. I think Kath’s got a point.”
“I didn’t
“But Tommy’s right. You should at least have tried. Then you could see a poster like that one, and remember that’s what you wanted once, and that you at least looked into it…”
“How could I have looked into it?” For the first time, Ruth’s voice had hardened, but then she let out a sigh and looked down again. Then Tommy said:
“You kept talking like you might qualify for special treatment. And for all you know, you might have done. You should have asked at least.”
“Okay,” Ruth said. “You say I should have looked into it. How? Where would I have gone? There wasn’t a way to look into it.”
“Tommy’s right though,” I said. “If you believed yourself special, you should at least have asked. You should have gone to Madame and asked.”
As soon as I said this—as soon as I mentioned Madame—I realised I’d made a mistake. Ruth looked up at me and I saw something like triumph flash across her face. You see it in films sometimes, when one person’s pointing a gun at another person, and the one with the gun’s making the other one do all kinds of things. Then suddenly there’s a mistake, a tussle, and the gun’s with the second person. And the second person looks at the first person with a gleam, a kind of can’t-believe-my-luck expression that promises all kinds of vengeance. Well, that was how suddenly Ruth was looking at me, and though I’d said nothing about deferrals, I’d mentioned Madame, and I knew we’d stumbled into some new territory altogether.
Ruth saw my panic and shifted round in her seat to face me. So I was preparing myself for her attack; busy telling myself that no matter what she came at me with, things were different now, she wouldn’t get her way like she’d done in the past. I was telling myself all of this, and that’s why I wasn’t at all ready for what she did come out with.
“Kathy,” she said, “I don’t really expect you to forgive me ever. I can’t even see why you should. But I’m going to ask you to all the same.”
I was so thrown by this, all I could find to say was a rather limp: “Forgive you for what?”
“Forgive me for what? Well, for starters, there’s the way I always lied to you about your urges. When you used to tell me, back then, how sometimes it got so you wanted to do it with virtually anyone.”
Tommy shifted again behind us, but Ruth was leaning forward now, looking straight at me, like for the moment Tommy wasn’t with us in the car at all.
“I knew how it worried you,” she said. “I should have told you. I should have said how it was the same for me too, just the way you described it. You realise all of this now, I know. But you didn’t back then, and I should have said. I should have told you how even though I was with Tommy, I couldn’t resist doing it with other people sometimes. At least three others when we were at the Cottages.”
She said this still without looking Tommy’s way. But it wasn’t so much like she was ignoring him, than that she was trying so intensely to get through to me everything else had been blurred out.
“I almost did tell you a few times,” she went on. “But I didn’t. Even then, at the time, I realised you’d look back one day and realise and blame me for it. But I still didn’t say anything to you. There’s no reason you should ever forgive me for that, but I want to ask now because…” She stopped suddenly.
“Because what?” I asked.
