The Radleys (5 page)

I
nevitably, if you have abstained all your life, you don’t truly know what you are
missing. But the thirst is still there, deep down, underlying everything.

The Abstainer’s Handbook
(second edition), p. 120

A Thai Green Leaf Salad with Marinated Chicken

and a Chili and Lime Dressing

“Nice jewelry,” Peter finds himself having to say to Lorna, after staring for too long at her neck.

Fortunately, Lorna smiles appreciatively and touches the simple white beads. “Oh, Mark bought this for me years ago. At a market in St. Lucia. On our honeymoon.”

This seems to be news to Mark, who only now seems to notice she is wearing a necklace of any description. “Did I? Can’t remember that.”

Lorna seems hurt. “Yes,” she says, mournful y. “You did.”

Peter tries to focus elsewhere. He watches his wife take off the plastic wrap from Lorna’s appetizer, then looks at Mark sipping his sauvignon blanc with such showy indifference you’d think he grew up on a vineyard.

“So, has Toby gone off to this party then?” asks Helen. “Clara’s gone, even though she’s feeling a bit sick.”

Peter remembers Clara coming up to him an hour ago, while he was checking emails. She’d asked him if it was okay if she went out, and he’d said yes abstractedly, without real y connecting to what she was saying, and then Helen had glanced scornful y at him when he went downstairs but had said nothing as she prepared the pork casserole. Maybe she was having her dig now.

And maybe she was right. Maybe he shouldn’t have said yes, but he is not Helen. He can’t always be on the bal .

“No idea,” says Mark. And then to Lorna: “Has he?”

Lorna nods, seems awkward talking about her stepson. “Yes, I think so, not that he ever tel s us where he’s going.” She swings the attention back to her salad, which Helen has just served. “Here it is. A Thai green leaf salad with marinated chicken and a chili and lime dressing.”

Peter hears this but no alarm bel s. And Helen has already taken a mouthful, so he thinks it should be al right.

He pokes his fork through some of the chicken and dressed watercress and puts it in his mouth.

Within less than a second he is choking.

“Oh God,” he says.

Helen knows it too but hasn’t been able to warn him. She has managed, somehow, to swal ow it down and is now swil ing white wine around her mouth to rinse out the taste.

Lorna is very worried. “Is something wrong? Is it too hot?”

He hadn’t smel ed it. The odor must have been lost amid the chili and everything else, but the pungent, foul taste is so strong on his tongue that he is choking before it even reaches his throat.

He stands up, his hand over his mouth, and turns away from them.

“Christ, Lorna,” says Mark, aggression hardening his voice. “What have you done to the man?”

“Garlic!” Peter can’t help but cry, between chokes, as if cursing the name of an undefeated enemy. “Garlic! How much is in it?” He rubs his finger over his tongue, trying to rub the wretchedness off. Then he remembers his wine. He grabs his glass. Glugging back, and through the blur of his watery eyes, he sees Lorna looking forlorn as she stares at the remains of her the blur of his watery eyes, he sees Lorna looking forlorn as she stares at the remains of her offending starter in its bowl.

“There’s some in the dressing, and a bit in the marinade. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you—”

Practiced, casual, Helen is quick on the vol ey: “Peter’s a bit al ergic to garlic. He’l survive, I’m sure. He’s like that with shal ots too.”

“Oh,” says Lorna, genuinely perplexed. ‘That’s strange. It’s such a useful antioxidant.’

Peter picks up his napkin and coughs into the white fabric. He keeps the last of the wine in his mouth, swil ing it around like mouthwash. Eventual y he swal ows that too.

“So sorry,” he says, placing the empty glass on the table. ‘Real y. I’m so sorry.’

His wife looks at him with a mix of sympathy and disapproval, as she pops a dressing-free green leaf into her mouth.

Copeland

“Are you going away this year?” Helen asks her guests.

Mark nods. “Probably. Sardinia maybe.”

“The Costa Smeralda,” adds Lorna, gazing at Peter and circling a finger around the edge of her wine glass.

“Oh,
Sardinia
!” Helen says, as a rare happiness rushes through her. “Sardinia is beautiful. We flew there for a night once, didn’t we, Peter?”

