Every Good Girl (33 page)

‘Shit,' Emily muttered, leaving the room and slamming the door. In the far corner she'd just caught sight of Chloe's big purple bag. ‘He's not worth it. None of them are bloody worth it,' Emily told herself as she stamped down the corridor towards the careers office. Inside, hardly knowing what she was doing but feeling the need not to go to the French lit. class, she picked up brochures and read their titles without interest till she came across one about gap year students and foreign travel. For the first time she could see herself free and travelling like the people in the cover photograph with a backpack somewhere hot and dusty, sharing beer and sun and fun with fellow world citizens. She'd know no-one but make friends. Selling underwear and snaring unwilling men seemed a dismally tame alternative.

‘Yeah, Australia, Goa, Africa, anywhere far, far away,' she decided.

Joe didn't know what to do with himself. Now that Catherine had gone the flat felt like an anonymous place where he was simply staying temporarily, not properly living, waiting for the next thing to happen. He wished he knew what it was, this next thing, so he could just go and get on with it. It was affecting his work, not being able to make proper decisions and give it his full attention. Every time he sat at the piano he needed to get up and pick up a guitar instead. Then he'd play a few chords and move across to the phone to check out what the girls were doing. Lucy was always thrilled, always ‘Dad! Are you coming to see us? Can we come over to you?' but Emily was moody, wary, he assumed, that his revived interest in them was just a between-women phase, that he'd be back to the alternate weekends kind of fathering just
as soon as a new Catherine moved in.

It was after one of these one-sided conversations with Emily (‘How's Wordsworth?' ‘Boring') that he walked out of the flat and got a taxi straight to Art and Soul. Nina didn't like surprises, he knew that because he'd given her plenty of bad ones during their marriage. Right now she might be lunching with the Enid Blyton man, or simply not want to see him when it wasn't His Day. In the past, following his instinct had been wayward and had taken him to illicit meetings far away from home and family. Now instinct was taking him back – and the risks were all his.

Joe was hovering awkwardly in the gallery, picking up bits of jewellery and putting them down again without really looking, flicking through the pile of artsy recipe books, choosing and looking through the same one twice and not noticing.

‘You seem very nervous. What's wrong?' Nina asked. He looked strangely lost, she thought, like a child whose new bike's been stolen.

Joe grinned, rather sadly. ‘I don't know. I suppose I don't know what to do with myself next.'

‘What about work? Nothing on right now?' There were customers browsing and she had to push down an urge to hug him, be comforting.

‘Oh, work, well yes plenty of that, luckily. Title track for a new sitcom series.' He laughed. ‘You wouldn't believe the brief: “Not too larky, more knicker dropping than farcey trouser loss.” I think that's what it said. They want modern but not alienating, whatever that means.'

‘I suppose it means a hummable tune, uplifting but not . . . oh I don't know.'

‘Not anthemic. I suppose I'll have to come up with
something that's a cross between
Game On
and
Terry and June
,' Joe supplied. He knocked a papier mâché dish off the counter, bent to pick it up and apologized. ‘Look, do you get time for lunch? Is Sally coming in?'

‘She might be, who wants me?' Sally bustled her large self in through the gallery door and kicked it shut with her gold sandal. ‘Oh Joe! Hello stranger!' She leapt forward and kissed him.

‘Hi Sal. How are you and er . . . goodness I don't even know who you're with any more. Out of touch or what?'

‘I'm with Weight Watchers, sweetie. That's my most regular date just now. Men are far less reliable than our group leader. She is constant and loyal in her care and attention, sees a positive side to every lapse with the choccy cake and has my best interests always at heart. What more can a woman ask?' she said. ‘Were you saying something about lunch, because if you two want to go out, I'll hang on here for an hour or two.'

The restaurant was just opposite the gallery, with most of its tables occupied by pairs of women. Nina imagined they were the employers of all those bored au pairs, keeping out of the way while the girls read
Marie Claire
and fed mush to babies.

‘We drank champagne in here, remember, the day Art and Soul opened,' Joe mused as they looked at the menu. Everything on it seemed to be fish. He didn't much like fish.

