Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [68]
Frankie seemed exotic. She was half Argentinian – her father owned a lot of land there – but she had been educated in England. She sounded posh, and she had the self-assured polish of the rich, beautiful and well-educated. He didn’t remember being intimidated by a woman before – that wasn’t his style – but she made him feel like a kid. Until she took him to bed, where she made him feel more of a man than anyone else ever had.
Natalie had hated Frankie on sight. Although what she had actually hated, on reflection, was the way Frankie made both of them feel. Tom was quite un-Tom-like around her. Not so much fun. Serious, and absorbed in her. Like there was no one else around. It was so weird seeing him like that. She’d told him, once, that it freaked her out. He said it was unfair of her: he’d been watching her behave like that around men for years, and put up with it, and that she, too, would have to learn to.
Secretly, he thought Frankie made Natalie feel insecure. She made most women feel that way: always immaculate, and always being watched by every man in the room, regardless of who that man was with.
It hadn’t lasted long. Tom always thought of it afterwards as a short, sharp shock. As though loving Frankie – which there was no doubt he had done – was akin to the electrical therapy they give to mental patients: mind-altering and violent. He was not the kind of guy she was going to end up with. That much was obvious. It was clear enough, too, that Frankie was not the sort of girl he would have been happy with long-term.
He remembered being surprised by the way his heart had betrayed him. Why would his physiology work that way? Let him fall in love with someone who didn’t suit him? A few months later he was actually glad that she had left him. It felt a little like being saved.
The four of them had had dinner once. It had been Natalie’s idea. He’d appreciated that she tried with Frankie – it was hard to imagine two more different women – and he understood her pursuit of a neat friendship between them. But Tom couldn’t stand Simon. He was of a type he had known throughout his life and never liked. Self-absorbed, self-important, self-righteous. A total slicing and dicing bore, who was only animated when he was talking about himself or his work. His patients clearly didn’t matter to him, except as nameless, faceless bodies that might be helpful in the fulfilment of his ambitions.
The evening had been a bit of a disaster, and they had ended it early.
It made him smile now to think that a woman like Frankie and a man like Simon might indeed have been very happy together.
Lucy
Lucy swept up the last of the crumbs and dust bunnies and stood up straight at last. She was knackered. Bella’s Pop-stars birthday party was finally, blissfully, over. Seventeen eight-year-old girls had learnt the Macarena, been made up to look like Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver, dressed in neon brights, and generally run riot in the village hall to an in ordinately loud soundtrack, which still hadn’t drowned their glass-shatteringly high voices, all shouting and giggling at once.
‘Thanks so much for your help, you two. You were life-savers.’ Marianne had stayed. Alec had collected Ed, who was looking horrified at the prospect of an afternoon of pink pop mania, to drop him and Stephen off at a school football session. But he had come back, and the four of them had finally cleared the debris. Bella and Nina were sitting on the stage, watching their parents benevolently as they worked.
Alec took the dustpan from her. ‘You look done in.’
Patrick came in from taking out the rubbish sack and added, ‘Yeah, you do.’
‘Thanks, guys. I feel great now! Don’t the boys