food.
Sam sighed. ‘What’s it worth?’
‘Quite a lot,’ I said. ‘We’ll fix the exchange rate later.’
Nathan picked up his fishing bag and grabbed my hand. I had time only to snatch up my sweater. Down, down to the beach we went, like the excited children we had once shepherded so carefully. My feet in their plimsolls sped over the turf, sprang over the stones, dug into dry white sand.
Johnny the Sail had towed the boat down to the beach and left it in its usual place, with the outboard oiled and ready. Nathan unhooked the tarpaulin, wrestled with the stiff, damp awkwardness, stowed it, then threw in his bag. I joined him and we pushed the trailer to the water’s edge.
Nathan swung over the side and primed the motor. I pulled the trailer back up the beach, and waded through silky ruffles of water towards the boat.
‘Come on.’ Nathan held out his hand. ‘Are you going to be all day?’
Proud of the deftness acquired over years, I slotted the oars into the rowlocks. They dipped into the water, and I began the measured, steady pull, feeling the muscles tighten in my back and arms and the tide working against me. I quickened the pace and, pretty soon, I stopped shivering.
The wind sharpened at Fiddler’s Rock and I took care to skirt a field of flat, rank-smelling seaweed, which hid rocks with sharp pointy teeth that liked boats for breakfast. ‘OK,’ said Nathan, and I stopped rowing. Instantly there was hush, except for the water slapping against the clinker side of the boat. Nathan pulled at the string, the motor spluttered, roared and settled down. He took the tiller and we rode the waves out towards the place where the mackerel cruised.
I busied myself sorting out the line. However carefully it was stowed at the end of the season, it always twisted in storage and I had to concentrate so that the hooks did not catch my fingers. Nathan cut the engine and primed it again, ready for a quick start if necessary. ‘You go first.’
I threw the line overboard, watching the bright bait-feathers swell as they touched the water. The sun beat down on my bare arms, warming flesh that had been hidden in the city. I looked up. Nathan was watching me. ‘We’ll have time together this year,’ he said, ‘won’t we?’
The line tugged in my hands, the water flip-flopped against the boat and the light was dazzling. I found myself astonished and shaken by joy. It was the joy of being alive, of being part of the mystery of existence, the more simple joy of Nathan’s love.
An hour or so later, we clambered back up the path to Beach Cottage. I carried the fishing bag, and Nathan carried our supper. Three mackerel: the best ever for a first day’s catch.
At the top of the path, Sam was scanning the cliff, one hand shielding his eyes. When he spotted us, he started down the path towards us. Lazily, I imagined what he might say.
Instead, when he arrived, panting, at the ledge where we had stopped to look at the sea and Nathan had slipped his arm around my shoulders, he said, ‘Dad, there’s been a phone call. They want you back in London.’
Why hadn’t I put my foot down then, I thought, and at all the other times? Why didn’t I now?
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jean. ‘I know you and Nathan had things to talk about, but it was impossible not to interrupt.’ She looked pained, and I knew that she knew.
‘It was ever thus, Jean.’
‘I know,’ she said sadly.
The minister’s wife had been only thirty-seven. Judging by her picture on the television screen in the office, which beamed in a constant stream of news, she looked pretty, and very English in a fair, large-boned way. In the photograph, she was dressed in a pair of trousers and a polo-neck sweater, the neat, unthreatening clothes of a Good Wife. There were two teenage children, the younger of whom had discovered her hanging from the banisters.
Good Wives kill themselves as thoroughly as anyone else.
Her face was vignetted in the top right-hand corner of the screen as commentators were wheeled in to discuss her death. Accompanied by their modulated tones, I emptied my desk and packed my bag, arranged the piles of books in publication order and deleted files from the computer. I rang Steven to warn him of late pages.
‘Leave it for Minty to sort out.’ Maeve was clearly furious. The bush telegraph had been at work and she came over to supervise my career demise – and to learn the details. Her pencilled-in eyebrows snapped together. ‘I don’t know what Timon thinks he’s doing. It’s an outrage.’ But her indignation was tinged with unease. ‘It’ll be me next, no doubt, as I’m no spring chicken.’ She leant over and urged, ‘Go to a tribunal. Fight for the older woman because that’s what it’s about.’
I was shaking with fury and shock, but I continued to sort out the piles of books. ‘I don’t think it’s as simple as that, Maeve.’
‘Wake up, Rose.’ She prised a couple of books out of my hand. ‘Stop it. Don’t waste one more minute on them than you have to. You don’t owe them anything.’
The television commentator stood outside the minister’s house, which was under siege, and reported on the charitable and constituency activities of the minister’s wife, the reaction of appalled friends, and of how the children had gone into hiding.
With the grief of the minister’s children in mind, and the woman’s death, I could not bring myself to make the gesture of leaving those last unnecessary tasks unfinished. Together, Maeve and I packed up a box with my stationery and pens, my files – the photograph – and left it for delivery to Lakey Street.
Maeve glanced at the screen where the minister’s solicitor was now making a plea for the family’s privacy. ‘What fools,’ she said fiercely, and surprisingly. ‘Letting themselves get like that.’
I kissed Maeve, promised to keep in touch, and gave her my mug, which had ‘I is edikacated’ printed on it, and went to see Jenny in Human Resources. Neither of us enjoyed the fifteen minutes I spent in her office, and I emerged with a portfolio of documents I had refused to sign until I had consulted my solicitor. ‘Timon won’t like that,’ Jenny said, flustered, and I toyed with the idea of telling her that she was in the wrong job.
At the front desk, I surrendered my pass to Charlie. ‘I’m sorry about this, Rose,’ he said, as he cancelled it. He had signed my forty-fifth-birthday card, which had been organized by Jean – over forty signatures spidered over it, promoting in-house jokes (would I remember what they meant?) and wishing me long life.
‘I enjoyed working with you,’ I told him, but Charlie had transferred his attention to a messenger.
I walked out of the building and came to a halt. Only once before in my life had I had no idea what to do, or where to go next. Only once before had I felt as exposed and crushed by the weight of grief and despair.
I breathed in traffic fumes, a whiff of rotting litter, and the knowledge that, for the moment, I was lost. The book bag hung limply over my shoulder, a symbol of my emptiness.
A woman bumped into me and hurried on. A mother wheeled a baby past in a buggy. A man in a black overcoat shouted at a bus.
My feet moved forward. The air was pulled in and out of my chest. I continued down the street, but I watched that woman walking along with her empty bag from a great height. I felt an enormous detachment, and a curious desire to laugh.
Outside the gym, I stopped. Anyone who was anyone knew that this was the place to be. The gossip and deals of the women’s changing room outflanked those of the office canteen. It was private, intimate, naked – the bone of a matter was always reached quickly and thoroughly: the smoothies at the bar, which machines did what to the anatomy and, especially, the air quality were avidly discussed. Some days the air was fine, on others it was dense with sweat sucked up from labouring bodies. At other times, diseases were said to lurk in the pipes.
It was precisely the sort of place that Minty would choose to make her second home.
The thick engraved-glass door swung open and shut, open and shut, revealing a receptionist in a tight, acid green T-shirt. A posse of women carrying sports bags streamed in, chattering to each other. The door closed silently, reinforcing the gym’s exclusivity.
From the outside, I looked in.
Eventually I pushed open the thick, dividing door and went inside.
Minty was not in the bar, or in the spa, or on a machine. I tracked her down in the changing room. Hunched on a bench, she was naked, absorbed, oblivious, drying between her toes. Then she stood up and rubbed lotion into her hard, confident body, which she tended so well.
