Peggy had never had any compunction about peeing in front of her husband. Or, indeed, had he with her. When they were first married, they had alternate bath nights and took turns to keep each other company with chat, sitting on the toilet, and never standing on ceremony when nature called. He always said that if you really loved someone, you could watch them do anything. Even defecate, he added solemnly, down on his knees as he asked for her hand and proffered his ring. After all, God saw everything you did. Why, then, shouldn’t the person you loved?
The funny thing was, Peggy reflected as they left their respective cubicles and washed their hands in silence, she’d never actually peed in the same room as Iris. She’d never been to Leeds before, either.
“Anyway,” said Iris brightly, “we’re going, and we’ll be there by lunchtime.”
Iris had pulled herself together somewhat overnight, and was back in thicker clothes, padding herself out to her usual bulk. She had begun, once more, to bustle around looking organised and busy without actually doing anything. What irritated Peggy slightly was that she was wearing a wide-brimmed blue hat, as if she were going to a wedding.
They went to fetch Sam from the shop. They looked through the glass, past the cashier. Iris picked her out and they watched. Sam was standing awkwardly, her face screwed up in indecision, before rows and rows of cuddly toys. She didn’t know what to choose. One hand held a ten-pound note and the other jabbed tentatively at grinning puppies, rabbits, bears, as if she knew she must take one, but wasn’t sure how they’d react to being picked out and carried away.
EIGHTEEN
SINGLEMINDEDNESS HAD EVAPORATED WITH THE FROST ON THE GRASS through the kitchen window. Somehow he couldn’t snap at Simmonds as he ranted and chattered endlessly.
The events of the night pressed a weight of guilt on Mark. Sitting in the kitchen, he smiled and smoked and sipped his tea as he waited for Sally to wake up and come down to breakfast. He couldn’t bring himself to yell, “Fuck off and fetch Tony, I’ve had enough of this.” He couldn’t do anything until she showed up, grumpily awake once more, her face drowsy as sleep and warm as cheese on toast.
So I can smile and be a villain, Mark thought—though he couldn’t snag the memory attached to that quotation. It was appropriate enough, however. Did he really feel like a villain? He turned the word over like a pebble, weighing the butter knife in his hand and watching the old man chunter on, obliviously. Did last night make Mark a villain?
Secretly he marvelled at his ability to turn so blithe. It seemed the height of adventure; a sexy foray into a more exotic life. Fancy coming to a house at night in the middle of nowhere, rescuing his kidnapped daughter, and then succumbing to anonymous, extravagantly casual sex with a beautiful stranger.
The breakfast service was the very best. He was being kept like a king this morning. The old man had turned up in a better mood and was serving and supplying conversation, eager to be nice. He was sickly-nice, Sam would say, as she did about many people she met through work. She knew what sickly-nice was, and warned Mark about it. But Mark fell for it every time. He couldn’t see her taking to Simmonds, nor to Richard, for that matter, when she arrived.
They’d be on their way by now. Here he was, buttering more toast, right in the spot where two worlds were about to collide. This was another lull before the storm. He imagined raised voices here in the old, tiled kitchen, demands and recriminations. Nothing would be the same afterwards.
Sam would turn up to find that Mark literally had his feet under the table. She’d perceive him as changing sides, perhaps. His skin irked; she knew how to inject the slow poison of guilt. He’d been sent down here as an avenging angel and, of course, he’d had his feathers ruffled. She couldn’t trust him to do anything right. He had fallen badly, feathers crushed under the weight of a single pair of deft and expert hands.
And Mark thought of the white gloves in the room with the single round window, the hands that had played him like a piano, and how perfect that had been. It was a seductively simple model of the way he wanted things to be: protecting and protected, with passion stealing in from nowhere and leaving before first light.
The realisation made him feel even more guilty. A vision of what he wanted was what he could do without when his real, ordinary world walked in through the door. It was time to shrink himself back down to fit the space allotted to him.
Simmonds was gesturing to him. “Come with me, come. I’ve got something to show you.”
Mark hadn’t been listening at all. He followed the old man out of the back door and up the black metal fire escape that reach to the top of the house, clinging to the very eaves. Again Simmonds proved nimble in his hi-tech trainers, clumping hard on the steps and bringing down icicle showers on Mark as he followed, too perplexed to
