One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [33]
‘Will you?’
‘Of course.’ She made her face smile. ‘These things happen.’
‘You mean—’
‘Oh, no, never before. Never a hint of scandal. He’s a good man.’
And I was a bad girl. Who’d instigated scandal. Trembling, I gathered my coat from the back of the door and departed. Would Hattie Carrington kindly leave the stage. Why? Why did I go, just like that? Years later, in retrospect, I’m not sure, but down the linoleum corridor I went, the one that had held so much promise, down the whispering elevator, and out into the night.
After the air conditioning, the humid night air ambushed me, wrapped itself around me like so many menacing scarves. I weaved shakily across the road, feeling it on my cheeks, like hot accusatorial breath, through the heavy traffic without waiting for the lights to change, amid blaring horns and furious-faced drivers around the square. Churchill loomed, then Palmerston; more horns as I crossed the road again towards the backstreets of Pimlico.
Laura was out when I got to the flat. There was a note on the kitchen table: ‘Hughie and I are in Pitcher and Piano if you and Dominic want to join us.’
You and Dominic. You see, that was the problem. I’d let it become so. But he wasn’t mine. We weren’t a couple. And I knew Laura had worried, had tried to broach the subject more than once that we were perhaps too close, but I’d brushed her off, dismissed it. I wouldn’t admit to myself, let alone to others, that I… I caught my breath. Loved him.
Despite my shame, despite his hugely pregnant wife in the doorway, the one who’d offered me hospitality, I knew this to be so. With the most burning certainty I’d ever felt about anything. And it was the first time. I’d got to the ripe old age of twenty-three without it. Had gone out with boys, but felt nothing like this. Nothing like the completely overwhelming sense of helplessness as he’d taken me in his arms in his office. In his office. How ghastly is that? How cheap? Yet to me, it seemed utterly romantic. And now, I’d never see him again. I’d lost my job, and I’d lost him too. The ramifications were hammered home, one by one, like nails in my head, delivered, it seemed to me, oddly not by Letty, but a contorted-faced Katya. I went to my bedroom and threw myself dramatically on my bed, still in my coat, pulled the pillow over my head, and burst into tears.
At length, the phone went beside me. I turned over. Lay there a second listening, then picked it up. Could it be… ? No, of course not. It was Kit, ringing to wish Laura a happy birthday. Of course, Laura’s birthday. Which was why they’d gone out.
‘No, she’s not here, but I’ll tell her.’ I sat up with a struggle, wiping my face, trying to steady my voice. ‘How are you?’ I lowered the mouthpiece and exhaled heavily, turning damp eyes to the ceiling. ‘Having fun?’ I managed.
‘Fun?’
I came to, remembering where he was. The steel in his voice went right through me.
‘Oh, Kit. Sorry, I—’
‘Fun?’ he repeated. ‘You have no idea.’ His voice was trembling. I could hear him trying to compose himself. I sat up and grabbed a tissue.
‘Kit?’
‘Oh, yes, great fun.’ Harsh words tumbled out. ‘The father of the family I’m staying with was killed yesterday, caught in crossfire on his way to hospital. A doctor. Snipers got him.’
I caught my breath, shocked. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Three children.’
‘Oh, Kit. I’m so sorry,’ I whispered again, lamely.
‘That’s nothing. At least it was quick.’ His voice didn’t sound familiar. It seemed to be coming from somewhere thin and dark. I felt completely disorientated, bounced as I was, in a heartbeat, out of my own drama and into his. I couldn’t marshal my thoughts.
‘At least he didn’t know anything about it,’ Kit was saying. ‘Not like the ones who are rounded up every day. Boys, some of them, shitting themselves as they’re herded into lorries and taken away, and all in the name of ethnic cleansing.’
My mind swam in a befuddled manner. I tried to grasp what he was saying.
‘Ethnic cleansing my arse – it’s genocide. I’m in Croatia, Hattie,