With a flash of apprehension, as she’s sitting on the bus, it occurs to Eve that the Maeve, Mavis, Maisie person might be vegetarian. She doesn’t look vegetarian. When Eve met her she was wearing court shoes with little gilt snaffles, and surely no one owning shoes like that has ever been vegetarian. And the husband, Mark. He does something in the City, so is surely a carnivore.
Niko’s home on time, for once. He tends to hang about at school, giving unofficial coding and hacking classes in the IT room, and teaching the science club how to make miniature volcanoes out of vinegar and baking powder. But today he’s busily peeling potatoes at the sink, and leans back to give Eve an over-the-shoulder kiss as she comes in.
‘I’ve fed the girls,’ he tells her. ‘I’ve given them extra hay to keep them busy.’
‘Can we give them those potato peelings?’
‘No, potato peel contains solanine, which is harmful to goats.’
She puts her arms round his waist. ‘How do you know these things?’
‘Urban Goat Forum.’
‘Sounds like a porn site to me.’
‘You should see LondonPigOwners.com.’
‘Pervert.’
‘I wasn’t deliberately searching for it. It just came up on the screen.’
‘Of course it did. Have you got the wine?’
‘Yes. White in the fridge. Red on the table.’
When she’s put the potatoes and fennel in the oven to roast, Eve goes outside onto the patio, where Thelma and Louise nibble affectionately at her fingers in the fading light. Despite her misgivings, Eve has grown very fond of them.
Zbig and Leila arrive at eight o’clock on the dot. Zbig’s an old friend of Niko’s from Cracow University, and Leila is his girlfriend of several years’ standing.
‘So what’s new?’ Zbig asks them. ‘Are you doing anything next week, for half-term?’
‘We were thinking of going up to the Suffolk coast for a couple of days,’ Niko says. ‘It’s wonderful at this time of year. No crowds. We’ve even found someone to goat-sit Thelma and Louise.’
‘What do you do there?’ asks Leila.
‘Walk. Look at seabirds. Eat fish and chips.’
‘Catch up on your love life?’ Zbig suggests.
‘Maybe even that.’
‘Oh my God’ says Eve, her heart plummeting. ‘The roast potatoes.’
Niko follows her to the kitchen. ‘The potatoes are fine,’ he tells her, glancing into the oven. ‘What is it really?’
‘Next week. I’m really sorry, Niko. I have to go to Venice.’
He stares at her. ‘You’re not serious.’
‘I am serious. It’s already booked.’
He turns away. ‘Jesus, Eve. Couldn’t you, just once, just fucking once . . .’
She closes her eyes. ‘I promise you, I . . .’
‘So could I come too?’
‘Er, yes, I guess.’ She feels her eyelids flutter. ‘I mean, Lance will be there, but we can still—’
‘Lance? Human cockroach Lance?’
‘You know perfectly well who I mean. It’s work, Niko. I have no choice.’
‘You do have a choice, Eve.’ His voice is almost inaudible. ‘You can choose to spend your life chasing shadows, or you can choose to have a real life, here, with me.’
They’re staring at each other, beyond words, when the doorbell sounds. Mark precedes his wife. He’s wearing strawberry-coloured trousers and a Guernsey sweater and carrying an enormous bottle of wine. A magnum, at least.
‘Hi, guys, sorry, got lost crossing the street.’ He pushes the bottle at Niko. ‘Ritual offering. Think you’ll find it’s fairly decent.’
Eve recovers first. ‘Mark, how lovely. Thank you. And Maeve . . . Maisie . . . I’m terribly sorry, I’ve forgotten your—’
‘Fiona,’ she says, with a mirthless flash of teeth, shrugging off the Whistles coat.
As Niko introduces them to the others, Eve feels a sick sense of things left unresolved. Leila raises an eyebrow, detecting that something is amiss, and Eve beckons her into the kitchen and gives her an abridged version of events as she takes the duck breasts out of the marinade and lays them, hissing, in a heated pan.
‘I’ve been ordered to go to Venice,’ she says untruthfully. ‘It’s an important short-notice thing I can’t get out of, half-term or no half-term. Niko seems to think that I can just tell my bosses to go to hell, but I can’t.’
‘Tell me about it,’ says Leila, who knows what Eve does, although not in detail. ‘I’m constantly pulled in two directions. Justifying my work to Zbig is more stressful than actually doing it.’
‘That’s exactly what I feel,’ says Eve, giving the pan an irritable shake.
Mark, they discover when they rejoin the others, is a compliance manager. ‘The youngest the bank’s ever had,’ says Fiona. ‘Top of his training cohort.’
‘Gosh,’ says Leila faintly.
‘Yup, the enfant terrible of regulatory compliance.’ Mark swings round to face her. ‘So where do you hail from?’
‘Totteridge,’ says Leila. ‘Although I grew up in Wembley.’
‘No, but where do you come from?’
‘My grandparents were born in Jamaica, if that’s what you mean.’
‘That’s amazing. We went there on holiday two years ago, didn’t we, darling?’
‘Yes, darling.’ Fiona flashes her teeth again.
‘A resort called Sandals. Do you know it?’
‘No,’ says Leila.
Dizzy with the ghastliness of it all, Eve introduces Zbig, more or less forcefully, to Fiona. ‘Zbig lectures at King’s,’ she tells her.
‘That’s nice. What about?’
‘Roman history,’ says Zbig. ‘Augustus to Nero, basically.’
‘Did you see Gladiator? We’ve got the DVD at home. Mark loves the bit where Russell Crowe chops the guy’s head off with the two swords.’
‘Yes,’ says Zbig. ‘That certainly is a good bit.’
‘So do you get asked on TV programmes and stuff?’
‘I get the odd request, yes. If they need someone to compare the US president to Nero, or to talk about Severus.’
‘Who?’
‘Septimius Severus, the first African Roman emperor. He invaded Scotland, among other good works.’
‘You’re shitting me.’
‘I shit you not. Septimius was the man. But tell me about yourself.’
‘PR. Mostly political.’
‘Interesting. What sort of people are your clients?’
‘Well, I’m basically working full-time with the MP Gareth Wolf.’
‘I’m impressed. Quite a challenge.’
‘How do you mean?’
Frowning, Niko holds his wine glass up to the window. ‘He means in light of Wolf’s persistent lying, his rapacious self-interest, his open contempt for those less fortunate than himself, and his all-round moral vacuity.’
‘That’s very much a glass-half-empty perspective,’ Fiona says.
‘What about that expenses scandal?’ asks
