Other People's Husbands (24 page)

‘And that makes you happy?'

‘I don't know about happy. Happy's a big word, a long-term word.' She didn't want to think beyond the moment. ‘But this is brilliant! If you only knew how good it is not to be going straight home right now . . .'

And that would be OK, she thought, swiftly counting through the people in her house. Cassie's lecture had been cancelled, so she was home with Charlie. Jasper and Pandora were grown up enough to keep themselves occupied and Conrad . . . well, Conrad was watching the racing on TV, something he'd never bothered with before but which had had him scanning the list of runners for Newmarket that morning with an alarming look of expensive new enthusiasm. If he got through the afternoon without losing thousands, she'd consider it as good as a winning streak.

Sara leaned back on the cream leather headrest, feeling the wind whooshing her hair round her face. She closed her eyes and the music came back on again, the same REM song as before, close to the end now. It had been an REM song Jasper had been singing to himself in the pool the night before, as they'd put out the fire and taken a mightily deflated Conrad back to the house. He had looked defeated but defiant, as if there was some essential something they had all failed to understand.

She'd offered him tea and said he should go to bed, sleep off his strange mood, but he'd told her she was a fussing witch, insisted on brandy and sat outside with the bottle, smoking many cigarettes and complaining he was still cold and it was all their fault. Some kind of mad stubbornness wouldn't let him simply come back into the house and he'd slid into bed hours later, freezing, falling into a dead sleep instantly and breathing smoky boozy fumes at her. Jasper and the girls had gone down to the studio. Cass had told Sara that morning that no one had mentioned Conrad, but they had simply watched comfort television and avoided conversation completely.

‘OK, over here, on the left. Wherever you can find somewhere to park,' Sara said, pointing to the common.

‘Ah – now this looks like
real
fun!' Ben said, as he turned off the main road and saw the fairground laid out ahead of them. ‘I haven't been to a fair for years, not since . . .'

‘Since?' she prompted. ‘Since your children were small?'

‘Yes – something like that. Actually I can't really remember. I suppose we must have been to a few at some stage, but when they're little you spend all your time trying to keep them from racing into the path of the Waltzer or getting lost in the crowd, or sick from candyfloss. And then when they're big enough to enjoy it properly . . .' He shrugged.

‘Yes, I know. They'd rather be with
anyone
but a parent and you either get them sliding out of sight with their mates or sulking and refusing to go on any rides, even though you know they're desperate to!'

Ben backed the car into what seemed an impossibly small space between a motorbike and a Mini, pressed a button and the roof started to come up. Sitting there beside him as it whirred into place, Sara was conscious that the space had become a very intimate one. She would almost have preferred to stay there for hours, just sharing this capsule with him, talking. But then Ben switched off the music (Queen now, the poignant ‘Lily Of The Valley'). Once the car doors were open and the spring air flowed in, the intimacy dissolved and together they walked up the road towards the fairground.

‘It's only just opened, by the look of it,' Sara said as they approached. ‘Looks like we're almost the first in.'

‘Good. Then we won't have to queue for the big wheel and I can get the pick of the prizes when I shoot all the ducks down.'

‘Are we still allowed to use guns?' she asked. ‘I'm surprised. I'd have thought Health and Safety would have a ball with this lot. I know you can't win fish any more.'

Ben laughed. ‘Yeah, but ours always died in about a day. Didn't yours? I thought they were pretty poor value, as a prize.'

‘We had one that went on for six years. He ended up about a foot long and very fat. There was something unnerving about the way he looked at you, and he'd gone all silver instead of gold by the time he died. Like someone whose hair is very suddenly going white.' She shivered. ‘I really didn't trust that fish. He had . . . powers!'

‘Oh God, I'm out with a loon!' Ben backed away, laughing at her. ‘There must be a word for it, this irrational fear of goldfish. Some variation on piscophobia, do you

think? Orpiscophobia?'

Sara punched him gently. ‘Not
all
goldfish! Just that one. We buried him very deep when he went, I can tell you. Oh look – dodgems! Come on!'

