‘Getting a bit cold now,’ I observed. ‘But it’s so lovely. I think I can stick it out a bit longer.’
‘More wine,’ Matt prescribed. ‘It’ll warm you up, and anaesthetise you.’ I held out my glass and he topped it up with local Sauvignon. I looked again at the back lawn. I was pleased with the short grass. I had cut it specially for Matt’s return, though he hadn’t commented. I had tied the listening end of the baby monitor onto the front of the lawnmower, where I could see the flashing lights, and cut it after Alice was in bed. The longer evenings were a blessing. I had loved driving up and down, making stripes on the grass and thinking of the future.
I sipped my wine and tried to judge Matt’s mood. I was pretty sure that this was not a good moment to discuss the timing of our next child. I took a gulp and wondered whether I could steel myself to mention it. If I got pregnant right now, there would be three and a half years between Alice and the new baby. I would have preferred a smaller gap. I was anxious that, because we had not planned to have Alice, Matt might be assuming that she was an only child. I knew I needed to discuss it with him. Communication was everything.
The wine seemed to be slipping down a lot easier these days, I reflected. I even, occasionally, poured myself a glass when I was on my own. I would never have done that in England. I opened my mouth to speak, then decided not to mention the putative baby just yet. It would have alienated him all over again; and I could not bear the prospect of Matt slipping back into his black mood.
‘Lunch with your new friends tomorrow, then,’ he said, stretching his legs out and gazing across the tame grass at the sun disappearing into the maize field behind the house. The maize, I noticed, was beginning to put up its green shoots, in perfectly straight lines. ‘What are they like, then, really?’
I considered a few adjectives. Brash would be one. Crass, another. Not really my sort of people, would have been kinder. ‘They’re lovely,’ I said blandly.
‘You’re far too nice, Em,’ Matt replied laconically. ‘That pause said it all. You don’t like them. I’ll look forward to seeing why tomorrow. There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that they’ll have these bloody filming people hanging around, is there?’
‘No chance at all,’ I told him confidently.
I was excited to park outside the house I had admired for so long, and to walk through the wrought-iron gates and into the front courtyard. There were pots of flowers against the walls of the house, and a small fountain in the centre of the yard.
‘Why didn’t we buy something that was already renovated?’ I asked Matt as we walked to the door, which was ajar.
‘Money,’ he replied. ‘Obviously.’
I pushed the door and called, ‘Hello?’ Then I turned round to fetch Alice, who was kneeling beside a flower pot arranging her dinosaurs around a geranium. I knelt down next to her to gather them up.
‘You can come and play out here afterwards,’ I said. ‘First we have to go in and see Andy and Fiona.’ I took her hand to pull her up.
Suddenly, there was a commotion.
Matt was shouting. He ran back towards me and Alice, with his back turned forcefully towards the door and his arms protecting his head. ‘Don’t film me!’ he shouted, ‘Don’t film me!’
Alice was startled. She looked at her father, who had nearly reached the gate, and started to laugh. Then she copied him. Her little hands were on her head, and she shouted, ‘Don’t film me! Don’t film me!’ I saw Matt looking at her. Her face was crumpled with delighted laughter. For an instant Matt’s face had a look of abject horror. Suddenly he did not look like my Matt at all.
He straightened and ran out to the street, and away down the middle of the quiet road. An old man cycled by, and turned on his saddle to stare back at Matt.
I watched him running off, as baffled as the old man, then looked at the house. Alice was still giggling.
‘Can I go with Daddy?’ she asked. ‘Is it a chasing game?’
‘It will probably have to turn into a chasing game,’ I told her. ‘Daddy has suffered an extreme overreaction.’ I frowned. ‘Daddy is under a lot of pressure.’
Alice nodded knowledgeably. ‘I under lot of pressure too,’ she informed me.
The film crew, as well as Andy and Fiona, were standing around on the paving stones. I looked at them, shook my head and spread my hands.
‘Sorry,’ I said, walking closer. ‘I’m afraid I have no idea what that was about.’
Andy chuckled. ‘I don’t think your husband was overly enamoured of the prospect of being beamed into the nation’s living rooms,’ he suggested. ‘Just a wild guess.’
