Invincible Summer (7 page)

Eva. The thought gave him a jolt. He'd been typing that email to her when Boris had started to malfunction…had he hit Send? No, he'd gone to see what Boris was doing and hadn't finished the message. And then Lydia had turned the power to the whole room off, so it would have been lost. A wave of relief washed over him. What on earth had possessed him? What sort of idiot sends a declaration of love when it couldn't be any clearer that it wasn't reciprocated? And anyway, looky here. There were other fish in the sea.

Lydia seemed to sense his appreciative gaze on her and rolled over sleepily, exposing her breasts (large and also freckled). She opened her eyes and gave him a lazy smile. Galvanised by her boldness, he reached out and ran his fingers over the left breast, tracing the outline of the areola.

‘What are you doing this summer?' he asked, rolling towards her. ‘Have you ever been to Corfu?'

T
HE THICK CREAM
envelope was lurking in the stack of post that Eva grabbed from the communal entrance table as she arrived home from work, on top of a pile of takeaway menus and exhortations to apply for credit cards. She noticed it immediately: her name and address handwritten on the front in black ink, the calligraphy stylish and precise. Hand-addressed letters were becoming rarer these days and usually meant a treat, or at least not a bill, so it was the first envelope she opened once she'd let herself in and put her bag down. She slid the card out of its envelope with a pleasant sense of anticipation, and read it three times before bafflement gave way to astonishment. It informed her that a Mr and Mrs Jeremy Price-Kennington requested the pleasure of her company at the marriage of their daughter Lydia Sarah to The Hon. Benedict Michael Waverley, at a church in Dorset some three weeks hence. She was still standing in the hallway staring down at it when her phone started to ring.

‘Have you got one of these?' she demanded before Sylvie had a chance to speak. ‘An invitation to Benedict's wedding? Is this some sort of a joke?'

‘Nope, deadly serious apparently,' Sylvie told her. ‘I just got off the phone to him. We only spoke for a moment before his paramour whisked him away to discuss the intricacies of table decorations but apparently he's known her all of about ten minutes, which makes sense because I wasn't even aware he was seeing someone. Did you know?'

‘I had no idea. The only thing I can tell you is that getting married ridiculously young isn't considered weird in his family, they all do it. But it says here it's in three weeks' time. What's that all about?'

‘Apparently the unseemly haste is because they wanted to do it before the weather gets cold and so it doesn't interfere too much with writing up their theses. You know he's about to finish his PhD?'

Eva turned this over in her mind. ‘I bet he's got the CERN job and needs to do it before he leaves for Switzerland.'

‘Who is she anyway, this Chlamydia Princely-Cameltoe?'

‘Lydia Price-Kennington? She's another Physics PhD, I knew her a bit when we were undergrads. A horsey sort, a bit ostentatiously sloaney but then I suppose Benedict's hardly a pleb himself. Still, he always wore it more lightly than she did. The word in the lecture theatre was that she boinked half the guys on our course, for which I'm sure they were all eternally grateful since that would have been all the action most of them saw in their undergrad years. She should probably be given a medal for services to desperate physicists.' Eva found herself growing more despondent as she spoke. ‘She had a certain reputation for kinkiness, if I remember rightly.'

‘Pah, the physics crowd wouldn't recognise kinky if it danced in front of them wearing a gimp suit and waving an armful of tentacle-hentai porn. I bet she's dull as ditchwater and the wildest they get is him rubbing one out in the corner of the bedroom while she recites prime numbers to him. Which come to think of it
is
kind of kinky, but not in a good way. But listen, are you okay with this? I always sort of thought that you two would get together eventually.'

‘I don't know, really,' said Eva. ‘The whole thing's a bit of a shock, isn't it? And I always thought…I mean…' What did she mean? That she had secretly assumed Benedict would always be there, that the thought of his actually being in love with somebody else created an unexpectedly forceful ache in her chest? She let the sentence tail off. ‘I'll just have to get used to it, I suppose. Anyway, it's been a while since we caught up. How's it all going with you?

‘Oh, you know. Still tiding myself over with bar work till I actually manage to sell some paintings.' Sylvie sounded morose.

‘It'll come, you'll see. And wouldn't you be better off in an art gallery or somewhere till then? You might make some decent contacts. Or at least be something like a designer or illustrator, use your artistic talents?'