‘Of course I remember,' Nina told him rather sharply. He was in a peculiar mood, mentally not quite there. He must be missing Catherine, she concluded, just not admitting it. Regret must be creeping in. Typical man, making a decision like that and then wanting everyone to feel sorry for him because he's now all alone-eo. She wondered if he'd been like that when he'd left
her
, but
then recalled that it had been very much her decision, a kind of freedom-or-me wing-clipping gesture with not a lot of real choice about it, not for him, not by then. If he now wanted to come home again, he wasn't giving the impression that he was about to ask.

‘Actually,' she said, putting down the menu, ‘I'm not very hungry but I do want to thank you.'

‘What for?' He looked mystified.

‘That night last week, the Graham thing. Not just for coming to the house to be there for Lucy but the way it never actually occurred to you that they might have got the right bloke.'

‘Oh, well . . . Graham. He's gentle, thoughtful. Just because he's a bit of a loner doesn't mean he has to be that dodgy. There's room in the world for all sorts.'

Nina looked hard at him, thinking before she spoke. ‘It could have been him, you know.'

‘But Emily said . . . and she'd know.'

‘No, I'm sure she was right. But we don't know for sure that he didn't do the other attacks. There might be more than one person. He fits the description – wandering about on the Common in a balaclava is definitely a bit odd, and, well there's all that profiling business you hear about. It's just something Paul across the road said about all those murderers who live with their mums.' She fiddled with the salt dish, arranging a row of the fat grains along the blade of her knife. ‘God what am I saying? My own brother. I hope the people he works with don't know anything about the arrest. If
I
manage to think in a no-smoke-without-fire sort of way, imagine what others would think. Sorry, I'm wittering on.'

Joe reached across and took her hand. ‘No, it's OK. I'm glad you can talk to me about it. I still think you're wrong, though.'

‘Yes. Thanks, Joe.' She squeezed his hand and didn't let go. Their fingers threaded themselves together. ‘So do I really. I think. Oh I don't know, I keep feeling so sick and I'm sure it's just the worry. You won't believe it, but Henry even suggested I might be pregnant!'

‘Oh Henry, he hasn't a clue about anything!' Joe laughed. ‘He thinks Arsenal will win the FA Cup before the year 3000.' Nina looked at him speculatively. He hadn't even given the idea a second's credence, just dismissed it without thought. He was frowning now and silent, staring past the menu at the pattern on the green tablecloth. Sally would say you could hear his brain whirring like stubborn old clockwork, counting and calculating. ‘I don't suppose,' he started saying, ‘I don't suppose it's, well . . .'

‘Possible?' she said, trying to sound lightly amused. ‘What can I say? I know how you feel about the idea because of Catherine, so don't. . .'

‘Don't what?' he said quickly, clutching her hand tightly. ‘Get my hopes up?'

‘But would they be hopes?'

‘Yes. Yes they would.'

When Nina got back to the gallery, she found her mother and Jennifer, heads together, inspecting a set of hand-blown wine glasses. In the moments before they caught sight of her they looked intent and serious, like health officials checking out a dubious café's kitchen. Sally was making eagerly enquiring eyes at her behind Monica's back and she had to suppress a giggle.

‘Oh hi. Looking for a present?' Nina greeted them. The two women looked strangely similar, perhaps bonded by their vigil, each with a large black oblong handbag, the rigid type that when she'd been a child Nina had thought resembled a coffin for a kitten. They
both wore navy blue jackets and heavy silk scarves tied loosely at the throat. Jennifer had strangely jaunty ankle-strap black shoes, the sort that Monica used to sniff at as ‘flighty'. An awful vision of Graham strangling them both in turn on Monica's sitting room floor came into her head. She wished she hadn't eaten the artichoke. The lemon butter had been far too rich and was sitting like an oily lake on top of her stomach.

‘We just came to see you, actually. I wanted to show Jennifer where you worked.'

‘I'll make coffee, shall I?' Sally suggested brightly, escaping to the little kitchen at the back.

‘I wanted her to get to know more about us all, you see,' Monica explained. ‘So she knows what I'm talking about and can picture what we all do.'