Ben was a formidable dodgem opponent. He and Sara were the only customers, so a couple of the fairground boys joined them to make it a good battle and he outmanoeuvred them easily, determined to scare the life out of Sara. Just as she was bracing herself for each almighty smash as he raced towards her, he'd swerve at the last second, maybe only nudging her car gently, confusing her.

Eventually, exhausted and all laughed out, they wandered across to the rifle-shooting.

‘Now,' he said. ‘Do I come over all macho and try to win you the big stuffed tiger? Or is this where you push me aside and prove that you're the Annie Oakley of Richmond?'

‘Never held a gun in my life, honest!' she told him. ‘Charlie might like that tiger,' she said, pointing to the array of stuffed-toy prizes, ‘though possibly a smaller version would be less terrifying for him. It's about ten times his size!'

‘The smaller one it is then.' Ben handed over the cash to a massively overweight blonde bulging out of a purple satin micro-skirt, and picked up the rifle, peering down the sight line. Men always do this, she thought, always try to look as if a gun is something they're really familiar with, because that's the blokey way to be. How often would a freelance feature-writer have handled a gun? All the same, every one of Ben's shots hit the target.

‘Hey, brilliant!' Sara hugged him, out of spontaneous delight. His arms were round her, his mouth brushed lightly against hers. She moved away, the moment passing, but she knew she'd think of it later when she was on her own.

‘Just call me Bill Cody. Which prize for you, my lady?' he asked her. ‘Big tiger? Medium? Or can I interest you in the leopard?'

‘Medium tiger, please.' She pointed to one that seemed to have a knowing smirk. The purple-clad giantess handed it to Ben with no suggestion of a smile. He gave the tiger to Sara and she cuddled it against her.

‘What will you call him?' Ben asked as they strolled towards the candyfloss van. The fairground was filling up now; families were out, schoolkids were roaming in giggly groups and there were shrieks from the rides.

‘Putney,' she said. ‘The fish was called Abingdon after the fair where we won him, so it seems right, somehow.'

‘Every chance this one won't triple in size, too.'

It was well into the rush hour as Ben drove them home. Confidently, he whizzed through various back roads so they didn't have to sit in stationary traffic. Sara was glad – she wanted to get back now. While she had been pressed by G force against Ben on the Waltzer and his arm was round her, she'd thought of Conrad and what he might be doing at home while she was out having teenage-type shrieky fun, clutching the big cheap toy and feeling sticky with candyfloss. Suppose he had another go at burning something? The entire house? Himself ? She imagined the girls distraught, saying, ‘But where
were
you?' Would it come to this, that she'd be afraid to leave Conrad unsupervised, or was it just that she felt guilty being with someone else, tempting fate, perhaps?

‘OK, would you like me to drop you?' Ben asked as they approached the riverside. Of course, he didn't yet know where she lived. She still slightly wanted to keep it that way, still be Sara McKinley for a free-spirited while, put off the moment when he said, as he surely would, ‘Ah! So your husband is
Conrad Blythe-Hamilton
!'

‘Just on the corner here will be fine, thanks,' she told him.

‘I must see you again very soon,' he said when he'd stopped the car. ‘We need to talk about this exhibition. I'll introduce you to the gallery owners. They loved your photos, thought it would work really well in the space.'

‘Great! I'm quite excited about getting back into it. It's been a while. Call me,' she said.

He unfastened her seat belt then took her hand, pulling her towards him. The adrenalin surged again as he leaned forward and kissed her softly. This time it wasn't the kind you could interpret as a just-casual-friends kiss. Nor did she exactly fight him off – quite the opposite. When, she thought as the kiss continued, was the feeling that she was being unfaithful going to kick in? Not today, it seemed. Eventually, confused and flustered, she disentangled herself from him and picked up her bag and the toy tiger from the car floor. She was having trouble working out how to breathe properly.

‘Bye, Ben,' she managed to say as she fumbled with the car door handle. ‘And er . . . thanks for the outing . . . and the tiger!'

‘A pleasure. Truly. And the next time someone asks me when I was last at a fair, I'll remember much better. I can tell them it was with someone else's beautiful wife.'

