Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [104]
Bella nodded enthusiastically.
‘Bread, milk, some eggs or something?’
‘Yeah. I’ll do a big shop tomorrow.’ But she chased them, as the car backed down the drive. ‘Better get some washing-powder too – I’ll get a few loads done tonight. There’s a mountain of it.’
Bella waved.
Ed lay on the sofa, reunited with his Power Rangers, thumb in, while Lucy made piles of whites, lights and darks, and tried not to think about Alec.
She’d started her period that morning, and her head and stomach ached. I’m shedding my lining, she thought. The lining that was getting ready for something that isn’t going to happen now.
You stupid cow.
It was getting dark when she heard Patrick’s car pull into the drive. She’d put Ed to bed, and poured herself a gin.
Different voices in the porch, then Patrick’s key, and Bella tripped in, giggling with Nina. She heard Marianne: ‘I know, I know, the last thing you need is visitors. We bumped into Patrick at the supermarket – he said you’d be glad to see us. I’ve got car-park withdrawals – I’ve missed you. And I’m bearing gifts – I have lasagne!’
Marianne came into the kitchen. ‘You look fantastic! So brown in just a week, damn you.’ She hugged Lucy, and Lucy saw Alec over her shoulder. ‘Good to see you!’ Marianne said.
‘We’re not staying,’ Alec was saying.
‘Nonsense.’ That was Patrick. Stop talking. Stop. Lucy wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. Her husband ushering her lover into the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of good red.
‘She’s had enough of me all week. Let’s have a drink, the lasagne. We’ve lost the girls, anyway, for an hour or two. Come on.’ Patrick found the corkscrew in a drawer. ‘Besides, you haven’t toasted my new job yet.’
‘Lucy! When did all this happen? You didn’t tell me! That’s fantastic, Patrick. Oh, darling, congratulations!’
Marianne was hugging him now, and Alec pumped his hand. ‘Great news.’
Patrick beamed. He saw her gin. ‘Did you start already, Luce?’
Lucy felt as if she was wrapped in clingfilm. Around her Marianne and Patrick toasted, laughed and busied themselves turning the oven on, tipping bags of pre-mixed chlorinated salad into bowls and drinking.
She couldn’t look at Alec, but she couldn’t look anywhere else either. She pushed her hair back from her face, behind both ears, and studied the plate rack as though she had never seen it before. And then he was there. Reaching for the plates. Marianne and Patrick were walking away, into the living room, glasses in hand. You stupid, stupid people.
‘You do look beautiful. Beautiful.’
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
Patrick saw them there. He’d come back for something. They weren’t kissing. Alec was barely touching her. But it couldn’t have been any clearer to him, suddenly, if they had been naked and rutting away on the Formica. He was standing so close to her. And the way they were looking at each other. He’d seen a painting like it once of two lovers. In a gallery. It must have been years ago – he didn’t go to galleries any more. That expression people used – ‘You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.’ He’d never really understood it until now. But what he saw between his wife and his friend in the kitchen, you could have sliced that. Solid, tangible and charged.
He felt as if he jumped backwards, but he didn’t, of course. It was the subtlest change in direction that took him, undetected, to the cloakroom. He locked the door and leant against it, panting as though he had just run a long way.
He stayed there until he was missed and called. Then he came out and ate lasagne.
Watching Lucy while she slept had always been one of Patrick’s favourite things to do. He had once told her that she slept like a child. Like an innocent. On her front, vulnerable, with all the little lines on her face smooth and untroubled. It had made him feel good, once, watching her while she slept. All sort of ‘God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world’. His world – the one with Lucy in it. Her and Bella and Ed.
Tonight he couldn’t look at her. He felt sick. But