‘He’s never liked having his photo taken,’ I told them, ‘but that was a little extreme. I’m sorry.’ I looked at Rosie, who was clearly in charge. ‘You won’t show that bit, will you? He’ll look stupid and everyone will laugh at him.’
She shook her head, efficiently. Rosie wore tight black trousers and a black Lycra top. Once again, she had a pair of sunglasses balanced on her blonde head. I had thought she was in her late thirties, but, close up, she looked closer to thirty-three or so. How could someone my own age be so pushy? I wondered. And so successful. ‘Of course not,’ she said briskly. ‘We can’t show him without his permission anyway. When Andy invited you to lunch we thought it would be a nice scene to shoot, but obviously it’s not appropriate so we won’t.’
Fiona stepped forward. ‘I would have called you to run it by you, but of course we didn’t exchange numbers. I would have dropped by to see you, only I’ve been up to my eyeballs.’ She looked to the director. ‘Rosie, what would you say to this idea? Emma and I will go out next week, get our hair done and her eyebrows sorted out, maybe a manicure.’ She picked up my hand. I had scrubbed my nails that morning, but they were still ringed with earth.
I winced and pulled it away. ‘Gardening,’ I explained. ‘A manicure sounds good. I don’t think I’d mind Rosie coming along. Alice is in school every day except Wednesday.’
Rosie nodded. ‘Tuesday morning? We’ll go with you into town. Do you want me to make the appointment, Fi?’
Fiona laughed. ‘So says the only woman who speaks worse French than I do! Go on then, I dare you.’
Andy swaggered to the gate and made a show of looking right and left.
‘Guys?’ he asked. ‘Shall we get Matt back? Shall we promise not to disturb his peace of mind? Shall we swear a solemn oath not, under any circs, to capture his image on celluloid? Why don’t you guys all bugger off to the beach, after all?’
The house was immaculate. Every detail had been taken care of. The dining room was huge, with a vast ceiling, a wooden mezzanine floor, and a table that would comfortably seat twelve. A vase of dried flowers lurked in the fireplace. There were ornaments of shepherdesses and china cats on the mantelpiece, and there was not a speck of dust, as far as I could see, anywhere. The terracotta floor tiles were shining. There was something incongruous about the house. The building itself was spectacular, and its decoration rather . . . I tailed off, mentally. It was becoming harder to force myself not to be judgemental. I told myself not to be a snob. It was not to my taste. That was all.
I knew that we would have to return Andy and Fiona’s hospitality, and I knew they would be shocked by our peeling walls and heaps of rubble. I hated entertaining at the best of times. I would never do it with the film crew around. Our house was furnished, but it was messy and dirty and had an aura of being held together with sticky tape. Water still coursed through the roof whenever it rained. We had stripped some walls in preparation for the builders, and it looked thoroughly tatty and shameful.
Once the awkwardness had been dissipated by alcohol, lunch was not too bad. Fiona had cooked roast beef, complete with roast potatoes, bits of bacon, and two dishes overflowing with green vegetables. Andy had red and white wine ready, decanted and chilled respectively. They had bought a bottle of the ubiquitous
sirop
for Alice, and didn’t seem bothered when she decided on a whim that she wouldn’t eat anything except bread. Fiona delighted her by producing a jar of Marmite and happily boiled an egg when it was requested.
‘Aren’t you a good little girl for saying please?’ she cooed, and I watched my daughter squirming in her chair and simpering. I tried to catch Matt’s eye to laugh at Alice’s behaviour, but he was involved in an animated discussion with Andy about London house prices. I knew he was not interested. He had never owned a house or even a flat. He had rented in London, and then, when he had moved into my house in Brighton, he had kept his rental flat on and usually stayed overnight on work nights. He must have been feigning an interest. I had a feeling he was keen to talk about anything except his earlier behaviour. Nobody mentioned it until we reached pudding.
Fiona made a grand entrance from the kitchen. She was carrying an enormous cut-glass bowl. Matt sat up and panted comically, like a dog. Alice stood on her chair to peer into the dish.
‘Is it custard?’ she asked hopefully.
‘It certainly is,’ said Andy, ‘and I’ll tell you a secret. It’s custard, but it’s better than custard. It’s called trifle.’ He poured dessert wine into new glasses, and handed them to Matt and me. ‘Cheers, m’dears,’ he said, and we clinked glasses. I was glad to see Matt half-drunk. It meant he would not be able to drive to the airport. He would have to stay with us overnight now, catch the early flight on Monday and give the six thirty breakfast meeting a miss. He was relaxed at last, and I decided that he had to apologise.
