Scissors, Paper, Stone (34 page)

‘I must say, Janet, that this is one of the best roast chickens I’ve ever eaten,’ he said, pushing his knife and fork together on his plate.

‘You always say that,’ Charlotte joked, prodding him affectionately in the ribs. ‘It’s like the Olympics: the last one is always the best ever.’

Gabriel rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t always say it.’ He paused. ‘And if I do, it’s only because I genuinely mean it.’

Everyone laughed. Anne, sitting on the other side of the table next to Janet, tried not to but couldn’t. She was being charmed in spite of herself.

‘Are you a good cook, Charlotte?’ asked Janet. ‘Young people these days seem to be able to do so many things.’

Charlotte smiled, and her pale pearl earrings glinted in the candlelight. She pushed a wayward strand of hair away from her face. ‘I’m flattered that you think I still qualify as a young person.’

‘Nonsense, Charlotte,’ said Anne. ‘You’re only thirty.’

‘You’re virtually foetal in comparison to the rest of us,’ said Gabriel.

‘Speak for yourself,’ Anne replied, adopting a mildly flirtatious tone that Janet had never heard before. She was clearly enjoying herself.

‘I’m an all right cook, I suppose,’ said Charlotte, twisting the stem of her wine glass so that the crystal cast a cone of light across the tablecloth. She pushed her finger towards the shadowy outline of it, stopping just before she got to the central brightness as if afraid it would scald her.

‘You’re a great cook,’ said Gabriel. ‘Although there was that time that you baked an entire sea bass without taking out its innards.’

‘Yes, there was that time. Thank you for reminding me.’

‘It was very thrifty of her,’ Gabriel continued, addressing his remarks to Anne. ‘In these times of economic hardship, we should all be doing the same thing. A few dead sprats could feed a family of four for a week. Waste not want not, I say.’

Anne giggled. Janet looked at her, astonished. Anne had actually giggled. She glanced up to see if anyone was ready for a second helping and caught Charlotte winking at her. Janet smiled, feeling the warmth of a shared joke settle around her like a thick blanket. She felt, for the first time in ages, so thoroughly included. She felt part of something. She wanted this evening to go on for ever.

Charlotte leaned across the table to top up Janet’s glass. She brushed her fingers across the back of Janet’s hand and when Janet looked up, Charlotte was smiling and her lips were moving and after a moment, Janet realised she was mouthing ‘Thank you’.

They all tried to help her clear the table but Janet insisted they leave it. There was nothing worse, she thought, than going to someone’s house for dinner and then being roped into the endless tidying up, dragged into the uncomfortable jostling in a stranger’s kitchen as guests tried to compete with each other to show how much they were doing.

‘Honestly, please don’t bother,’ she said as she caught Gabriel stacking plates, wiping them clean of chicken bones and stray bits of stuffing. ‘You don’t know where anything goes in any case.’ Gabriel looked at her sceptically. ‘It would be more work for me in the end,’ she persisted.

‘OK, well at least tell me where the tea and coffee things are and I can make myself a bit useful.’ He picked up his tower of crockery. ‘And as I’m going to the kitchen anyway I’ll take these with me. But don’t worry. I promise not to lift a finger.’

Janet smiled and followed Charlotte and Anne through to the drawing room. The evening air had cooled so she knelt down by the open fireplace and started building up a framework of logs and crumpled balls of newsprint, just as Nigel had taught her. It lit easily, the flames catching on the paper and spluttering into life at the edges of the wood bark. A sulphuric warmth filled the room and Janet felt her cheeks get pleasantly hot. For a while, nobody spoke. From the kitchen came the sounds of coffee percolating and the gentle clatter of teacups and saucers being assembled. It was a contented sort of silence.

Anne was sitting on the armchair nearest the fire, her face softened by the burnished light. She was resting her head on one of the wingbacks, a glass of wine still in one hand. There was a small, but noticeable smile on her lips. Each time she took a sip, she closed her eyes as if to savour the moment as much as she could, wringing the present dry of every liquid atom. She looked happy.

‘That was impressive,’ said Charlotte and it seemed they had been silent for so long that her words sounded strange. Janet blinked. Anne turned to look at her.

