In a Good Light (45 page)

‘So what you want is some assurance from me that I'm not going to start making demands?' I said. The drinks sat on the table between us untasted. This was the closest to a disagreement we'd ever come.

He reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘I don't want anything, darling. I'm sorry: you know what a pessimistic old git I am. Don't take any notice of me.'

‘Okay, let's talk about something else,' I said, returning his squeeze. ‘We're wasting our precious evening.' I only realised as I spoke that this last remark might, in the current climate, be construed as demanding. ‘Better still,' I went on hurriedly, ‘let's go back to mine.' I stood up
and pulled him to his feet, and we walked out of the heat and smoke of the pub into the dark and chill of the March night, towards our separate cars.

I PARKED AT
the end of Penny's road and switched off the engine. I was ten minutes early. I'd brought the Lettings section of the local paper along as a time-filler, and began working through it methodically, crossing out ineligible properties with a red pen. Too big, too expensive, way too expensive, too far away
and
too expensive.
Slash, slash
. Geoff had not exaggerated the cost of renting in the commuter belt. After ten minutes the only ad to be spared the red pen was for one room in a shared flat above a dry cleaner's on the main road. I could imagine the toxic fumes drifting up through the open windows on summer evenings, the perpetual thrum of machines and traffic.

I got out and checked my appearance in the shine on the car door. Penny had said that she had an enduring memory of my delinquent fashion sense, so I had made an effort to conform today, and was clad in long, high-heeled boots, a suede skirt with a tasselled belt, and a white shirt.
I knew it went together okay, because I'd seen it on a store dummy in Marks & Spencer's window, and bought the whole rig. The boots were killers, though.

The house was large, 1930s Tudorbethan, and set back from a wide, straight road flanked by grass verges and naked trees. There was a truck in the driveway containing various garden equipment, including a giant shredder. As I approached a white Appliance Care van pulled up and a man jumped out carrying a case of tools. I hung back out of sight until he'd been admitted, so as not to have to share my moment of reunion with the plumber, or whoever he was, and then I teetered down the driveway, carrying a bottle of Chablis and some lilies, and rang the bell.

After some time the door opened, and she stood before me, unmistakably Penny and yet utterly changed. She had put on weight, especially round the bust and hips; her hair was now very short, with a feathery fringe and grey highlights, and her skin had acquired that crinkled effect of habitual sunbathers. She wore a tiny pair of oblong rimless spectacles, but within this altered setting her features were the same.

‘Esther. At last!' she said, although I was in fact dead on time, and we leant towards each other and clunked jaws across my armful of wine and flowers.

Dad was right of course: someone did get hurt, but not the person he had in mind. Once I'd made up my mind to find Penny – and Dad's disapproval gave me just the impetus I needed – it was amazingly easy, thanks to the internet. Christian would have been an ideal recruit for this task as he is on the computer all day, either refining a new game, or surfing spinal injury websites for the latest research,
but of course he was the one person I couldn't enlist. I'm ashamed to say I had never mastered anything other than simple word-processing. My excuse is that the computer is never free for me to use, but it's also something to do with being a novice in the shadow of an expert. It's like living with someone who can programme the video recorder, or speak a foreign language: you never bother to learn because it's pointless duplicating skills.

Fortunately, at Rowena's prompting, one of the chefs, Daniel, offered to help me out, and the night after I'd provided him with what little information I had concerning Cassie and Penny, he had produced an address and phone number.

‘Did it take long?' I asked him, watching as he chopped an onion to a fine tilth with what seemed to me reckless haste.

‘Nah,' he said. ‘I could probably have found out her work address, bra size and credit rating if you'd wanted it.'

‘Really?'

‘Yeah.' He pointed the knife at me. ‘I looked you up while I was online. You've got about sixty mentions on Google.'

‘Me?' I said, thinking, What the hell's Google?

‘All about your illustrating stuff. All the books you've done. Winning that prize. Basically every time your name's been in a newspaper. I'm like, wow, she's more interesting than she looks.'

‘Thank you so much, Daniel,' I said, wilting.

