‘Do they?’ Ant said. ‘Oh, fair enough then, I suppose. If you’re gonna get het up about that sort of thing . . .’
We walked past another house identical to our own and then Ant shocked me by saying, ‘You know, we could go to Spain.’
I turned to study his features, and even though there wasn’t a great deal of light, there was enough for me to see that he wasn’t joking. ‘Really?’ I said.
‘I’m not saying we should,’ Ant continued. ‘I’m not saying that at all. But . . .’ He combined a shrug with hiking Sarah a bit higher. ‘This one’s getting heavy,’ he said.
‘I want to go to Spain,’ Lucy commented, but without much enthusiasm. She was too tired to put any energy into it, I think.
‘But what, Ant?’ I prompted.
‘What?’ he said.
‘You said, you’re not saying we should go, but . . .’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It just doesn’t seem as daft as it did when you explained it. Not now we know them.’
‘I don’t think you can really say we know them,’ I pointed out. ‘They seem nice enough, but that’s not knowing them.’
‘No,’ Ant agreed. ‘I suppose not. But I like her. She made me laugh. He’s a bit of a nobody, though.’
‘You just fancy her,’ I teased. Saying it felt like poking my tongue into a bad tooth. It hurt, but I couldn’t resist.
‘Well, she’s a good-looking woman,’ Ant said. ‘Who wouldn’t?’
I immediately regretted my teasing. Life is better when certain things are left unsaid. Life is better when other, more attractive women and dead baby calves are not thought about.
‘You know, she reminds me of someone,’ I told him, to change the subject. ‘I was trying to work out who all night.’
‘Yeah?’ he said, as we entered our driveway and the automatic light clicked on, blinding us. ‘Who?’
‘Some American actress or singer, I think.’
‘Madonna,’ he said. ‘She looks like Madonna.’
‘No,’ I said, as we reached the front door and Ant slipped the key in the lock. ‘No, I know what you mean, but that’s not it.’
‘Kylie?’ he suggested.
I laughed. ‘No!’ I said. ‘She’s nothing like Kylie.’
‘She’s blonde,’ Ant said. ‘They’ve both got arms and legs and nice arses.’
‘Yes, they’re both women,’ I said, hating him for mentioning Amy’s nice arse. ‘But that’s about where it ends.’
‘Anyway, she’s nice,’ Ant said. ‘Lively. God knows what she sees in him, though.’
‘I thought he was nice too,’ I commented.
‘Nice, yeah. But dull.’
‘More quiet than dull,’ I said.
‘He’s a good craftsman, but you’re better getting him to fit your kitchen than tell you a joke. Still . . .’
‘Still what?’ I asked.
‘Well, I mean, your jokes aren’t exactly side-splitters, are they, and I’m with you.’
We’d reached the bottom of the stairs, so Ant pushed Lucy forward, and saying, ‘I’m gonna put these two straight down,’ he started to carry Sarah upstairs, behind her.
I watched them disappear from view and then walked to the lounge, where I stood in the dark, looking at the window. The tree outside was swaying in the breeze, casting orange patterns from the street light across the carpet. The room looked alien and, for some reason, a bit unfriendly. I realised I was unsteady on my feet from the alcohol and perched on the arm of the sofa to steady myself. It was because Amy’s house looked so much more welcoming, I decided. It was in contrast that our own lounge looked so cold.
I’d spent the nicest evening I’d had with Ant in ages, I realised. If ever, in fact. Yet, I was feeling sad to find myself home alone with him. It was a strange feeling, almost as if I was missing Amy and Joe. I thought about Amy then, and despite my irritation that Ant had found her ‘good-looking’, I conceded to myself that he was right. She was, unarguably, good-looking. She was tall and slim and vivacious and funny and entertaining. In a nutshell, she was everything that I wasn’t. But despite my jealousy, I’d liked her. A lot of what she said reminded me of the witty dialogues you get in American sitcoms. Everything she said had an edge of wit or sarcasm to it – nothing was ever delivered without some kind of linguistic spin. More than once, I’d missed something funny because I’d been laughing at the previous thing she’d said. She’d made me feel a bit frumpy, really – a bit slow, as if I’d been unable to quite keep up.
And then I thought of Joe, and though I’d liked him, though I’d found him to be kind and unusually attentive to everyone’s moods and sensibilities, ultimately I agreed with Ant. He was nice, but ‘nice’ wasn’t necessarily that much fun.
‘Are you coming up?’ Ant called from the top of the stairs. ‘I’m gonna crash, I think. I’m bladdered.’
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘I’ll be up in a minute.’
A gust of wind made the tree move again, and the patterns juddered across the floor. For some reason, I thought of my mother and her strange, indecipherable message. Had she said, ‘Go to Spain?’ I wondered. But no, that wasn’t it either. I shivered and stood and with one last glance out of the window, turned to head upstairs to bed.
Neither Ant nor Lucy mentioned Amy, Joe or Ben again that week, but I thought about them almost constantly. The evening had been by far the most exciting thing to happen to me since we’d moved, after all. As for Spain, I couldn’t help but feel I’d come close to getting something I’d wanted for ever – namely, a sunny holiday in a foreign country. Even though I still couldn’t see any real way that we could have said yes to the proposition, I was fully aware of the irony in the fact that I was the person who had showed the least enthusiasm.
Early the following Saturday morning, Kerry called me on WhatsApp. I was in the conservatory with the girls, and Ant