‘The fire, I mean,’ said Charlotte, her eyes darting between them. ‘Were you two half asleep?’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Anne stiffly, pushing herself upright on the chair and smoothing down her skirt.

‘You were, Mum! I caught you.’

‘I wasn’t,’ insisted Anne, but her mouth was curling up at the corners.

‘Is it past your bedtime?’ asked Charlotte, her voice full of faux-concern. ‘Have we kept you up too late?’

‘Stop being so cheeky.’

‘Yes, Charlotte, you should respect your elders,’ said Janet, emboldened by the light-hearted atmosphere.

‘Janet!’ Charlotte shrieked. ‘I can’t believe you’re telling me off!’ Anne smiled and then the three of them were laughing and they almost didn’t hear the tinny sound of a mobile phone ringing.

‘Whose is that?’ Anne asked. ‘I thought I switched mine off.’

‘It’s mine,’ said Charlotte, checking her watch. ‘I’ll let it ring out.’

‘You could have put it on silent,’ Anne said, a note of criticism in her voice.

‘I normally do. I forgot.’

Charlotte’s smile slid from her face. Her mouth set in a firm line of irritation. The room seemed to shrink with tension. Why did Anne have to do it? Janet wondered. She couldn’t help herself. Janet glanced at the fire and jiggled it about a bit with the poker for no reason other than to occupy herself. It was extraordinary, she thought, how quickly a squall of mutual misunderstanding could brew up between these two. She hoped Gabriel would come back into the room soon.

‘What’s taking so long with the coffee?’ said Charlotte, as if reading her thoughts. She fiddled with one of her earrings. No one spoke. And then the phone rang again. Anne tutted, just loud enough to be heard.

‘I’m sorry, Janet. I’d better get it.’ Charlotte went into the hallway and rummaged about in her bag. The phone was flashing a frigid blue light, but it was dark and her fingers grappled to find it underneath the tissue packets and dog-eared business cards.

‘Hello?’

‘Miss Redfern?’

‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘It’s Evan Lewis here. From London Bridge Hospital.’

Janet

Janet knew instantly that there was something wrong when Charlotte walked back into the room. Her face was pale and slack, her mouth hanging slightly open as if she had been interrupted in the middle of saying something. She was still holding the phone.

Gabriel was pouring tea. He put the pot down on the tray as soon as he saw her face.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked but something stopped him from going to her.

Janet held her breath, waiting for someone to speak, and then she heard a noise and she couldn’t make out what it was until she turned to look at Anne and realised that it was coming from her. Anne was bent over in the armchair, her arms crossed over her stomach, the hands clutching at her sides, her fingers scratching into her flesh like pecking birds. She was rocking forwards and emitting a low, moaning sound that was a scream and a cry all at once. The glass of wine had tipped over. A clotted red stain spread slowly across the carpet, inching darkly forwards.

‘It’s Dad,’ said Charlotte and her voice sounded detached and dry and as though it wasn’t her own.

Charlotte

Charlotte shut her eyes tightly, pushing the lids down, screwing the darkness up inside her like a crumpled piece of paper, and then, after a few seconds, she opened them again and the room was still there and Janet was still looking at her with concern and Gabriel was still just about to walk over and take her in his arms and her mother was still bent into herself, still crying, still grieving for something that had never been. And then she knew what she had to do. She walked across the room and knelt down by the armchair and put her arms round her mother.

Charlotte drew Anne close to her chest and she could feel her mother’s juddering sobs and her scratchy gulps for air; she could feel Anne’s shoulders shaking and the shattered vibrations of her crying. ‘It’s OK, Mum, it’s all right,’ she said, stroking Anne’s grey-brown hair and feeling its brittleness. ‘It’s over.’ Then: ‘He’s dead.’

She felt her mother’s hands pressing against her back and she felt Anne’s fingers bunching up the fabric of her dress and then she felt her mother gripping hold of her with a ferocity that lay somewhere between relief and love. She felt it and she held her mother tight and she did not cry and, in the midst of it all, she found that she was thinking back to the strange straw donkey that her father had once given her, its black glass eyes staring at her, unblinking through the darkness of night. She did not cry.