I considered turning up on Penny's doorstep unannounced, but common sense prevailed. Weybridge was that bit too far to drive on the off-chance that she'd be at home. A letter would require more patience than I possessed. It would have to be the phone. I preferred to make the call
when I had the house to myself, and I didn't have to wait long: Christian and Elaine were off out on little jaunts at every opportunity. Today they were going to Tate Modern. Christian's an art-lover all of a sudden!

I didn't plan what I was going to say. I thought it would be better to crash in and be spontaneous, so as soon as I'd waved Christian and Elaine off I snatched up the receiver and dialled without giving myself any time to rehearse.

The phone was picked up after half a dozen rings, and a curt female voice said, ‘Hi.' This monosyllable wasn't quite enough for me to make a positive identification, so I said, ‘Is that Penny?'

‘Hello Esther.' The reply came back instantly, with all her old warmth, but without any trace of the surprise that I would have thought the breaking of a nineteen-year silence deserved. From her tone you would think I was just returning a call.

‘Yes, it's me,' I ploughed on, trying not to be derailed by her composure. ‘I got your number off the internet. I hope you don't mind. I thought I'd get in touch and see how you are and what you're doing and all that.' I found myself reverting under her influence to teenage levels of inarticulacy.

‘Well, I'm so delighted that you have, Esther. Shall we meet? I'd love to see you.'

It was as easy as that.

In the kitchen Penny prepared lunch of mushroom omelettes while the man from Appliance Care dismantled the washing machine. ‘I'm sorry about the chaos,' she said, ‘but when you work full-time you have to get everything done on your day off.'

Already someone had come in to take the computer away to be fixed, and a crate of groceries had been delivered and unpacked. At the bottom of the garden a man was braced halfway up the largest of three tall poplars, a buzz saw swinging from a rope around his waist.

‘I'm having them lopped,' Penny explained, uncorking the wine with a curious plunger. ‘Cassie has worked out using Pythagoras that if they fall this way they'll demolish the house.'

Just beyond the trees was a railway cutting. What seemed like every few minutes an express train went screaming past, making the whole house quake. I found myself tensing up, waiting for the next onslaught. Penny didn't turn a hair. I suppose you get used to anything.

‘Where do you work?' I asked her.

‘For the Crown Prosecution Service. As a solicitor.'

‘That sounds high-powered.'

She pulled a face. ‘It's the civil service.' As if that explained everything. ‘Whereas you,' she went on, fluffing up some salad leaves with a pair of wooden claws, ‘are a successful illustrator of children's books. I've read all about you in the
Guardian
.'

I launched into my usual litany of denials. ‘Oh, no, I'm not successful at all. I mean, I don't make a living. Almost nobody does, unless they sell TV and merchandising rights.'

She dismissed this talk as mere modesty. ‘I always knew you'd be an artist of some sort. You were the only one who didn't realise what a talent you had.'

‘There's your problem,' said the Appliance Care man, holding up a piece of semi-circular wire. ‘That's what was making the noise. It had gone right through the drum.'

‘Oh,' said Penny. ‘I wonder where that came from.'

The man's face assumed the arch expression of one who has privileged information to impart. ‘Shall I tell you what it is?' he said.

‘Yes, do,' said Penny. ‘We're on tenterhooks.'

‘Put it this way,' he said, twiddling it round between finger and thumb, ‘one of your bras is not giving you the support it should.' Penny was speechless. I roared with disloyal laughter. ‘We get this all the time,' he said, laying the exhibit down on the kitchen table and shaking his head. ‘You ladies.'

While he reassembled the machine and packed away his tools, we ladies ate our omelettes in the sunny, white-walled dining room, which looked onto the garden. The tree-man had moved on to the second of the poplars: the lawn below was six feet deep in fallen branches.

I explained the chain of circumstances that had led me to her, making no mention of Christian. ‘I couldn't believe it when I saw Cassie. I knew she had to be yours. And then I read the name on her exercise book and that settled it. I just had to follow it up – it was such a monumental coincidence.'

‘You surely don't think it was a coincidence, do you?' Penny said, with an enigmatic smile.

