Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [59]
Pete came in. ‘Everything all right out here?’
Rose smiled. ‘Better than in there.’
‘Christ, I know. Mogadon in human form. What the hell were we thinking?’
‘I was thinking I’d lost the will to live.’
‘Can I die in here with you?’ Pete jumped up on to the worksurface. ‘I don’t think they’ll notice I’m missing.’
‘Stay with us, then. Come over to the dark side… cooking brandy?’
Pete shook his head, then nodded. ‘You two are incorrigible.’
‘Absolutely. Then perhaps you’d like to explain to Natalie exactly what you thought she and your friend might have in common.’
Lucy
‘Chicks’ night out?’ The waiter was grinning at her. He was absurdly young.
‘Definitely hens, I’m afraid.’ Lucy smiled back.
‘I’ll bring these over for you.’
‘Thanks – I can manage.’ She picked up five wine glasses in one hand and tucked the two bottles of wine under the other arm.
The other mums were being pretty loud for an early-evening Monday in town. It was only seven, and they’d had two bottles already. She normally avoided these things like the plague. School dinners and Mark Warner holidays weren’t her favourite subjects to discuss over a glass of average Chilean red, but just now they beat a night in front of the telly with Patrick. He didn’t want to talk to her – or do anything else with her for that matter – so he feigned interest in every wildlife, home-improvement and reality show going. It was driving her mad, and she had shut the door behind her this evening with relief.
‘Come on, Lucy.’
‘We want to know how you and Patrick got together.’
‘Yeah! Did you know Lorna and Steve were at the same infant school?’
Lorna was anxious not to sound too dull. ‘But we didn’t see each other for about ten years after O levels.’
‘Sweet!’
‘We were just a bog-standard dull office romance. Eyes met across a crowded boardroom sort of thing.’ This was Sasha. ‘Actually, it took me about three months to get him to stop concentrating on his figures and start focusing on mine, but I got there in the end!’ Her laugh always ended in a little snort. It was the kind of line Lucy knew she had used for years but it still made her snort.
‘So what about you?’
‘Let me catch up a minute, will you? I haven’t even had a glass of wine yet. Someone else go.’ Lucy wasn’t sure she could talk about it tonight.
‘Marianne? What about you and Alec?’
Lucy felt a little shiver. Of anticipation or dread? She didn’t want to hear this, but Marianne had leant in conspiratorially, and was warming to her subject. ‘Qantas. Economy section, of course. Christmas 1985. I was visiting, Alec was going home.’
‘I’d forgotten he was Australian.’
‘His accent has almost gone, hasn’t it?’
‘And.’
‘Well, you know how on those long-haul flights you walk up the aisle of the plane in complete dread of who you’re going to end up sitting next to – like, please don’t let me get anyone vast, or smelly, or mind-numbingly dull? – for twenty-four hours? I got him. Actually, there was someone pretty vast, smelly and mind-numbingly dull in the window-seat, but he swapped with me and went into the middle so he had her, not me.’
‘What a gent!’
‘Exactly!’
‘And?’
‘We just started nattering. And it was the quickest flight. We landed in Bombay and Bangkok, got off and stretched our legs – I remember him buying Chanel No. 5 in Duty Free for his mum – but the time in the air passed really fast. I didn’t even watch the films.’
‘Ah!’
Sasha was waggling her eyebrows lasciviously. ‘Did you… you know… mile-high club and all that?’
‘No one ever actually does that. It’s an urban myth.’ Lorna shook her head.
‘Certainly not,’ Marianne added. Then paused. ‘Not on the way out, at least.’
Sasha snorted again. ‘Tell us more.’
Lucy took a long drink. She wasn’t enjoying this.
‘We swapped numbers and stuff, but he was incredibly busy with family and I was doing my own thing – I met up with some people out there, these friends of my parents, who had kids my own age. I’d gone to spend Christmas with them and Alec and I didn’t see each other. We spoke a couple of times – he rang on Christmas Day –