The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton - Catherine Alliott [11]
He'd laughed. ‘I wish it was. No, it's like deciphering Chinese.’
Later, when I'd found it in the storeroom and boggled at the hideously difficult Middle English, I'd blushed. But it was all part of the learning curve. And after all, that was what I was doing here: learning the way of life, acquiring the habits of an undergraduate, without actually doing any hard graft. I took the Coles Notes approach to Oxford; I didn't actually study the text, but, boy, could I wing the lifestyle. Naturally I had a bike, and long dark hair, and a scarf of indeterminate origin with the stripes going lengthways, and I'd cycle round the city with a basket of books on the front, hoping the gaggle of Japanese tourists on Magdalen Bridge would think I was the real McCoy. I'd once – laughingly – said as much to Ant, and he'd roared.
‘Oh, no, no one would ever take you for one of those St Hilda's girls.’
‘Why not?’ I'd said, hugely offended.
‘You're much too pretty.’
I didn't quite know if I was mollified. Probably. A bit. But I wouldn't have minded being both. Like Anna. Pretty and clever.
I watched now as she scooped up her GCSE coursework folder with one hand and took the piece of buttered toast I proffered with the other.
‘See you,’ she called as she went through the open French windows, pausing to stroke Brenda, our West Highland terrier, who was asleep on the lawn, then going to the wall at the far end where her bike was parked. When she'd dumped her books in the basket she clamped the piece of toast between her teeth and went to wheel her bike through the garden gate to the street. She turned back suddenly. Removed the toast.
‘So what did she say?’
‘What?’
The washing machine had embarked on its final spin behind me.
‘Caro. What did she say?’
I caught this, but shrugged and cupped my ear, pretending I couldn't hear over the noise, which she acknowledged with an impatient shake of her head. I watched as she swung a leg over the saddle and pedalled off down the road in her dark blue Oxford High uniform.
‘She wants to get her ears pierced,’ I murmured to no one in particular, but I suppose to Ant, who was also gathering books and papers, making final debarkation noises, patting his pockets to check for wallet, glasses.
‘There, on the dresser.’ I pointed to his ancient spectacle case on the top shelf.
‘Thanks.’ He reached up. ‘Well, I suppose if that's what all her friends are doing,’ he said vaguely. ‘But she's a bit young, isn't she?’
‘That's what I said. I said, what about next summer, when she's fifteen?’
‘And she said?’
‘Fine. It was almost as if she felt she had to ask, but was quite relieved when I said no.’
We exchanged smiles and I knew we were silently congratulating ourselves on having a daughter who didn't actually want every orifice pierced, or a tattoo on her bottom, like Jess next door; who thought smoking was sad, drink to be sipped cautiously, and who wanted to get ten A stars in her GCSEs, and looked as if she was going to.
‘See you later.’ Ant kissed my cheek.
I leaned on the open frame of the French windows in my dressing gown and watched him go: crossing the garden to get his own bike, head slightly bowed, in the manner of a very tall man. Yes, we didn't do too badly, Ant and I. When friends complained about their bloody husbands, or their bloody marriages, I found myself keeping quiet, or even making things up. ‘Yes, desperately untidy,’ or ‘No, never remembers an anniversary,’ I'd sometimes contribute. I remembered Paula's accusation, yesterday – ‘Don't tell me you're still in love with your husband!’ Well, I was, actually. And he with me. I knew that, not smugly or sloppily, but just with a thumping great visceral certainty: knew we were in this for the long haul. Lifers.
As he went through the back gate he met the postman and took the letters from him, brandishing them at me to let me know he'd got them. I smiled and nodded back. These days they were nearly all for him, anyway. Not just the bills – I could barely manage the milk bill – but readers' letters too.