He remembered now, those nights of knowing full well that she was awake and knowing she wondered whether he was. He would be pretending sleep and fiercely thinking of ways to extricate himself. How he could make it seem natural to be turning in his sleep towards the coolness of the further part of the bed.
Thinking it over now, it struck him that any glimpse of a new life, any whiff of change in the air, brought him the exact prickle of pleasure given him by turning to lie on the fresh side of the pillow.
On him Richard was stirring awake and Mark almost forgot to breathe. He was suspended, waiting to see where a conscious Richard would turn.
When Sally opened the door a crack and crept in, on her way to her own room, Richard shook fully awake.
“Goodnight, Dad and Richard,” she whispered, and Mark saw she could barely keep her eyes open.
“Night, love,” he said, and Richard looked up, shocked.
Sally was like a sleepwalker, flat-footed across the carpet, opening the dressing-room door.
“Hang on,” Mark said. He couldn’t trust the night these days, but Sally seemed real enough.
Richard was sitting bolt upright, gripping his shoulder. “Shit, I forgot; the phone! They said they were coming back tonight!”
The dressing-room door clicked shut and they listened to Sally stumble through her scattered books and drop with relief into bed.
SAM KNEW WHAT POSH WAS AND SHE WAS DETERMINED NOT TO BE
in the least impressed by Tony’s house. Not being impressed had been a key element in her refusal to acknowledge Iris’s impact on Peggy’s life. So Sam sneered at the chandelier in the hallway and the ornate mantelpiece in the living room, where they sat, shivering with fatigue.
Iris and Peggy dressed quickly in the hallway.
“Sally knows where her room is,” Peggy called out. “There’s no sense in keeping the poor thing up any longer.”
Sam was too tired to argue. Bob was no support. He was stretched out on a scarlet chaise longue and snoring. She had never heard him snore. With a jolt she realised she had never slept with him before. He made the same noise snoring as he did fucking and that revolted her. She was thinking, He’s always on the job, just like a bloody copper. He’s never off duty, never out of uniform. If they were always together, those stertorous groans would punctuate her every move.
Peggy sat by her. “I’m glad you’re back. We can sort things out now. It didn’t seem right, you just storming off like that.”
“We had no choice about coming back. This isn’t with my tail between my legs, Mam.”
“I didn’t imagine it was.”
“I never do that.”
“I know you don’t.”
“We’re going to be snowed up. Snowed in. It’s outrageous out there.”
“Well,” Peggy said. “At least we’re all safe.’
Sam snorted. “In this house. Have you seen him yet?”
“The mythical Tony? No. I don’t think he exists at all.” With this Peggy stood. “I’m going to find you a room upstairs. I think Iris went to hunt one out for you and Bob. We all need to rest just now.”
Sam looked at her. “Thanks, Mam.”
Peggy smiled.
“Mam? Just…would you tell me…I haven’t acted like a kid in all this, have I? I’ve not been like some big daft bairn stomping about and shouting the odds, have I?”
“Oh, Sam!” Her mother knelt to hug her and was surprised when Sam hugged back. “If you have, then I reckon it’s a lesson to the rest of us, frankly. It doesn’t do any harm to know what you want. Out of any of us, you’ve at least had the guts to broadcast it.”
Sam pulled back and looked at her mother. “That sounds as if there’s something you want and daren’t say.”
“Ah,” said Peggy. “Your professional manner. You sniff things out. Yes, there’s something I want.” She stood again and looked at Bob, and Sam. “I want things to stay exactly as they are. But knowing that they won’t, that they can’t, I daren’t say that. I daren’t say that’s what I want. Because nobody else wants that.”
Peggy went off to find Iris, to allocate the rooms. It was as if the house had somehow become theirs and they were playing the competent hostesses.
Downstairs Sam cast one disappointed look at Bob and, to keep herself awake until she had found a bed to fall into, went hunting around the other rooms.
The detritus of the evening before lay strewn around: crumbled cheese and biscuits, empty bottles overturned and glasses smeared in fingerprints. Vaguely Sam wondered whether Richard had copped off with Mark. It oughtn’t to make any difference now. Well, they all seemed to have had a nice night, at any rate, to judge by the remains. A better night than we had, she thought, blizzarded in Bob’s crappy car.
Could Sam have consented to a safe and pleasurable night, even to see her husband seducing—or being seduced by—a stranger? She didn’t know. Unless pushed, Sam never knew how possessive she would be.
She happened upon the dining room where the candelabra was pasted to the whitewashed sill by wax drips. Nothing had been done with the china on the tarpaulin. The pieces still waited, gleaming, to be hauled like swag to markets: teapots, Toby jugs, figurines twirling painted skirts, dead clocks and toast racks. Both desolate and exotic, this tableau drew her attention for a few moments.
The moonlight was such that she could see only half a room. The remaining furniture was bisected by the slant of the light. In the dark half floated six avocados. As her eyes accustomed themselves, she could pick out their green skin and then, as they whirled slowly through the air, two stark white hands flexing and waggling underneath.
Tony juggled avocados for Sam’s benefit, suppressing his giggles, and Sam didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Unwilling to trust her own imagination, she fled the room.
She left Tony to sink to his