Nina wondered why Jennifer would want to. Or were Nina and her mother soon to be marched to the hospital and given a special tour of the orthopaedic wards so that reciprocal imaginings could be done? Monica might need warning, it occurred to her, that she should leave well alone and let Jennifer and Graham get on with their love life by themselves.

‘Yes I do like to get the full story,' Jennifer chipped in. ‘If Graham and I are chatting about you and what you do, I'll know what he's on about, won't I?' Nina felt uncomfortable. She was being inspected for gossip-fodder. She wondered if she should make their day and tell them that Joe and Catherine had separated. Monica would then probably take Jennifer straight off to Chelsea to point out Joe's apartment, like a tour guide doing the rounds of family landmarks. They'd kick themselves if they knew they'd just missed him climbing into a cab right across the road.

‘Well, what do you think of our stock?' Nina asked instead. ‘Anything take your fancy?'

‘Oh yes,' Jennifer enthused. ‘There's a lot here would make lovely wedding presents.' Nina's mouth fell open. This was exactly the kind of remark of blatant tactlessness she would have expected Monica to make, but it was Jennifer who'd said it. ‘Jolly expensive. Place must be a little goldmine,' she was now muttering, picking up a vase and checking the price label on the bottom.

‘Oh who's getting married?' Sally asked cheerfully, emerging from the kitchen with a tray of coffee in gallery stock mugs.

Nina, behind Jennifer, shrugged and grinned at Sally. ‘I do like weddings,' Sally commented comfortably, winking at her and offering sugar. ‘Well I liked mine, both of them. It's the marriage afterwards that's the problem. You have to live with them you know, after the big day. Ghastly,' she shuddered, mock-confiding.

Jennifer and Monica tittered. They would talk about Sally afterwards with great satisfaction, Nina knew. They would describe her as A Character and not even begin to imagine that she'd been anything but joking.

‘Right, well, for me it's time to get off to work. Nice to have seen you again,' Jennifer said to Nina. ‘Perhaps I'll come back and actually buy something one day,' she added.

‘Oh feel free. Any time,' Sally told her, opening the gallery door and ushering the pair out. Nina waved as they left, feeling like a child left at school.

‘Strange,' she commented to Sally. ‘Whatever is my mother up to? Is she giving Jennifer a one-day crash course in how this family functions?'

‘Exactly that, I'd say,' Sally agreed. ‘And I hope you were up to standard or Jennifer will mark you all down as a big Fail and go back to the usual nurse hobby of pursuing Dr Right.'

‘I think she's had one of those before. She's been married anyway.'

Sally shuddered. ‘And she thinks it's a good idea to do it again? Mad.'

‘Well no-one's mentioned marriage. I don't suppose Graham has anyway.'

Sally gave a loud laugh. ‘Graham? What's he got to do with it? He'll be the last to know, trust me.'

Emily felt about as depressed as it was possible to be.

‘Come to the pub,' Chloe was trying to persuade her down the phone. ‘Honestly, everyone'll be there and Nick's being a pathetic lost soul without you. He keeps talking about you, I'm sick of the sound of your name!'

Why were you on the common room floor with him then?
Emily's mind demanded. She didn't want Chloe to know she knew. Something said couldn't be unsaid.

‘I would come, but I promised to babysit for the bloke across the road. You know, the one I told you about whose bratty little girl got Lucy's Barbados modelling job. Lucy made her some suntan lotion out of real cream so that she'd put it on and stink the beach out.'

‘Nice one, Lucy,' Chloe giggled ‘Revenge is sweet.'

‘Mmm, probably is though the smell won't be. Anyway, so I can't come out. He's going to the airport to meet them – not the sort of thing you can cancel.'

‘Shall we come to you?'

‘Depends who “we” is . . .'

‘Well me and Nick and Alex and Mel and Miranda and whoever's there. We could bring drink.'

Emily considered. There'd be Nick, giving her a chance either to show he was With Chloe or Wasn't With Chloe. She was feeling a bit too emotionally fragile to be able to take a With Chloe scenario.

‘Nah, leave it. I'll end up having to clean their house if everyone comes, they'll spill beer on the sofa and stuff. They always do. I'll come out tomorrow and get pissed with you.'