‘I've been trying but all that's really on offer is unpaid internships, so you've still got to pay your rent and feed yourself while working for nothing. And even they seem to require experience. It's Catch 22: you can't get experience till you've got experience. I actually went for an interview at a gallery in Chelsea yesterday, figured I could do an internship in the day and then go straight to my bar job at night. I mean, who needs sleep, right?' She let out an unconvincing laugh. ‘Don't think I've got it though, they seemed rather underwhelmed by my 2:2 in Art History. The fuckers. I mean, I could swallow it if they were actually going to pay, but to be sniffy about your degree when they expect you to work for free…'

‘Just you wait,' soothed Eva. ‘When you're a famous artist you can go back and buy the place and fire them all. See how sniffy they are then.'

They carried on chatting for a few minutes, each trying to inject a bonhomie they didn't feel into the conversation, before giving up and saying their goodbyes. Eva hung up and sat at the kitchen table looking down at the wedding invitation. That was it then. She was losing Benedict, who'd always been there for her. There had been that moment, towards the end of their holiday in Corfu, when they had very nearly kissed. How different things might be now, if only one of them had actually made a move. Maybe she should have, but it would have been such bad timing, just as she was moving to London and starting her new life. Even as she'd been finally giving up on Lucien and growing closer to Benedict, there had been a part of her that hadn't really wanted her old life hanging around as she headed off on new adventures. She'd wanted a blank slate and the opportunity to recreate herself however she chose. But over the last couple of years Eva had started to realise that there weren't a whole lot of men out here with Benedict's qualities: his rumpled good looks, his kindness, his gentle humour. She had never met anyone else she found it so easy to talk to. He was one of those people who knew everything and had read everything, so that you never had to stop and explain yourself.

Anyway, what was this Honourable Benedict business about? He'd kept that flipping quiet all these years. What did it even mean? That Hugo was a lord or something? She suspected she'd find out at the wedding; clearly Lydia and her social-climbing family weren't planning to allow Benedict to maintain his discretion. Catty, she reminded herself. You don't know a thing about them. Sour grapes, that's what it is, and you've got no right. If Benedict's found someone he loves you should be happy for him. Being your safety net shouldn't be a lifelong project for him.

Eva didn't feel happy though. She felt stunned and nauseous.

‘So are you really not having a stag do?' Eva asked Benedict as they picked their way through the long grass on Hampstead Heath ten days after the invitation had dropped through her door.

He smiled. ‘This is it. This is my stag do. I can't think of anything I'd rather do. Besides, I'm not risking letting the Plasma Physics boys organise something. It's all good fun till you wake up in Utah in bed with a dead Girl Guide.'

‘Oh, come on.' Eva gave him a gentle shove with her shoulder. ‘A walk on the Heath isn't a stag do. At least let me invite Sylvie and Lucien out for drinks. Who knows when you'll next get the chance to spend time with us once Lydia has the old ball and chain around your ankle.'

‘Well, yes, it could be a while,' he admitted. ‘I've got another bit of news, you see. After the wedding we're moving to Switzerland.'

Eva stopped walking and looked at him, the cheerful expression she had been effortfully sustaining slipping a little. Not only was he getting married, but he was emigrating. She couldn't be losing him more completely.

‘So you got the CERN post? Congratulations,' she said bleakly. ‘You deserve it. And Lydia's going with you? Doesn't she mind putting her own life on hold?'

‘She's decided to take some time off. She's just finishing her PhD too, and even for a Solid State bod it's a pretty exciting opportunity to spend time at CERN. We're at a stage where the theorists don't know which direction to go in and the results from the Large Hadron Collider will determine that. It might come up with a real surprise but whatever we find, it's going to keep physicists off street corners for a long time to come.'

They were walking past the Highgate ponds now, the water gleaming in the autumn sunshine, and through the hedge they glimpsed an old man of perhaps seventy diving into the men's swimming pond.

‘What a nutter,' commented Eva to save herself having to think of something positive to say about how exciting it would indeed be for Lydia at CERN. ‘I know it's warm for September, but can you imagine doing that?'

Benedict laughed. ‘I can because I have. My father used to take us when we were kids. The house where I grew up is just the other side of the heath though my parents spend more time in the country than here these days. The real hard-core swim in there in all year round you know.'