The pub was a long thin bar split into distinct people factions. Noisy with music, but one end, leading to an L-shaped alcove, was crammed with saggy old plum-coloured sofas where a bunch of students in scruff mode seemed to have found a speaker-free gap and were talking. That wasn't the Goth end. Those were in the middle by the bay window, huddled together looking as gloomy as Goths should, round a big table beneath a black chandelier. Cassandra, as she half-dragged Jasper towards the bar, got a fleeting impression of tiny fingers holding glasses. The fingers weren't truly tiny, of course, they were the only bits of visible flesh emerging from black fingerless Goth gloves. They all had them, as if it was compulsory. Some of the girls wore lacy ones, others were more hard-core in studded leather. Cass envied them. They had their chosen tribe, their comfort rituals of death-mask make-up and dressing up, and their support network. They could go to any town and hook up with their own crew just by asking around, looking around.

She felt adrift, here with her younger cousin, living back home with her parents, already a parent herself, which separated her, somehow, from her peers. How many of these Goth girls had a baby at home, she wondered. Probably none. It would be hard, after all, to keep an extreme make-up habit like theirs going, if you had to remember to buy more baby-wipes and sort the triple-vaccine appointment. And all that black and the purple satin . . . it would show every smear of baby rice. She missed Paul. Or maybe she just missed
someone
.

‘Hey, you made it! Xavier's here too. He's just gone off to talk to some people down the far end.' Pandora was behind the bar, doing her first shift at the Pumpkin pub. She skilfully operated a beer pump with one hand and poured tonic into a gin with the other. ‘Ice and a slice?' she called perkily to her customer.

‘Were you born doing this? You're putting on a perfect barmaid voice!' Cass commented.

‘Pity I don't have the tits for it,' Pandora said, looking down at the front of her boyish little body. ‘Five pounds sixty please,' she said, returning her attention to her customer. ‘OK now you, Cass, what can I get you? Please don't ask for a fancy cocktail; they take ages and the place is filling up.'

‘No, just a beer in a bottle, please Panda, and what about you, Jasper?'

‘Same,' he grunted. Cass noticed his attention was on the Goths. One girl in particular, with hair that looked mildly electrified. She must have hacked at it herself with blunt kitchen scissors. It was black, shot through with scarlet as if she'd run heavily bloodied hands through it.

‘Oooh . . . sorry, Jasper. If I was buying it would be fine, but as I'm selling, I just can't. I don't want to get fired on day one for flogging booze to my underage cousin. Think of something else? I'm really sorry.'

Jasper scowled a bit and scuffed crossly at the floor, kicking the base of the bar. ‘OK, OK, I sort of expected it,' he conceded. ‘Coke then. Real, not diet.'

‘Coming right up!' Pandora trilled, giving them her professional smile.

Cass fought back the urge to ask Jasper what the magic word was. She might be a mummy, but she wasn't
his
mummy. She'd only brought him out to show him that there was a potential smidgen of night life in this town. If he was going to be staying a while, he needed to get out and meet people or he'd soon be as mad as Conrad.

‘Mum get back OK? She's not usually that late, is she?' Pandora asked Cass during a break in the customers.

‘Yeah – and well weird too. She looked all hot and she'd got this
really
ugly, like cheap toy tiger? The sort you get down the pound shop? She said it was for Charlie but she was kind of hugging it and stuff.'

‘Oh God. The all-hot bit might be her age or something. Are we going to have Dad going senile at the same time that Mum goes menopausal? How much fun will that be?' Pandora giggled, moving up the bar to serve another customer.

Cassandra didn't see how it happened – it must have been while she was talking to Pandora that Jasper had slid under the radar and infiltrated the Goth table. He was on the curved window seat, squeezed up tight beside the girl with the blood hair. Partly she was glad that he, who seemed so silent in the house, could summon a useful level of social skill when he felt like it, but she also felt slightly abandoned. Pandora was busy with customers and Cass was relieved when Xavier approached, bringing with him a friend, quite a tasty, smiling one.

‘Cass, this is Josh,' Xavier said to her, looking as pleased with himself as if he'd brought her a bunch of roses. ‘He's doing English at Reading so I, like, thought you might get on . . .' He slunk backwards along the bar towards where Pandora was serving a couple of young post-work men in too-big suits, leaving Josh and Cassandra to look at each other and think of some amusing way to get past the fact that they'd been so obviously set up.