“Maybe I did start as young as you,” says Roster quietly.
Agatha gets up and goes over to Fedor’s bed in the corner of the room. She picks up one of his toys and squeezes it to make it squeak. The hound’s soft footsteps can be heard on the stairs, and then his long nose seen pushing against the door. He trots over to Agatha and takes the toy from her hands, then shakes it.
“Darling, let’s go out,” says Anastasia.
“I’ve just got in,” replies Agatha.
“But you’ve not been out properly. You’ve been working or doing something boring. Let’s go into Soho. We’ll get some drinks, maybe some dinner, then go dancing. You might meet someone.”
“I don’t want to meet anyone in Soho.”
“We’ll dance, then. I haven’t danced in so long. It feels like years.”
“I’m sure you danced in Cannes.”
“A bit, maybe. But it isn’t the same. There isn’t anywhere to dance like in Soho.”
“Sleazy, you mean.”
“Well, maybe. Is that so bad?”
“I suppose it depends on your perspective.”
“I want to feel someone grinding against me in the dark.”
“That’s where we differ. You wish to be molested by a total stranger. I can’t think of anything worse.”
Anastasia slumps back on the sofa, pouting. Agatha is struck by how childlike her mother looks in this posture. Anastasia spends her summers in the sun, and her skin is bronzed and, despite the application of expensive creams, beginning to sag and wrinkle. But her aspect is young. She has the mannerisms of a teenager. She sighs and pouts and shrugs and sulks, and she laughs at juvenile jokes and makes crass remarks.
Agatha is conscious that she may have been a little unkind. “Perhaps we could go out for dinner,” she says. Her mother sits up. Her face brightens. “I’ll need to have a shower and change my clothes. Let’s leave in an hour.”
Anastasia becomes very excited by the prospect of getting ready for a night out with her daughter, and starts talking about hair and makeup. Agatha smiles and plays along, and after her shower she allows Anastasia to blow-dry and straighten her long hair, and she even allows her mother to do her eyeliner and mascara. She doesn’t take on board any of Anastasia’s clothing suggestions, but her mother is so happy to be allowed the physical contact with her only daughter that she doesn’t argue too much.
She and Anastasia decide to walk into Soho. Anastasia tells her daughter that a short walk before entering a bar does more for a woman’s face than a thousand pounds’ worth of cosmetic treatments; and that if she wears high heels, it’ll do even more for her arse. Anastasia is full of this kind of advice.
As they walk, Agatha asks her mother how she has been since she saw her in the summer. “How is Mohammed?” she asks.
“He’s depressed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” replies Agatha, startled. Mohammed seemed well last time she saw him.
“It’s because I split up with him. I broke his heart and now he is depressed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that too.”
“He became so boring. I had to end it. He wanted to put me up in an apartment and come and visit me and have little family dinners with me like I was his wife. I told him not to. I’m not your wife, I said to him. I said, I don’t want to be your wife, stop trying to treat me like a wife. And then he said he was sorry and that he was in love with me or something and then he said he wanted to spend all his time with me and that he wouldn’t be able to get divorced from his actual wife, because of his children and his job, but he already saw me as the most important person in his life. And I told him, that’s not what this is. Meet me in a hotel, yes. Take me out for dinner, yes. Buy me diamonds, handbags, a car, yes please. But don’t expect me to sit in a little house baking stupid cakes and waiting for your flight to get in. No thanks.”
“I liked Mohammed.”
“Well, he didn’t like you. He thought you treated me with a very little amount of respect. He had no idea why I put up with it.”
“Okay,” says Agatha. There isn’t much more she can add to that.
They are walking down a street Agatha doesn’t recognize. She doesn’t come this way much. Her mother takes hold of her arm, perhaps in reconciliation after her unnecessary barbs, and they find their steps falling into time. They are the same height, and their legs and feet are the same length and size, although Anastasia’s heels are much higher so she has to stoop to hold her daughter’s arm.
The streets are crowded and the bars and pubs are overflowing. Men in suits stand on the pavement with pints of beer, jostling for space by the window so they can place their glasses or elbows on the sill. A big man takes a step back without looking around, and both Anastasia and Agatha are pushed into the road. Anastasia swears at him but the street is busy and the hubbub from the bar is loud so he doesn’t notice.
They come to the French restaurant, Des Sables. Agatha hadn’t realized this is where they were heading. She hadn’t paid attention as her mum had led her through Soho.
“Not here,” she says.
“I love this place. Your father used to bring me here when we were first dating. He knew how to treat a girl. I never had eaten food like this. Snails. And garlic. He used to order all the most delicious foods for me and all the most expensive wines. I thought I was getting fat, but it turned out I was pregnant.” She raises a hand to Agatha’s cheek tenderly.
Agatha rarely hears her mother speak affectionately about her father. Conversations about him, in whatever context, tend to center on his money. On another occasion, she