‘What else would you call it?'

‘Well, suppose I had read about you in the
Guardian
, and suggested to the literacy coordinator at Cassie's school that they invite you in to speak at Book Week.'

‘Oh. Why would you do that?'

‘Because I knew you'd recognise Cassie, and if you were interested in a reunion, you'd pursue it, and if you weren't you wouldn't.'

‘Oh.' This was unsettling. I had considered myself to be
the manipulator of events. Penny was part of my plan. Instead, it seemed, I was part of hers.

‘I'm not saying there's no such thing as coincidence,' she said, enjoying my mystification. ‘I'm just saying that nothing that happens here today can be called a coincidence.'

In the doorway the Appliance Care man coughed discreetly. When Penny had paid him off she made a pot of sludgy Turkish coffee and we moved into the sitting room, which was large and slightly underfurnished, with dents in the carpet where the missing pieces had once stood. There were photos on the piano, studio portraits of Penny and Wart and Cassie, arms around each other, the united family.

‘So you married Wart,' I said.

‘Yes.' Penny's smile vanished. ‘And then two years ago he left me for someone else.'

‘Oh dear. I'm sorry to hear that.'

‘I never thought I'd end up divorced. Even my parents are still together, and they can't stand each other.'

‘How long were you married?' I asked her.

‘Twelve years. And we were together for five years before that. That's what's so unfair. People assume the relationship was a failure, but it wasn't. It was successful for at least fourteen years, which is a bloody long time.'

‘What went wrong?' I could sense from her tone that she didn't mind talking about it. Perhaps every retelling dispersed a little more of the unhappiness.

‘He had an affair with this woman he worked with. The fact that it's such a cliché doesn't actually make it any less miserable when it's happening to you. In fact I think it makes it worse, because you feel ridiculous as well as heartbroken.'

‘Poor you,' I said, with rising inadequacy. ‘How did you find out?'

‘I think I always suspected. I don't believe people who say they have no idea. I think you always know.'

‘Really? Do you think it's impossible for a man to deceive his wife for long?' This conversation was beginning to make me feel uncomfortable.

‘Yes, I do. I knew for a long time before I actually caught John out. We were in the car one day and he pointed out one of those coffee house chains and said, “
That's
the shop I was talking about the other day.” Only he hadn't been. Not to me. He got a bit flustered and tried to pretend I had forgotten the conversation, but I
never
forget conversations. Even after that I was frightened to confront him, because I didn't want to precipitate a huge crisis. I kept thinking, if only I do such and such, he'll realise what he'd be losing, but you just end up running round in circles trying to be the perfect wife, and getting more and more demoralised.'

‘I'm so sorry,' I said. Penny offered me the coffee jug, but I shook my head. My heart was hammering enough already. The fact that Wart, who had pursued her so hard and lured her away from Christian when she was at her most vulnerable, had gone on to discard her seemed to me an outrage.

‘I thought, perhaps if I showed more interest in all the things he's into, like Formula One, and modern jazz. He always used to accuse me of being an intellectual snob and looking down on his interests. But it didn't work. I used to go round to my sister's all the time and say, “What can I do? How can I make him love me? Just tell me what to do and I'll do it.” And eventually she had to sit me down and
say, “Look, mate. He doesn't love you any more, so nothing you do is going to work. And if he leaves you it's not going to be for a saxophone-playing racing driver, because love isn't logical like that.”'

‘Well, that's true,' I said. My face was burning. Partly with embarrassment at listening to Penny abase herself so frankly, and partly at the hypocrisy of my own expressions of sympathy. I had always been able to appease my bad conscience over Geoff's wife with the thought that our situation was utterly unique, and beyond the scope of conventional ethics. We were no common adulterers: I was no scheming home-breaker. The impregnability of his marriage was a given for both of us, and I had never wanted it otherwise. I didn't feel jealous or resentful of his wife; indeed, I felt a sort of sisterly warmth towards her, and something like regret that we could never meet. I imagined myself, in short, to be the sort of nice, untroublesome mistress that any woman might be pleased for her husband to have. I had been deluding myself, clearly.