‘Hugo used to take you? I thought the men's pond was a bit of a gay pickup place? No offence, your parents are great, but I can just imagine him fulminating against the queers. God, do you remember how he thought that being vegetarian meant I was some sort of cult member?' Eva laughed.

‘Funnily enough he doesn't seem too bothered by that sort of thing. I know he's a bit of an old reactionary but you have to bear in mind that he was at Eton in the bad old days of fagging so a spot of homosexuality would be unlikely to shock him, though of course he'd think it terribly bad form to actually speak about it. She'd never admit it, but my mother would probably be more scandalised. She's enquired rather pointedly about what she calls my lifestyle more than once over the last few years, so I think Lydia has come as quite a relief to her. She was no doubt trying to convey that she'd love and support me even if I did bat for the other team, but she looked like she was about to have an attack of the vapours. I've tried to explain often enough that I'm just crap at girls.' He let out what seemed to Eva a rather sad little laugh. ‘God knows it took long enough after that Corfu holiday for her to stop asking hopefully after you.'

She jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘And after all the reassurance you gave me about how they wouldn't think anything of it if you brought a friend.'

‘Well, I wanted you to come, and you wouldn't have if I'd told you that my family had been asking to meet you for ages and would descend on you like a pack of raptors, would you?'

The thought of that summer seemed very far away to Eva now, part of a more innocent era when the world sat more lightly on her shoulders. They wandered on, weaving away from the tarmacked path and across the spongy grass until they neared the crest of the hill.

‘Shall we sit down for a minute?' Eva said. ‘I love the view from up here.'

They lowered themselves onto the grass and looked out past the ponds towards the old Witanhurst mansion and St Michael's church spire. It was only four in the afternoon but already the sky was hinting at dusk with a streak of purple, a gentle reminder that a warm week in September didn't mean that autumn could be staved off forever.

‘I guess there won't be many more chances to do this,' said Eva, leaning back and propping herself up on her elbows. ‘Hanging out just the two of us, I mean, doing nothing in particular, just wandering around talking about anything and everything. I guess this is what happens when you grow up. People drift off in their own directions. Sometimes I look around at my job and my flat and my car and can't believe that people have mistaken me for an adult and let me have all of this. But this is it, isn't it? We're the grown-ups now.'

Benedict shifted so that he was facing her instead of the view. ‘Yes, I suppose we are. I probably shouldn't admit this, but some days I'm petrified. I've spent the whole of my adult life to date as a student and now I'm going off to a new job in a new country with a new wife.'

Eva sighed. ‘It really is the end of an era, isn't it? Or maybe the era already ended without our quite having realised it. I'm going to miss you, Benedict. In a funny way, I think I already do even though you're right here beside me.'

They suddenly seemed to be very close together without either of them having moved.

Are you really going to do it again? Benedict was asking himself. Let her walk away? You've spent years regretting not kissing her—do you want it to be the rest of your life? Shit, but Lydia, you're marrying Lydia, and you love her and she's…she's…

And all the time he was thinking these things his mouth was inching lower and Eva was raising hers and once their lips were touching it would be crazy, impossible not to kiss her, was he expected to just sit there with his face on hers and not move his lips like some sort of mad statue, he wasn't made of stone and now he was kissing her and it felt…

‘Shit!' yelled Benedict and sprang back, pushing Eva away so hard that she almost rolled backwards into the grass.

‘What?'

‘This! We can't do this! What are we doing? We can't do this.'

‘God, I thought you'd been stung by a bee or something. Okay look, calm down, let's sit on this bench and talk.'

But Benedict was up on his feet and pacing now, hands pressed to his temples.

‘Benedict, this isn't all bad. It's not great timing, but it's happened. And we both wanted it to happen.'

‘It's not that simple.'

Eva took a deep breath. ‘No, I know, there's Lydia. And the wedding. Benedict, I know this is the worst possible time for me to say this, but do you really want to go through with it? I've got no right to say this, but since I knew you were marrying her I've felt, well, bereft. I thought you'd be there forever but now I'm losing you and I haven't been able to sleep for wondering, what the hell are we doing? Should we be together? And I know it's impossible, that there's Lydia and the wedding and CERN, but….'