Epilogue

The air smelled of hot earth and lavender. It was late afternoon and the mottled yellow light was about to tip over into the gentle violet of dusk, the change in colour seeping through the sky, leaving a litmus trail of pink. Later, the pale moon would bleed through, its circumference becoming gradually sharper until it was hanging above them, a bright coin pressed against the darkness.

The lawn was parched from a long, dry summer. Flakes of creosote hung off the garden fence like the shreds of a discarded reptilian skin. The plants had just been watered and droplets were still glinting from the leaves of an overgrown rhododendron.

At the bottom of the garden, a small child sat contentedly among the clay geranium pots, her chubby legs protruding from under her dress, and her feet bare. She wore a pale pink hat embroidered with daisies and her fair hair was wildly curly. She was picking blades of grass with her fingers and her attention was almost entirely occupied with this task. Occasionally, when she found a particularly long stem, she would giggle to herself and put it carefully into the lap of her dress for safe keeping.

Sitting at the table with a chilled glass of wine, Anne looked at the child, carefully observing each of her movements and smiling at the intent precision with which she carried out her task. The child was oblivious to the rest of the world, absorbed in her own microcosm, fascinated by the smallest things.

Anne took off her sunglasses. She had not noticed it getting dark and her eyes took a moment to adjust to the new, softer light. The child stood up unsteadily, scattering grass as she moved. Anne looked at her. The child turned and caught her eye, smiling, so that Anne could just make out the tiny glimmer of her two bottom teeth, small and precise like a doll’s. The child started to walk shakily towards her, a stumbling sort of movement that seemed to make her legs whir with the effort of keeping upright, her hands clenched into tiny, round fists.

Anne put down her wine glass and crouched forward, arms outstretched in encouragement. ‘Gracie! Are you coming to say hello to me?’

Gracie stopped for a moment, startled by the sudden noise, and then she grinned and tried to walk even faster, her feet stamping noiselessly on the lawn, her pink tongue poked out in concentration. ‘Come here, darling,’ said Anne, scooping her up as she reached the chair.

Gracie installed herself on her grandmother’s lap, turning her head so that it rested against Anne’s chest. She started to suck her thumb and Anne noticed that the back of her hand was stained with grass. Anne took off the child’s bonnet and placed it carefully on the patio table. She felt the warmth of Gracie against her, the sweet burnt-toast and honey smell of her hair, and she brushed down the tight blonde curls at the nape of her neck.

‘She looks so like Charlotte, doesn’t she?’ said Janet, who was sitting at the opposite end of the table grappling with the pages of a Sunday newspaper supplement. Anne wished she would read a magazine instead – the constant sound of crinkling and re-folding was unnecessarily intrusive. And then she checked herself. It was a new technique she had: she was trying to let trivial irritations skim over the surface of her consciousness and, instead of focusing on someone’s negative qualities, she was attempting to remember all the good things about them. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded. She had read about the technique in a book that she was ashamed of having bought. It was one of those self-help-type things with a vividly coloured cover and a rhetorical question as a title. Anne had picked it up without thinking while in a queue at Waterstone’s and found herself oddly comforted by its curious blend of advice and hopefulness.

‘Yes.’ She smiled at Janet. ‘Yes, she does.’

She could feel Gracie’s head get heavier and she knew, without looking, that her eyelids would be stuttering shut. It was almost her bedtime, but Anne did not want to surrender her just yet. She drew Gracie into her more tightly, placing a protective hand gently against the side of her face so that she could feel the extraordinary softness of her granddaughter’s skin.

It had been almost three years since Charles had died. Anne shivered involuntarily at the thought. It felt far longer than that and yet simultaneously seemed so recent. Sometimes, she woke up in the mornings and forgot that he was gone. She could still feel his presence oozing through the house, even though she had finally got around to redecorating the study and then, in unspoken sequence, she had painted all the other rooms as well. She had thrown out the overstuffed sofa and replaced it with a square, beige minimalist affair that Charles would have hated. She had wanted to get rid of the Aga too but Charlotte protested so vociferously that eventually she changed her mind.