There was a practical problem, too. Seeing David when George had no interest in what she was doing was one thing. Seeing David when George was following her every move was another.
Except that he wasn’t very good at it. The listening, the taking an interest. He reminded her of Jamie at four.
Just before they climbed into bed he’d wandered out of the bathroom holding a soiled Q-tip to ask whether she thought it was normal to have that much wax in one’s ear.
David could do it. The listening, the taking an interest.
The following afternoon they were sitting in his living room with the French windows open. He was talking about stamps.
“Jersey World War Two occupation issues. The 1888 dull green Zululand one shilling. Perforates. Imperforates. Inverted watermarks…Lord knows what I thought I was going to achieve. Easier than growing up, I guess. I’ve still got them somewhere.”
Most men wanted to tell you what they knew. The route to Wisbech. How to get a log fire going. David made her feel she was the one who knew things.
He lit a cigar and they sat quietly watching the sparrows on the bird table and the mackerel sky moving slowly from right to left behind the poplars. And it felt good. Because he could do silence, too. And in her experience there were very few men who could do silence.
She left late and found herself in a traffic jam by the roadworks outside B amp; Q. She was worrying about what to say to George to explain her lateness when it occurred to her that he knew about David. That his attentiveness was a way of making amends, or competing, or making her feel guilty.
But when she manhandled the bags into the kitchen he was sitting at the table with two mugs of hot coffee, waving a folded newspaper.
“You were talking about the Underwood boys. Well, apparently, these scientists in California have been studying identical twins…”
The shop was unusually quiet the following week. As a result her paranoia began to grow. And because Ursula was in Dublin there was no one she could discuss her fears with.
Mornings at St. John’s were her only respite, sitting in the Jungle Corner with Megan and Callum and Sunil reading
On Thursday George announced that he’d booked the marquee firm and arranged a meeting with two caterers. This from a man who forgot his children’s birthdays. She was so surprised she didn’t even complain about the lack of consultation.
Later that evening a sinister voice in her head began to ask whether he was making her dispensable. Ready for when she moved out. Or when he told her to go.
Yet when the day of the dinner with David rolled around he was unexpectedly cheerful. He spent the day shopping and making risotto in the time-honored male way, removing all the utensils from the drawers and laying them out like surgical instruments, then decanting all the ingredients into small bowls to maximize the washing up.
She still couldn’t shake the idea that he was planning some kind of showdown, and as the tension rose during the afternoon she found herself toying with the idea of faking some kind of illness. When the doorbell finally rang just after half past seven she ran down the landing, trying to get to the door first and tripped on the loose carpet, twisting her ankle.
By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, George was standing in the hallway wiping his hands on his stripy apron, and David was handing him a bottle of wine and a bunch of flowers.
David noticed her hobbling a little. “Are you OK?” Instinctively he moved to comfort her, then caught himself and stepped back.
Jean put her hand on George’s arm and bent down to rub her ankle. It didn’t hurt a great deal, but she wanted to avoid David’s eye, and the fear that he might have given something away in that fraction of a second made her feel light-headed.
“Is it bad?” asked George. Thankfully he seemed to have noticed nothing.
“Not too bad,” said Jean.
“You should sit down and put your foot up,” said David. “To prevent it swelling.” He took the flowers and wine back so that George could help her.
“I’m still in the middle of cooking,” said George. “Why don’t I sit you two down with a glass of wine in the living room?”
“No,” said Jean, a little too firmly. She paused to calm herself. “We’ll come into the kitchen with you.”
George installed them at the table, pulled out a third chair for Jean’s ankle, which she didn’t really need, filled two wineglasses and returned to grating Parmesan.
It was always going to be a strange occasion, whoever their guest was. George didn’t like other people in his kennel. So she assumed the conversation would be stilted. Whenever she dragged him along to parties she would invariably find him standing disconsolately in a circle of men, as they talked about rugby and tax returns, wearing a pained expression on his face, as if he was suffering from a headache. She hoped, at least, that David would be able to fill any silences.
But to her surprise, it was George who did most of the talking. He seemed genuinely excited to have company. The two men congratulated themselves about the decline in Shepherds’ fortunes since their departure. They talked about trekking holidays in France. David talked about his gliding. George talked about his fear of flying. David suggested that learning to glide might cure the problem. George said that David clearly underestimated his fear of flying. David confessed to a snake phobia. George asked him to imagine an anaconda in his lap for a couple of hours. David laughed and said George had a point.
Jean’s fear ebbed away and was replaced by something odder but equally uncomfortable. It was ridiculous but she didn’t want them to be getting on this well. George was warmer and funnier than he was when they were alone together. And David seemed more ordinary.
Was this how they’d been at work? And if so, why had George not mentioned David once since leaving the company? She began to feel rather guilty for having painted David such a bleak picture of her home life.
By the time they decamped to the dining room George and David seemed to have more in common with one another than she had with either of them. It was like being back at school again. Watching your best friend striking up a relationship with another child and being left out in the cold.
She kept muscling into the conversation, trying to claw back some of that attention. But she kept getting it wrong. Sounding far too interested in
Only at one point did George seem lost for words. David was talking about Martin Donnelly’s wife having to go into hospital for tests. She turned round and saw George sitting with his head between his knees. Her first thought was that he’d poisoned everyone with his cooking and was about to vomit. But he sat back, wincing and rubbing his leg, apologized for the interruption, then headed off to do a circuit of the kitchen to ease a muscle spasm.
By the end of the meal he’d drunk an entire bottle of red wine and turned into something of a comic.
“At the risk of boring Jean with an old story, a couple of weeks later we got our photos back. Except they weren’t our photos. They were photos of some young man and his girlfriend. In the altogether. Jamie suggested we write ‘Do you want an enlargement?’ on the back before we returned them.”
Over coffee David talked about Mina and the children, and as they stood on the steps watching him drive away on a little cloud of pink smoke, George said, “You wouldn’t ever leave me, would you?”
“Of course not,” said Jean.
She expected him to put an arm round her, at the very least. But he just clapped his hands together, said, “Right. Washing up,” and headed back inside as if this were simply the next part of the fun.