Her guests look confused. “A
night
?” asks Mark, almost with suspicion. “What, you just spent a night there?”

Helen realizes her mistake. “I meant we flew there
at
night,” she says, as her husband raises his eyebrows in a let’s-see-how-you-get-out-of-this-one fashion. “It was beautiful, flying into Cagliari . .

. with al the lights and everything. Of course, we stayed there for a week. I mean, we’re into short-stay, but going there and back in one night would be pushing it!”

She laughs, slightly too hard, then stands up to bring in the next course. A garlicless pork casserole, which she vows she wil eat without making any unnecessary faux pas.

I should talk about the book I’m reading
, Helen thinks to herself.
That should be safe. After all,
we never had a wild night flying to Mao’s China.

But she doesn’t have to worry about what to say, as Mark spends the whole of the main course boring everyone about property.

“I bought it at the bottom of the market, so it was a win-win for me,” he says, of a place he’s bought on Lowfield Close. Then he leans over the table as if about to reveal the secrets of the Holy Grail. “The trouble with buying to rent is that you can choose your properties but you can’t always choose your tenants.”

“Right,” says Helen, realizing Mark expects some kind of affirmation.

“And the first and only guy who wanted to rent it out has been a total disaster.
Total
disaster.”

Peter is only half listening. He is too busy trying to fight off thoughts about Lorna as he chews away on his pork. He tries not to catch her eye and to stay focused on his plate and the vegetables and the sauce.

“A disaster?” asks Helen, stil doing her level best to sound interested in what Mark is saying.

Mark nods, solemnly. “Jared Copeland. Do you know him?”

Copeland.
Helen thinks. It certainly rings a bel .

“Got a daughter,” adds Mark. “Blond girl. Eve, I think.”

“Oh yes. Clara’s friends with her. Only met her once but she seems lovely. A bright girl.”

“Wel , anyway, her dad’s a strange case. Alcoholic, I reckon. Used to be in the police. Criminal Investigation Department or something. But you wouldn’t believe it to look at him. He’s been out of work and decided to move from Manchester to here. Makes absolutely no sense, but if he wants to rent a flat from me I’m not going to stop him. Trouble is, he doesn’t have any money. He’s only paid me his deposit and that’s it. He’s been in there two months now and I haven’t had anything off him.”

“Oh dear, but the poor man,” says Helen, with genuine sympathy. “He’s obviously had something happen to him.”

“That’s what I said,” says Lorna.

Mark rol s his eyes. “I’m not running a charity. I’ve told him, if I don’t have the money in a week it’s curtains. You can’t get sentimental about these things, Helen. I’m a businessman. Anyway, he told me not to worry. He’s got a new job.” Mark smirks in such a way that even Helen is wondering why she invited the Felts around. “A
garbageman
. From the CID to a garbageman. I don’t think I’l be going to him for career advice.”

Helen remembers the garbageman rummaging through her rubbish this morning.

Her husband, though, hasn’t made any connection. He hasn’t heard the reference to the garbageman because it coincided with something pressing against his foot. And now his heart is racing because he realizes it is Lorna.
Her
foot. An accident, he assumes. But then it stays there, her foot against his foot, and even rubs against his, pressing tenderly down on the leather.

He looks at her.

She smiles coyly. His foot stays where it is as he thinks about the barriers between them.

Shoe, sock, skin.

Duty, marriage, sanity.

He closes his eyes and tries to keep the fantasy sexual. Normal. Human. But it is a struggle, even with Vivaldi playing in the background.

He retreats, sliding his foot slowly back under his chair, and she looks down at her empty plate.

But the smile stays on her face.

“It’s business,” says Mark, in love with the word. “And we’ve got an expensive year. Some big work on our house.”

“Oh, what are you thinking of doing?” Helen asks.

Mark clears his throat, as if about to make an announcement of national significance. “We’re thinking of extending. Upstairs. Make a fifth bedroom. Peter, I’l come round and show you the plans before we go for planning permission. There’s a risk it might shade some of your garden.”

“I’m sure it wil be fine,” says Peter, feeling alive and dangerous al of a sudden. “For us I’d say shade’s almost a plus point.”