‘How’s the documentary going?’ I asked Andy. Matt took his cue.
‘I do apologise for earlier,’ he said, looking at the white tablecloth. ‘I just can’t bear to be filmed. I suppose it’s something of a phobia, though I never realised that before. I don’t quite know what came over me.’
‘He has got a phobia.’ I felt bound to offer my support. ‘When Alice was born, it was all I could do to get him to have his photo taken holding her. I think I had to cry before he agreed. The photo is so meaningful that Alice has it framed in her bedroom, as a trophy.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Andy patted Matt’s forearm. ‘Must be a bit of a shock, to go to someone’s house and there’s a bloody great camera pointing in your face.’
‘I suppose so. I knew you were doing this show, you nutters, but Emma told me they wouldn’t be here today.’
‘Should have checked with you first, mate. Our fault. We solemnly swear never to do that to you again. OK?’
Matt smiled tightly. ‘Deal.’
Jo sat and looked at the picture. She had refused to give it back to Hugh, and kept it in a drawer at her gallery, where he would never find it. He had explained, smoothly, where it had come from. A colleague in Paris had taken it out to show him. This man had just moved his family to France and settled in the countryside within commuting distance of the city. He had been proud of his daughter’s picture and had shown it around. It had stayed on a table and Hugh had accidentally picked it up with his papers and shoved it in his bag.
She knew he was lying. What frightened her was that he was doing it so well. As soon as he had come into the bedroom, looked at her face, looked at what she was holding, he had raised his eyebrows casually.
‘Oh, that,’ he said. ‘Can you put it in my briefcase? I’ll give it back next week.’
He had given his explanation, and she had grilled him. ‘What’s the man’s name?’ she had asked, feeling sick.
‘Matt.’
‘What’s his daughter called?’
‘Alice.’
‘What’s his wife’s name?’
He had frowned. ‘His wife? I’m not sure. Emma, I think. Or Anna. Something like that. Why?’
She had asked why, if he had gathered it up with his papers, it was not in his briefcase with everything else. He had an answer: ‘Because I found it in there and left it out to give back. Then I missed him so I just shoved it in my overnight bag.’
His story hung together, but she knew it wasn’t true. When she let herself think about what this might mean, her knees trembled and she felt sick. Their weekend in Paris had been great, but his reaction to the idea had made her deeply uneasy, particularly since he seemed to have next to nothing to do when they were there. Alarm bells were ringing loudly.
Her assistant, Sylvie, knocked on the office door with a banal question about the new burglar alarm. Jo threw her the manual. Then Sylvie reminded her about her three o’clock appointment with a rich collector she needed to woo. It was quarter to three now. Jo put some coffee on, checked her make-up, smoothed down her dress, and put the picture back into the drawer. She wondered if it was ironic that she, Joanna Smith, queen of the contemporary art scene, had become obsessed with a child’s scribble. She was fairly sure that if she framed it and hung it in her window, someone would pay good money for it.
She forced herself to concentrate on her business. Matt had stayed away the previous night, unexpectedly. He said it was because he’d had so much to catch up on after taking time off to spend with her. She didn’t believe him.
He was going back to Paris on Thursday. While he was gone, she was going to do an enormous amount of snooping.
Coco, Matt and I stood next to the roundabout and watched Louis and Alice laughing as they spun round and round in their fire engine. The local fête was in full swing. Everybody who lived in St Paul appeared to be here. The evening was stickily hot, and men and women stood in groups around the carousel and the amusements which had been shipped in on the backs of lorries and put up in the car park next to Alice’s school. Matt had a can of beer in his hand. I was drinking water, because I was driving.
Alice was in her element: overtired, overstimulated, and surrounded by her friends. She knew them all from school, and they were all as pleased to see her as she was happy to see them. I knew that her French was reasonably fluent now but I was astonished to hear her chattering. Matt could not believe it.
‘She’s not three till October,’ he said, staring, ‘and she speaks bloody better French than I do. How did that happen?’
‘It’s one of the reasons we came here,’ I reminded him.