Cara pushed the hens aside. She looked little and fierce. “Text him back, Charlotte.”
“Can you pretext?” Gemma asked. “Is that possible? Would you know, Colette? If she made it look as if she sent a message before he sent his, then she could be the one to call it off.”
“Yes, do that,” Cara urged. “Your self-esteem’s at stake here. Pretend you never got it.”
“Now look, darling.” Gemma squatted on the ground before Charlotte. Charlotte keened and flapped at her, but Gemma took her hands and squeezed them tight. “Now look, you think the world has stopped turning, but it hasn’t. You’ve had a shock but you’ll get over it. This is your lowest ebb and now the only way is up.”
“That filthy scumbag,” wailed the girl.
“That’s the spirit,” Gemma said. “You’ve got to put it behind you, sweetheart.”
“Not till she’s billed him,” Colette said. “Surely. I mean, there’ll be deposits. On the venue. And the honeymoon, air tickets paid for. Unless she goes anyway, with a girlfriend.”
“At least she’s got to text and ask him why,” Cara said. “Or she’ll never achieve closure.”
“That’s right,” Gemma said. “You’ve got to move on. I mean, if you’ve had bad luck in your life, what’s the use of brooding?”
“I disagree,” Colette said. “It wasn’t bad luck. It was bad judgement.”
“Will you shut it?” Gemma said.
“There’s no point in her moving on until she’s sure she’s learned something from it.”
She glanced up. Alison was wedged in the doorway. “Actually I agree with Colette,” she said. “Just on this occasion. You have to think about the past. You ought to. You can work out where it went wrong. There must have been warning signs.”
“There, there,” Gemma said. She patted the girl’s bare bronzed shoulder. Charlotte sniffed, and whispered something; Gemma said, “Witchcraft, oh no!” But Charlotte continued to insist, blowing her nose on a piece of kitchen roll that Al handed to her; until at last Gemma whispered back, “I do know someone in Godalming. If you really want to make him impotent.”
“I expect that will cost you,” Colette said. She thought, I wonder, if I went in for it, could I get a trade discount? That would be one in the eye for Zoe. She said, “Some girls in your position would go the direct route. What do you need a witch for, when you could go around there with a carving knife? More permanent, isn’t it?”
She remembered her own moments of temptation, the night she left Gavin. I can be reckless, she thought, at secondhand.
“You’d go to jail,” Gemma said severely. “Don’t listen, sweetheart. What do they say? Revenge is a dish best eaten cold?”
Al moaned and clasped a hand to her belly. She made a dash for the kitchen sink, but it was too late. “Oh, that’s all I bloody need,” said the bride-to-be. She jumped from her stool to fetch a mop and bucket.
Afterwards, Colette said, “I told you prawns were dodgy in weather like this. But you can’t curb your appetite, can you? Now you’ve embarrassed yourself.”
“It wasn’t the prawns.” Hunched in the passenger seat, Al sounded snuffly and depressed. “Prawns are protein, besides.”
“Yes,” Colette said patiently, “but you can’t have the extra protein
“It was when you rattled the matches,” Al said. “That’s when I started feeling sick.”
“That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Colette said. She sighed. “But I’ve ceased expecting sense from you. How can you be frightened of a box of matches?”
Between the bride’s sudden jilting and Al’s sudden vomit, the hen party had broken up early. It was not quite dark when they let themselves into the Collingwood. The air had cooled, and the cats of Admiral Drive tiptoed along the garden fences, their eyes shining. In the hall, Al put her hand on Colette’s arm. “Listen.”
From the sitting room came two gruff male voices, rising and falling in amicable conversation.
“A tape’s playing,” she said. “Listen. Is that Aitkenside?”
Colette raised her eyebrows. She flung open the double doors from the hall; though as they were glass, the gesture was superfluous. No one was within; and all she could hear, from the machine on the table, was a faint hiss and twitter that could have been the machine’s own workings. “We ought to get some more sophisticated recording equipment,” she said. “I’m sure it must be possible to cut out these blips and twitters.”
“Shh,” Alison said. “Oh dear, Colette.”
AITKENSIDE: Here, Morris, you don’t get a good gherkin these days. Not like you used to get. Where would you go for a good gherkin?
MORRIS: You don’t get a good pickled onion. You don’t get a good pickled onion like we used to get after the war.
“It’s Morris.”
“If you say so.”
“Can’t you hear him? Maybe his course is finished. But he shouldn’t be back.” Al turned to Colette, tears in her eyes. “He should have moved on, higher. That’s what happens. That’s what always happens.”
“I don’t know.” Colette threw her bag down. “You said yourself, you get these cross-recordings from the year before last. Maybe it’s old.”
“Maybe.”
“What’s he saying? Is he threatening you?”
“No, he’s talking about pickles.”
AITKENSIDE: You don’t get a mutton pie. Whatever happened to mutton? You never see it.
MORRIS: When you go on the station for a samwidge you can’t get ham, you can’t get a sheet of pink ham and some hot mustard like you used to get, they want to go stuffing it with all this green stuff—lettuce—and lettuce is for girls.
AITKENSIDE: It’s all wog food, pansy food, you can’t get a nice pickled egg like you used to get.
MORRIS: Could have some fun with a pickled egg, see a pickled egg and Bob Fox he would start up without fail. Pass it round, lads, he’d say, and when MacArthur comes in you just drop it on the table, say aye-aye, MacArthur, have you lost something, old son? I seen MacArthur turn pale. I seen him nearly drop in his tracks—
AITKENSIDE: I seen him clap his hand to his empty socket—
MORRIS: And Bob Fox, cool as you like take up his fork and stab the little fucker then squeeze it up in his fingers—
AITKENSIDE:—all wobbling—
MORRIS:—and take a bite. Tee-hee. I wonder what happened to Bob Fox?
AITKENSIDE: Used to knock on the window, didn’t he?
Towards dawn, Colette came down and found Al standing in the kitchen. The cutlery drawer was open, and Al was staring down into it.
“Al?” she said softly.
She saw with distaste that Al had not bothered to tie up her housecoat; it flapped back at either side to show her round belly and shadowy triangle of pubic hair. She looked up, registered Colette, and slowly, as if half asleep, pulled the thin cotton wrap across her; it fell open again as her fingers fumbled for the ties.
“What are you looking for?” Colette said.
“A spoon.”
“There’s a drawer full of spoons!”
“No, a particular spoon,” Al insisted. “Or perhaps a fork. A fork would do.”
“I should have known you’d be down here, eating.”
“I feel I’ve done something, Colette. Something terrible. But I don’t know what.”