Helen pinches her husband’s leg, as hard as she can manage.

“Right,” she says, starting to clear away the plates. “Who’s for some dessert?”

Tarantula

It is cold out in the field, even with the fire, but no one else seems to care.

People are dancing, drinking, smoking spliffs.

Clara sits on the ground, staring at the impromptu bonfire a few meters in front of her, flinching at its heat and brightness as the flames lick away at the night. Even if she wasn’t il , she would have been pretty miserable for the last hour or however long it has been since Toby Felt weaseled over and started plying Eve with cheap vodka and cheaper lines. And somehow, it has worked.

They are kissing now, and Toby’s hand is on the back of her friend’s head crawling around like a five-legged tarantula.

Making Clara’s night even worse is Harper. For the last ten minutes he has been leaning back and gawking at Clara, with drunk and hungry eyes, making her feel even worse.

Her stomach flips again, as if the ground is shooting downward.

She has to go.

She tries to conjure the energy to stand up when Eve pul s away from Toby’s mouth to talk to her friend.

“Oh my God, Clara, you look real y pale,” says Eve, drunk but concerned. “Shal we go? We could share a taxi back. I’l phone one.”

Behind her Clara sees Toby pep-talking Harper and vaguely wonders what he is saying.

“No, it’s okay,” Clara manages to say, over the drum-heavy music. “I’m going to cal my mum in a minute. She’l pick me up.”

“I can phone her if you want.”

Toby is tugging on Eve’s shirt.

“It’s okay,” says Clara.

“Sure?” asks Eve, with the eyes of a drunken deer.

Clara nods. She can’t speak now. If she speaks, she knows, she wil throw up. Instead she inhales and tries to get some fresh night air inside her, but it does nothing to help.

And then, as Eve and Toby start kissing again, the nausea in her stomach intensifies and begins to be mixed with sharp, wrenching pain.

This isn’t right.

Clara closes her eyes, and from somewhere deep inside the darkness of her being, she summons the strength needed to stand up and get away from al the happy dancers and kissing couples.

Signal

A couple of minutes later Clara is crossing a stile and heading into an adjacent field. She wants to cal her mum but there’s no signal on her phone so she just keeps walking. Not directly toward the road—she doesn’t want to stay in ful view of the partygoers—but through this field, which offers a quieter way to disappear.

She takes out her phone again. The little aerial symbol stil has a line through it.

There are sleeping cows on the ground. Headless shapes in the dark, like the backs of whales breaking free of an ocean. They only properly become cows when she is near; they wake, startled, and blunder in desperation away from her. She keeps going, treading a diagonal path toward the distant road, as the voices from the party blur and fade behind her along with the music, becoming lost in the night air.

Clara has never felt so il in her life. And in a life of eye infections, three-day migraines, and recurrent diarrhea, this is quite an achievement. She should be in bed, curled up in a fetal bal under the duvet whimpering to herself.

Then it comes again, that racking nausea that makes her wish she could escape her own body.

She needs to stop.

She needs to stop and be sick.

But then she hears something. Heavy panting.

The fire seems miles away now, a distant glow behind a rough, bushy hedge separating the fields.

She sees a hulking silhouette, bounding across the earth.

“Hey,” it pants.
He
pants. “Clara.”

It’s Harper. She feels so sick she isn’t real y too worried about why he might be fol owing her.

She is delirious enough to have forgotten his lecherous stares and to imagine that he might not be fol owing her at al . Or maybe she left something behind and he’s coming to give it to her.

“What?” she says. She straightens herself upright.

He steps closer to her. He smiles broadly and doesn’t speak. He is incredibly drunk, she thinks.

She’s not, though. Harper is a big oaf and a thug, but she’s always thought of him as lacking a mind of his own. And as Toby’s isn’t around for him to borrow, she should be okay.

“You look nice,” he says, wobbling about like a huge tree chopped at the base of its trunk.

His deep, sinusy voice weighs her down, adding to the queasiness.

“No. I don’t. I—”

“I wondered if you wanted a walk.”

“What?”

“Just, you know, a walk.”

She’s confused. She wonders again what Toby has been saying to him. “I am walking.”